Building a sound set
Without wanting to lead you down a pre-defined path, when you’re trying to create massive, cinematic beats, there’s a certain core sample set that you need. That’s not to say that you can’t introduce your own sounds or more unusual ones (indeed, we’ll look at both shortly), but certain sounds fit well with – and are expected to be heard in – cinematic scores and music influenced by them.
To reinforce the different roles these sounds play, we’ll divide this core set into ‘drums’ and ‘metals’. Drums includes everything from the humble drum kit rack tom, orchestral snare and timpani to oversized orchestral bass drums, African djembe, Middle Eastern darbuka, Indian tablas and Japanese taiko (typically, the large wadaiko drum). Of course, the complete list is way longer than we can cover in its entirety, but the main thing to appreciate is that drum sounds vary from deep and thunderous (taiko and bass drum) to high-pitched and ringy (tabla and djembe), and some (tabla again) are capable of generating a broad range of sounds on their own. This versatility can be further enhanced by using different types of sticks or beaters.
When we talk about metals, the array of possible options can seem even more vast than that of drums. Once again, although there is general consistency in terms of instrument types, a Chinese cymbal and a Turkish (Western) cymbal, for example, sound very different. What’s more, playing style has a huge influence, too – think of the difference between a crash cymbal struck with the shank of a stick and a crescendo roll played with beaters on the same cymbal. Similarly, damping and choking metals can influence their sound and range of usage. In order to get started, hunt down good-quality raw sounds. These may be ‘non-epic’, but focus on tone and try to find variations of playing style in the same sample set. Your goal, ultimately, is to build an appropriate (but not unadventurous!) sound set for the music that you’ve been working on.
“Focus on tone and try to find variations of playing style in the same sample set”