How To Get More Punch Out Of Your Virtual Drums

Many of you today record, produce, and mix all of your own music. You write the songs, record the instruments, and then mix the music. This means for a lot of you, you are probably using virtual drums. And let me say this, virtual drums are great. It's really amazing how far they have come with sampled drums and getting them to sound more realistic. However, sometimes sampled drums are just missing that punch that comes with a live kit.

Today I want to share with you one way you can add punch to your virtual drums.

Parallel Compression

Parallel compression is an amazing tool when mixing. I use it all the time when mixing on vocals, guitars, drums, and just about everything if I think it needs it. 

So what is parallel compression? 

Parallel compression is basically creating an identical (parallel) aux track as your normal bus track, and having that track squashed with the compression. You then use the fader to dial in the compression with the normal bus. 

If you want to see this visually, take a look here. 

In this video I walk you through exactly how to set up a parallel compression track and what it sounds like on drums. You can see that I have a drum bus created, and then an identical aux track next to it with just a compressor on it. I then use the fader to dial in the compressor with the original sound.

Parallel compression is an amazing tool for virtual drums as well. Virtual drums can often sound kind of bland and lacking in punch. By using parallel compression, you will alleviate that problem quite a bit. The key here is to be subtle and don't go overboard, but simply start pushing that compression until you get the punch you desire.


Remember if you have any questions please feel free to submit them to the right, and I'll be happy to feature it on the blog. Thanks for reading!


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