Free Plugins You Should Be Using For Awesome Drums 🥁

Howdy! Today we're going to talk about drum sound design and work through a few of my favorite weird tips for making interesting percussion sounds!
Playbeat 3 ► bit.ly/3OQXF7v
Exea Expansion ► bit.ly/3nUkFqC
▼▼▼Other plugins in this video▼▼▼
Hysteresis ► bit.ly/3u7iPGC
Kilohearts Dynamics ► bit.ly/3IGrrtS
Gatelab ► bit.ly/3u55Mp6
Vocoder (Free Alternative) ► bit.ly/3a0XMhY
Granular Sampler (Free Alternative) ► bit.ly/3y3MS37
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▼▼▼TIMESTAMPZ:▼▼▼
0:00 My Free Playbeat Expansion!
0:25 Howdy
0:58 My New Free Expansion
1:50 Hysteresis Textures
2:57 Side Tip For Better Texture
3:46 Texture Percussion Loops
5:15 Vocoder Noise Grooves
7:27 Pull-Apart Method
9:22 Granular Sample Layering
11:35 Closing Thoughts
Stay classy!
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#musicproduction #sounddesign #tutorial

[@VenusTheory]

Go drum your monkey this week 🐒 Playbeat 3 ► bit.ly/3OQXF7v Exea Expansion ► bit.ly/3nUkFqC (note: the expansion also works with the free playbeat lite!)

[@tulminov-2142]

the playbeat does have its own sounds aboard?

[@PaulEubanks]

Playbeat 3 isn't free though, right?

[@AziDoesQuestionableThings]

i get reminded that glitchmachines exist every like month or so, and have a sound design field day for like 2 days and then completely forget about them after, thanks for reminding me about fracture/hysterisis lol

[@cullenkernan2844]

Tactic from GM is dope as well. Running a couple instances with your own kick, Snare and hat along with their glitch samples is great for breaks

[@VenusTheory]

Their plugins are a magical thing - so easy to lose a ton of time with them but often you end up with a ton of really unique samples and ideas afterwards! Need to grab a few of their other ones at some point.

[@cullenkernan2844]

@@VenusTheory I couldn't agree more. I also started creating stutter edits with their samples and my drums in Breaktweaker and then re-importing them into GM Tactic.

[@adrianlara5045]

I love their plugins.

[@BlackDrip]

Same 🥲

[@MaybeAnnatar]

I use gatelab a lot on drones and lower the wet level on it to make it feel like there's motion to it. Small warning to other Ableton users, if you just have that on a track don't just hit export with it on infinite 1. Ableton will crash. My way around this is to record that track to another track and just turn it off as soon as the new gate instance generated and turn it back on right before the next one...or just turn it in infinate 2.

[@bjam2424]

Another fantastic tutorial from the Venus genius. I watch/listen to your channel everyday on the way to work and I always feel so inspired to get into the studio and try your tips and tricks. Thanks again for all the inspiration!!!

[@callmeimp]

Wow, the timing on this one is unbelievable - I've just been fighting the drum design these days. You're the man!

[@JoshuaDb_The_Witness]

Man I only recently started watching your videos. I have watched a LOT of videos about SD and music production - and stopped for a long time - as after a while a lot of folks are just saying the same things in different ways. You not only bring different angles on old topics, your reviews and tutorials are very clear - you present the information with the clarity of a professional educator - and the humor of an improviser - for the record - i'm an improv teaching artist (longform theatrical) - as well as professional musician and (retired) sound designer - audio post generalist and dialogue editor. I started making music with machines with a shitty PC, a sound blaster card, and a cracked copy of ACID back in 96... my times have changed... keep up the excellent work brother.

[@electropocalypse5877]

Amazing. This video truly has great tips on how to make countless sounds using simple methods. The thing I am most thankful for is the point often made that sound design is about being adventurous and making discoveries. Being new I tend to put too much focus on creating sound in overly methodical ways. We should let these things come to us rather than burn ourselves out searching for them. It's just like learning a new language that way - the best teacher is first hand experience over a long period of time, not reading/staring at a screen. That said everyone's different. Keep your creative (right) brain working everyone and don't let perfectionism overtake innovation.

[@smosifjr]

Your content is amazing dude. Always such useful information. Every time I watch your videos, it reminds me that an enormous part of creativity is allowing yourself to just explore and try new things. Noodling around and having fun with new toys is so important for me to reach a state of "play", where I'm not even thinking, I'm just doing. That's when the real magic is made! Cheers x

[@charodeyjeddy5677]

Pure Gold!!!! You're my favorite sound designer and teacher! Thanks a lot for all stuff u made!

[@Beehunker]

Really great stuff here, usable in so many genres and styles. You did a great job at making the task seem approachable, so glad to learn there is an easier way!

[@philmarsh5593]

Some really interesting tips there - I liked the idea of slowing down and snipping out hits. Saved to my "useful music creation" playlist, thanks. I have Playbeat too, so thank you for the expansion too.

[@eladyihie2502]

אני פשוט אוהב את הסרטונים של הבחור הזה, זה מובא בצורה מובנת ומוסברת היטב ובכלל כיף לראות את זה

[@JayAlsman]

That stretched drum trick, sounds amazing when put into context! Thank you for the tip.

[@elijahgleckler2273]

I love the drum sound design videos you’ve been putting out recently-I’ve really been getting into making my own drums recently! For a future video, it might be appreciated by many if you would delve into the nerdy “philosophical” part of drum design. How do you go about making a kit/sample pack? Sometimes if feels redundant to just make another lame hihat like “uhhh ok this is what a hat sounds like I guess” Like what are some things you think about when trying to make interesting and stylish kits, as opposed to just saying like “ok yeah this is a snare I guess”

[@Dante150_]

YES, THIS. I want to make my own drums and I only want to use My drums. No more industry sounds for me lol.

[@P5SFX]

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome :) As always, thank you so much for going over techniques. I learn so much from your channel, it's incredible. Keep up the fantastic work. Cheers.

[@nicolasrouiller3885]

And another free masterclass man, thanks so much Venus Theory

[@starsandguitars2050]

I was blown away by your video. I'm not a designer BUT....you've got my attention. Very cool!

[@designhappens8444]

wow! Hysteresis is fantastic, Haven't heard about it...Great also for use with slow synth arpeggios...you can create fantastic atmospheres through a good lush reverb...hmmm, thx for pointing this out!

[@audiomodern]

What an awesome expansion Maestro! Brilliant work! ❤️

[@namagenshu]

catching up on your recent videos tonight and this was a really cool one! definitely want to try out some of these techniques in the future. thanks!

[@flowleopard893]

Love the introductions 👌🤣 Keep that sense of humour man, truly fun channel

[@hirnzircus]

Thank you for this very cool pack!

[@ashylarry416]

This is a dope vid my man! 🤌🏻🤌🏻

[@dmitripopov8570]

Awesome as always! Great topic. Thank you!

[@reklawk]

This has to be my fav video yet.

[@scottlarock7924]

This was great. Thank you

[@StephanBuchin]

So well done at all levels. Great job ☺

[@3str]

Thanks very much for doing this, appreciated!

[@jolieuke]

I highly enjoy your videos ! Thanks for those great tips ! Cheers,

[@Danksta02]

Dude you are hilarious and super talented and knowledgeable at music/tech. Makes for great entertainment as well as valuable content.

[@exitthelemming145]

Love the freebie Playbeat patterns.You spoil us rotten Mr VT

[@Xenowave]

Perfect timing! I've been experimenting w/ drums the past few days.

[@VenusTheory]

Hope these tips help out then!

[@compucorder64]

One technique that gets you from percussion to somewhere more tonal, is to use percussion input to excite a physical model resonator, like Mutable Rings. The Unperson had an example of this on his channel recently. It's something like what Oscar from Underdog did in his video with a resonator, but instead of a fixed parameters, you have something more musically malleable to apply modulation to, including pitch. Another more experimental technique uses concatenative synthesis, where you train the synth using a corpus of sounds from one domain, for example, a sampleset of one shots of a Balinese Gamelan Orchestra. Then, once trained, you feed a drum groove into it. The concatenative synth will do it's best to resynthesize, say a rattly motown funk groove, but using small slices of transients, timbre from the gamelan corpus. The results can vary, but can sound weirdly psychedelic/strange. Almost Like a highly overcompressed jpeg, where the result sounds like a lo-fi version of the original, but with the unmistakable sonic DNA of the gamelan corpus. Like a pixelated image, but where each pixel is a fragment of a collage of another image. Speech resynthesized this way from percussion, or percussion groove resynthesized using speech corpus is also interesting. See Douglas McCausland's video (Fragment 10. ) to get some sense of what it sounds like.

[@ToreHansen]

This is always inspiring and creative!

[@travisblack85]

Love your videos man. Thank you!

[@willjustice1876]

This was such a great and effective video, thanks

[@BorisBarroso]

Woow so cool I almost missed this one, thanks a lot for sharing

[@tablameister]

Explained and demonstrated very nicely. Relatively easy techniques to add so much more interest into drum tracks.

[@psyedk]

dude i love that little jam at @9:09 ( dat timestamp tho, ayyyy ) big portishead / massive attack vibes

[@ihaveagoddamnplanarthur]

Toy-like people make me boy-like

[@louislafontaine5984]

The nice thing is when you use Playbeat as a VST instead of AU, you can send its impulse to trigger other soundsets in Kontakt, Battery, samplers, etc.

[@RexArcum]

This is the video that I needed right now, thank you so much!

[@fischergreen4134]

Nice one Cam Play eat is current my go to for drum It's amazing

[@hhal9000]

Great sounds-reminds me of Talking Heads,Particularly their album ''My life I The Bush of Ghosts''.

[@gogamusic]

Great video . Learned many new techniques from this . Thank you!

[@LaymensLament]

downpitching has been a staple for trip hop and loafy i kinda never thought of just downpitching my beat wholesale good idea

[@MrJansteiner]

This is a great tutorial (once again)! What you’re presenting here in 12:28 will take me at least a weekend of homework to elaborate on. Great stuff. Thank you, Cameron. 🙏

[@SuperRingoffire1]

Thanks Cameron, so many great ideas so little time! 👌😎😅

[@paullambert7376]

Freaking sick video! Thanks!

[@SirNotAppearing]

thx for the freebie! and great tips.

[@nicschuchtern9561]

Very cool tips, thank you for ur awesome videos

[@lisotunali3807]

Man what a solid display of sound design skills this is…

[@cdasteez]

Best bing bong noise make sound show on KZbin 🙌

[@Euthymia]

I snagged Fracture and Hysteresis pretty early on, along with an accidental purchase of Cataract (which I had taken for a more....normal sampler). They sat for years, I dusted them off when I went back to doing electronic music. I got so hooked, when Pluginboutique ran a sale of all Glitchmachines' plug-ins for $5-10, I bought all of them. Then Tactic, when it came out. They're like the Tony Chachere's Seasoning of electronic music. Gotta be careful not to use too much, but it can turn the plainest stuff into a deliciously spicy feast. So useful for breakdowns it feels like I'm cheating (as if such a thing were possible in EDM)

[@bricelory9534]

Very nice! Love these

[@jaixiviii]

"Audio Vomit", I love it! You are Awesome!

[@saeye]

Another very cool video yo. All these noisy percussion hits. Do it in a odd time signature for a few grooves with some cool melodies and you are basically writing for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' The Social Network soundtrack.

[@qoiet6049]

really solid video! 🖤

[@74goldenjet]

Really cool and useful tricks, thank you :)

[@Artersa]

Great video!!!

[@MrLarsDF]

Pure gold.. once again👍🙏🙏

[@thebeatrumble]

The time stretch/pitch shift trick is what Hip Hop producers would use when using Samplers like the Sp-1200. Because of the limited sample time they would have to play vinyl records at 45 speed to get the most recording time and then pitch down the samples in the sampler to sound normal but it would actually make them sound deeper and fatter. That’s why you get those beefy drums in Boom Bap 90s rap.

[@jamie9726]

When you took off the gate lab with the dark shit under the groove 🤤 this my guy 😂

[@zachsteiner]

Huh cool. I was just watching some of your old drum sound design videos yesterday.

[@jamie9726]

Venus theory I’m wondering if you have a video on sound engineering but in terms of panning, gates, high and where to put high and low frequencies to create a sound with purpose? Almost like a visual space where you can feel/hear the different instruments? This is becoming more intuitive, but I really like your music and your angle of presentation for the sound you want to hear so I feel like you would be great. I will be continuing to find out myself 😇

[@alexmoscatelli149]

Incredible content, as always

[@qasderfful]

1:31 I recently played Spore once again and this reminds me of Spore soundtrack HEAVILYYYY And it's not a bad thing. For the whole playthrough I thought "Man, how cool and ahead of its time the OST (or, in fact, everything) was"

[@johnrun712]

Nice, thanks for this. We have very similar tastes, except I'm old and flabby and off soon, so you'll have to carry on my work with your young vibrant stuff ;-) Like you, I chase those odd sounds between things, but never get full control and maybe that's the way it supposed to be.

[@vdub4216]

Dude, these were gold 🙏

[@glenesis]

Great stuff, Cameron! This stuff is kinda what I go for when I mic up my kitchen counters, pots and baking sheets. Argotlunar is a wonderful, free, simple granulator too, if you can find it.

[@tulminov-2142]

could i hear some of your stuff somewhere?

[@MediaMusik777]

Also check sugar bytes drum computer and arturia vocoder and xln they work good in random generating

[@laurentc1129]

01:32 this reminds me Nip/Tuck TV Show. Very similar triphop-ish soundtrack in my memories

[@CatFish107]

Yay! Bing bong noise make sound show!

[@VenusTheory]

Yeeeeeeeee

[@DeafyDeaferson]

Cool ideas.

[@tdtrecordsmusic]

Coolness I tried the vocoder thing. Ableton ; Drums as carrier > half unvoiced, sens 100%, 12 bands, 5.45khz-120hz, bw 10%, depth 200%, attack 6ms, rel 120ms, formant -11 < >> Next put into Amp cranked all the way >> Hybrid Reverb >> glue compressor The whole thing is in a audio effect rack, a second device in the rack is just utility to make a dry , so I can create a dry/wet situation and still have the distortion and compression slamming. The vocorder has a lot of pitch to it, which sounds good if the drums stand alone. Only trick I do with drums which stands out is that I use sidechaining a LOT. Not just kick & bass. Try the sidechain on everything ! For example > use the high hats to sidechain a trancegate effect on a vocal.

[@steveboris6286]

I have been watching a few of your videos lately but this one struck a chord. One thing I have noticed in my past 4 years of working in Logic and taking countless masterclasses is that teachers do not want contact with their students. No grading of projects and I understand that but when you mentioned assignment it made sense. It would be great for someone (maybe you) could have a series of assignments that people could try as a way of learning. Not to be listened to by you but to challenge us. There would be no right answers just our answers. It would be designed to make us approach something from a different way. Just a thought.

[@jamie9726]

I literally nestled my feet into the ground when he said that. Nice vibes for sure. Genuinely guiding those who are willing to work consistently to master the craft ☺️ ty Venus bruh

[@jamisbillson4872]

Brilliant ideas mate.

[@iciaussi2454]

Merciii !!!

[@etacar6532]

have you checked drumcomputer from sugarbytes ? especially for layering fast groove and riddim structures to the beats.. very powerful tool, totally underrated and for me much more powerful then microtonic !

[@aaronappling4754]

Quality video bro!

[@saltesc]

You are Gordan Freeman's cooler younger bro. While he pursued theoretical physics with Black Mesa, you went with music. On top of style, you also lucked in with the ability to speak and let the rest of the world know what's going on in those Freeman boys' brains-which is, of course, very qualitatively rich, interesting, and entertaining.

[@amaningilingadecarvalho1571]

Bruh this what I been looking for

[@BeeDotEee]

plugin boutique gave me ozone elements and PB3 for 5 bucks. Hard to say no at that price. PB3 is a ton of fun and your pack is fantastic sir.

[@BeeDotEee]

VT - Exea 5 is great. Someone will make money from it.

[@timschannel247]

Hi Backeroony, thanks nice contribution from your side. I am just asking myself, why nobody gives attention to microtonic with new beatspace, as to me it is mindblasting aswell. To be honest, I would say this is a serious competitor maybe even the better one outerperforming ;-)

[@milenski_]

Thanks, Cameron 🙏🏻

[@kelvinfunkner]

I mostly come back here just to listen to the incredible voice over tone and witty mannerisms 🙂

[@malvinusmusic]

Interesting stuff, I'm searching for some good software drums and I do think these plugins are worth a try.

[@ancel6811]

Please do a Industrial Drum/FX tutorial!

[@DanielGergely]

Check out the latest version of the Emergence granular plugin mentioned in the video here (the pluginboutique link has an older version): daniel-gergely.itch.io/emergence Here you can also find a beta version with some cool new features!

[@Meyendzi]

Buckarooney opens DAW for the first time in weeks. Inspiration Val=true; Thanks Cameron =)

[@NxckMusic]

I love your camera holy shit

[@VenusTheory]

Thanks haha - Sony A7III and a few vintage lenses is what I typically use! Lately been using a Rokinon 35mm as well for the 'at desk' shots and some talking heads which is great and a bit faster to work with.

[@NxckMusic]

@@VenusTheory Dope to know!

[@gulagwarlord]

Sick glitch tips here

[@scottk3292]

Okay, if I'm working on a project similar to 80s Genesis (or solo Phil) and I need his "beat the crap out of the heads" drum sound, I doubt I'll get that from NI Battery... do I need to look for a sample library? Examples: "Don't Lose My Number" and "Against All Odds" I could take my 909 samples, give them a hard slap using a compressor, and then gate them, but I think mic placement could be crucial for that sound?

[@DoctorJRx]

killer !!

[@kibr_et]

What software do you use to record your screen?

[@alexbiddell8710]

Cool drum techniques! Love watching stuff like this :) HEY Cameron! I don't know if DMs on KZbin is a thing but I got tagged in some "You've been randomly chosen for a prize" that says it was you, obviously a bot. Thought you should know

[@VenusTheory]

Glad you enjoyed the video! I think I've banned all the bots doing that now but seems like it's sorta 'ban one, three take it's place'. Hopefully YT will do something about that eventually but best I can do for now is manually banning them and adding some comment filters.

[@nj1255]

Riffer doesn't really do much for me in terms of inspiration, it just feels like the melodies that it creates are too random and not really musical. On the other hand, Playbeat is amazing! I usually input the kick+snare pattern I want to use and then let Playbeat generate a couple of different hi-hat and percussion grooves. Works every time!

[@AllThatsGone]

Nice one

[@HEC9]

I think RIBS by Hvoya Audio will be a great friend of this guys! 😎

[@onairmastering]

Who needs Trent when you have Cam actually explaining how.

[@TonyThomas10000]

HY Plugins are amazing for drums!