Elektron Musical Instruments

> anyway, that's my only suggestion - use your initial drum sounds to 
help
> shape the tone of the song and then tailor them to the general mix 
later.
> and don't just use the TRX bass drum; try *everything* (even toms!).
> the EFM BD is great, for example :-)

I've been doing one song for now, in which I tried what I call 
the 'prodigy-style technique'. I took recorded patterns from MD to 
computer, processed them so that they sound something like vinyl or 
just generally mess them up. I put them to sampler which I trigger 
from MD. Then I made a new kit, with TRX-snare and EFM-kick and 
sequeneced the crisp and clean beats on top of messed up patterns. I 
have to admit this sounds soo good!! I get a lot of dynamics (very 
nice accent) this way and kicks body is there also better. And the 
TRX-snare sounds better than ever before. 

This experiment led me thinking that maybe my problem is just that I 
really don't know how to make good balance between different sounds. 
I almoust always use every single 16 machines on my patterns and 
tempo is somewhere 160, so it's pretty hard to make kick and snare 
sit there. My balancing is that I just try to get everything heard... 
(I guess this is wrong technique..?).

(There is also a lot more in kick than just a kick. You can get kick 
right as single element but overall punch isn't top notch if you dont 
have your bassline to extend the kick.)

So I guess I'm heading towards layering different kind of kicks and 
stuff.. I would really like to hear how people do their layering. How 
to make upper and lower kick fit to themselves? Which one do you do 
first? I guess the attack is easier, but making good body is harder. 
With good body I don't just mean something thumbing on sub-range. I 
guess they (attack and body) have to sound like they come from one 
single kick. How do you people do it?

From what I experienced I'm imaging that maybe good way would be 
something like this: I make beat with my normal style and just try to 
get attack and upper body right with the kick. Then I make new kick 
and snare and sequence them on top of that a lot more louder. This 
way I could get the dynamics right too (so that it just doesnt sound 
like even volume all the time, refresh your thinking of dynamics with 
Prodigys 'diesel power' example).

Long and messy post again ;)
Toni.

ps. I've been mentioning prodigy a lot, I'm not really trying to do 
prodigy style stuff (I guess my stuff is more IDM), but I think the 
prodigy did their kick pretty damn good on the 'fat of the land' 
album and if you want to compare your stuff to something (to 
understand what needs to be polished), prodigy is very good reference 
point (and very disapointing, because you can not get it sound so 
good).