ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the following techniques: vintage plugins for drums, advanced effects for drums, working in parallel, reducing bleed, adding samples and changing timing. Traditionally, reverb for drums and percussion is added with echo chambers, plate reverbs and hardware devices such as the Lexicon Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) 60, PCM70 or the AMS RMX16. Gated reverb continues to be a powerful tool to inflate drums; many reverbs have presets for it. With drums, adjusting the ratio between early reflections and reverb makes all the difference. By using early reflections only, depth and width can be added, without losing definition. Distortion makes an instrument sound more aggressive; as if the musician is playing harder. With drums, the effect can be crucial for the right amount of attitude and character. Parallel techniques allow the original signal to remain unaffected. Because the processed signal is added, extreme settings for compression can be used.
