How to add a pseudo stereo effect to your mono drum loops?

Category: Mixing/Sample Manipulation
For example, you have a mono loop ripped from your old vinyl recording and want to use it in your song, here are a way to make it sound more interesting. All you have to do is duplicate the mono drum loops track and pan them hard left and hard right. Now slide the second audio track a bit to the right and play them, voila now you hear them in stereo. Usually a 1/64 notes setting is enough to make the pseudo stereo effect. It means you slide your second audio tracks 1/64 note to the right (use grid mode in your sequencer to make it easier).

Don’t let your drum tracks loose their punch!

Category: Mixing
This is what to do when your drum tracks seem lack of punch. Copy your drum track into another new blank track (simply duplicate it) and add compressor plugins to the new track. Apply a heavy compression on the second track (for example: ratio 9:1) and set a lower threshold (for example –25 db). You can also add eq plugins after the compressor to brighten the track someway. And now set the second track volume fader to minimal and move it up gradually until you hear the punch added to your first track. This trick works also for other audio signal such as vocal. What happened is the second (heavily compressed) track modify the transient of the first (uncompressed) track in someway that make the drum track sound punchier.