How to make a more interesting & engaging "drop"

rayishu · 3 months

Have a moment of silence right before the drop. It makes the drop so much more intense

DdangerWu · 3 months

this always stuck with me "tension and release" i.e. the more tension you create before the drop, the better it'll be.

mistersloth · 3 months

i've always liked building a drop and then cutting it off a bar or half bar before it actually drops- in that space, you can do a number of things. you can leave it silent, put in a little drum break (both as previously mentioned) or you can bring in just your melody, sort of high pass it into the drop. a lot of it has to do with what fits well with the track.

xchino · 3 months

The biggest part of the drop is the build up, so make sure it is solid. One trick is to drop in some white noise and frequency shift it upwards as a riser, this "fakes" the rise without having to mess with the pitch of your synths.

Also full stop, pause, one-shot snare, pause, drop is a good way to carry the beat over the drop. You can then experiment more with the timing of each pause rather than just an awkward silence.

frankster · 3 months

its a combination of buildup and contrast.

K1DUK · 3 months

Maybe put a highpass on everything right(EDIT: add it gradually in like a slope) before the drop, and add a short drum break right before. This is a pretty common sound cue for a drop, and really makes it dynamic.

That's just the beginning. In almost every synth you have, there is probably a group of presets called "FX", these are ideal because they are made to be used in one-off ways that can mark the end/beginning of a section.

Pitchslap · 3 months

what kind of music are you writing?

dirtydela · 3 months

let's hear a tune with a drop you would like to make better. it would be easy to suggest things rather than to just give criteria for a 'good drop'

abox813 · 3 months

I found that one of my drops built up really well but when it dropped it was missing a lot of energy (this was an electro track). My best solution was to drop some white noise in right on the first beat of the drop, in this case it was a half note of sidechained noise followed by a half note rest, and repeated that for 8 bars. Dropping into the noise really filled up the sound and felt like a crowd was screaming at the drop. It didn't clutter up the sound like trying to add more instruments did, and really made that drop. I haven't used that technique again yet but I would recommend trying it out!

Butterspud · 3 months

Something as simple as a reverse cymbal can leading up to the drop is pretty cool but really depends what you're working with.

RevProtocol · 3 months

A couple of things I use: 1.) Lower the master volume by about 1dB or so during the breakdown. When the drop hits, it will seem a bit louder and more powerful 2.) Put a very tiny gap of silence between the buildup and the drop. This will increase the perceived impact of the drop.

Of course, both of these depend on what kind of music you're writing.

prplhed · 3 months

Make cool sounds

NowTheyllNeverKnow · 3 months

I'm really no expert, I've only been producing for a few months but I've found you can make a pretty sweet drop by cutting the last bar of the breakdown to drums only. Then on an equaliser you give the drums max low end, and barely any high end. Then throughout the bar you automate the equaliser to swap to no low end, and max high end. It kinda dries and compacts everything down before the drop to make it punch harder.

This might be a bog standard technique, but its just something I've found recently.

Akyu · 3 months

It needs energy.

I realize that's not a particularly specific answer, but thats the best way to describe it.

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