Pick and mix

“Practice your beat programming with the preprogrammed kits from sample packs”

In these walkthroughs, we’ve focused purely on sequencing drum sounds rather than processing them. The resulting beats might be relatively simple, but they’re solidsounding and consistent with what you might expect from their respective genres. An important element of this is sound selection. For each tutorial we’ve specified that you use a particular set of sounds, and it’s easy to hear how differently things can turn out – just load the Drum Rack or HALion Sonic SE with a different kit after you’ve programmed the beat. Sometimes the results will be interesting (for example, the SR Wall Of Snare Kit in Cubase makes a decent acoustic backbeat sound with a house pattern), but they can sometimes be less than satisfying.

Trying to make a particular style of beat without the right sounds can often be frustrating, and it takes time to learn what kinds of sounds work in any particular context. It can be tempting for producers to always pick the biggest, baddest-sounding sample or kit, and then make it sound even more extreme by heavily processing it in illadvised ways. If you find yourself falling into this trap, practice your beat programming with the pre-programmed kits from sample packs or your DAW’s included library. These will offer a sonic consistency that makes it much easier for you to concentrate on learning how to use each sound and the tricks that you can achieve with variations in velocity and timing.

Once you’ve got to grips with creating beats using preset kits, you can take things to the next level by selecting each sound individually and processing it. Get your hands on high-quality versions of tracks that you consider to have decent beats – preferably ones where the beat plays on its own during the intro or outro – and load them into your DAW, where you can loop the relevant sections and study them more easily.