Crunch it up

Even the most boring, vanilla drum samples can be turned into something exciting simply by experimenting with abusing everyday EQ and dynamics processors. One example is making a loud, crunchy jump up Drum ’n’ Bass snare. Simply take any standard drum machine snare sample before applying around 10dB of gain reduction using a limiter such as Waves’ L2 – this’ll crush the snare’s attack, making it into an abrasive block of noise that sounds nothing like the original sample!