Hello everyone!

There is a drum fill sound that I love, most commonly found in records from the mid to late 70s. I don’t think it’s genre-specific, but I would say it’s more common to funk and soft rock, as it belongs to the “dead drum” timbre family.

This type of drum fill is composed mostly of tom toms, and although there might be a snare or a kick drum here and there, it’s the tom toms I am trying to focus on here.

The specific rhythm or cadence is not relevant; what is relevant is the tone of the tom toms. They are dry, yes, but not only that: they seem to be preceded by a hint of a reverse sound, as if a reverse sound anticipated the dry hit.

Now I’m not 100% sure of this sound that comes before the hit, for it could be just an auditory illusion caused by some effect. I am not positive, but from what I have learned about compressors, it seems likely that this specific sound should be achieved via compression.

What triggered my post was the release of Fuse Audio Labs VCE-118 and its “infinite compression” and “reverse compression” stylistic traits. Before that, I had had an intuition that the answer could lie on Eventide’s Omnipressor, but I tested it to no avail.

I wish I could give you a reference track to better explain what I am looking for, but I have been delaying this post in search for one, whenever I have the time, and haven’t found any. If any of this makes any sense to you, please drop your two cents.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

TL;DR: how to make 70s dry tom-tom drum-fill that has (or appears to have) this 'reverse' sound before the actual hit?

 

if i wanted to add the expectation of tom sound coming, i would add reverb to the tom then reverse it, and connect it to the original tom sound

 

how about a snippet of an audio example of what you're trying to describe?

 

i'm not sure how this guy ended up with Michael Brauers compression settings for toms. He says he is using the Waves Kramer PIE compressor but that one is not on his plugin list. Many of the famous tom fills people often try to figure out are actually early 80s too. What you are describing sounds like they were maybe running the tape backwards. Splicing the tape for short reverse transients would be pretty difficult. But I'm not sure how you could make a reversed sound before a transient with a compressor which had no lookahead. Here's that video and it is pretty short. I don't think it is the technique you are after, but I will take any Brauer recipes I run into,

 

He says it in one of the the Puremix Brauerize videos, he shows the settings too.

 

Maybe I missed it.

Michael Brauer Temple Plugin List

Acustica Pensado EQ2
Audio Ease Altiverb 7
A.O.M Plugins Invisible Limiter
Craddle The God Particle
DDMF Magic Death Eye Compressor
Fuse Audio Labs VCL-864U
Kazrog True Dynamics
Komeff Audio Pawn Shop Comp 2
Kush Pusher
Kush Goldplate
McDSP EC300
Pulsar Echorec
Slate Digital Virtual Mix Rack
Slate Digital VerbSuite Classics
Sonnox Oxford Dynamics Comp/Lim
Avid Trim
Fabfilter Pro-Q3
IK Multimedia Sunset Sound Studio Reverb
PSP Spring Box
PSP Lexicon PSP42
PSP Vintage Warmer 2
Plugin Alliance SPL De-Esser
Plugin Alliance Black Box Analog Design HG-2
Plugin Alliance Maag EQ4
Plugin Alliance Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
Plugin Alliance Shadow Hill MAstering Compressor Class A
Plugin Alliance bx_console SSL 4000E
Plugin Alliance bx_console SSL 9000J
Plugin Alliance bx_digital V3
Process.audio Decibel
Softube Chandler Limited Curve Bender
Softube Summit Audio TLA-100A
Softube Chandler Limited Germanium
Softube Tube-Tech EQ
Slate Digital Trigger 2
UAD Korg SSD-3000
UAD Manley Variable Mu
UAD Distressor
UAD Hitsville EQ Mastering
UAD EP-34 Tape Echo
UAD Neve 33609
UAD AKG BX20
UAD Struder A800
UAD EMT 140
UAD Capital Chambers
UAD Precision K-Stereo
UAD Studio D Chorus
UAD Pultex EQP-1A
UAD Avalon VT-737sp
UAD Manley VoxBox
UAD Ampex ATR-102
UAD UA 1176 Rev A
UAD Fairchild 670
UAD UA 1176LN Rev E
UAD Fairchild 660
UAD SSL G Bus Compressor
UAD Oxford Inflator
UAD Oxford Envolution
UAD Zener Limiter
Waves Kaleidoscopes
Waves Brauer Motion
Waves dbx-160
Waves H-Delay
Waves NLS Channel
Waves Manny Marroquin Reverb
Waves Abby Road Plates
Waves REDD17
Waves REDD37-51
Waves REQ 4
Waves RD56
Waves S1 Shuffler
Waves Smack Attack

 

It's called tea towel drums, if you're looking for those 70s dead drum sounds. There are libraries for kontakt at least

 

Try Parliament's intro drum fill for Give Up the Funk...

 

Ok. Nothing special there other than a traditional 70's studio funk type sound. There's a tad of what sounds like standard plate reverb on the whole thing and maybe a little compression on the drum kit. That's about it. The Toontrack New York studios 1-3 libraries has some really good deadened studio kits that can be manipulated to produce that exact sound. You'll need to get the updated versions to use with SD3 though. Or you can just use SD2 and use the original libs. Just set up the e-kit and bang away. If you're looking for canned drum riff's there's a shit-ton of so-called "funk" sample packs that probably have multitudes of canned licks using this same kind of 70's studio funk setup.

 

Last edited: Apr 25, 2024

Do you mean the drums coming in at around 9.05?

 

More subtle than that, can't quite pinpoint it, but love that sound you brought in!