Dance / Rock Music Beats

[RetLek]

when mixing a track, i always find it difficult to get the beats sounding right, they often sound flat. eveything else seems to sound ok, guitars, synths etc. Frankly im getting fed up, ive messed with e.q's, compressors and volumes, any ideas, tricks? I use logic audio 5.5.

[tpfan]

Well, you'd need to be more specific on what you mean by "flat".

If you mean they sound rubbish then you could work on the timing/placement of Kicks and snares.
If you mean they are overpowered by the other instruments you could try adjusting the levels (volumes) so that the beats become dominant.
ie. turn the levels down on the other instruments and/or up on the beats.

For timing of the drums I always count hi hats.
e.g. 8 hi hats in a bar/4 beats. So count out "1,2,3,4" in hi hats and then put a kick drum on the 1st hat and a snare on the 3rd hat, then extra kicks, snares and hi hats in between to make the rhythm more complex.
I use Magix 6.0 which does the job for me.

N.B. When counting "1,2,3,4", it is the count of hi hats. There are 8 hi hats to every 4 beats. When counting the BPM, the kick on hat 1, and snare on hat 3 become beat 1 and beat 2, respectively.
200 hi hats per minute = 100BPM

This sounds complicated so I'll try to explain it with a very simple drum pattern:
H=Hi hat, K=Kick drum, S=Snare drum
 1 2 3  4  1 2  3 4
H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-
K----S----K----S---
Let me know if this helps!
If all else fails you can always turn up the bass!