Getting Snappy Hip Hop Drum Samples

By John Gellei

Why would you want to generate snappy kick and snare drum samples? Well, as we all know, there's a serious loudness war going on, and what better way to drown out the competition that have the rhythm track in your songs simply cut through any speaker set or car radio and be instantly recognizable and catchy? With the importance placed upon drum samples and their arrangement and sound, budding music producers pay no attention to this topic at their peril!

If you have any fears about altering drum samples yourself, don't worry. It's not too hard to achieve the snap effect; in fact, it can be child's play with a bit of guidance and a bit of critical and proactive thinking on your part. If you already have tools like compressors and EQs, you are two steps ahead of a lot of people. Software or hardware, these tools will make life easy for you and getting them to modify a sound the way you want it will be easy after learning their menu systems and hearing the effect that different functions have on your initial sound file. There is nothing like experimentation in this case!

Both software and hardware effects usually have factory patches that display the capabilities of the effects unit. This is very useful for the budding audio engineer and drum samples editor; feed the device some standard samples - but first analyze the samples and really listen to them - then start applying some of the default effects, not the parameter levels and starting doing A/B tests on the sound; that is, before and after the effect. If you can start to internalize the changes and link the sound alteration to the settings, you will be well off!

Compressing your drum samples to add snap is a very common road taken by mixers and music producers alike. Sometimes it can be a bit hard working out what the knobs and dials actually do, so writing down - in your own words - what the changes do to the drum samples, will help you out a lot when making critical decisions later on. Try out different software and hardware compressors, as they also sound a little bit different and you will have trouble with some, while others will be easy to work for you.

So, by now you probably understand that really writing stuff down can give you a huge advantage. When describing the effects that a compressor has on drum samples, you want to make several observations, including the sound sample that you were working on (describe its sound), the supposed effect of a particular parameter (as the manual suggests) and also the actual, perceived sound (how you hear it). Describe it in plain English for maximum comprehension later on when comparing different experiments.

Now as a final tip, I'd like to mention how important it is to have good drum samples. Not just good ones, but a solid selection to pick from. The less samples you have, the more time you're going to be twisting knobs and adjusting sliders, and therefore the less time you will have making an actual beat! So if you want to be able to easily convert the music in your head and lay it down into your program or workstation, expand your selection of sounds. - 23806

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If you're after some great-sounding hip hop drum samples or simply want to know how to make beats, just remember that you shouldn't settle for second best!