Adjusting the volume of drum samples is the easiest mixing process to consider, both at the start, during, and at the end of the production process. Even with regular instrument tracks, it's as easy as it gets. Adjusting the volume of certain tracks will allow others to fit in and not clash all that much, hopefully not at all! It comes quite naturally to even people who have just come into the music production game.
Adjusting the volume of multiple tracks is possible in many different places in, well, basically all different samplers and hosts. For instance, Propellerheads' Reason has volume mixers on a lot of buses and all the different devices, and also in the main mixer. So that's three places that you can easily change the volume of whatever sound you're currently attending to. Logic, which is Apple's audio flagship program, also has a similar structure. You can easily adjust all types of volume quite easily in different places.
An essential rule to volume mixing that every single music producer and beat maker should note is that you should never introduce a sound into a beat if that sound cannot be heard. The best that sound can do is muddy things up, and the worst it can do is totally destroy the mix as a whole. A drum samples beat is only as good as the weakest single track, so if one of the sounds is not pulling its weight in the mix, it may be time to let it go and look at something else. Professional mixing engineers will tell you exactly the same. So have your sounds contribute equally and watch your mix take off.
Did you know that a sound can be lowered by six decibels and lose half of its perceived volume? This is actually the same when increasing by six decibel - that is, you will increase the volume by one part. When mixing drum samples like hi-hats, a popular tip is to lower it a few notches below where you think it should sit. This is because our human ears hear the higher frequencies at a higher level than the others.
Velocity and volume are not the same things. Lowering volume does make a sound quieter, but velocity comes in at another level as well. If you are manipulating a multi-sampled drum samples patch, then playing at a different velocity can even trigger a different sample entirely. This is true performance playing and synthesizing.
When making creative decisions pertaining to track volume for drum samples, you should take your time and weigh up all decisions. Also, try never to increase more than a few tracks in volume. To sculpt tracks as a group, lower the volume of the tracks you want to make quieter, don't increase what you want louder. You do not want to deliver a song that has twelve sounds all on the edge of clipping, so keep it in perspective.
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