The Art Of Beatmaking
Master the art of sampled beatmaking. Slice, layer and edit your way to killer drums with our in-depth guide
If the synthesiser is the primary melodic instrument of electronic music, then the sampler can be thought of as the tool that has single-handedly defined the punchy, repetitive rhythms that we now take for granted. Though recorded drums have been around since recording technology itself, it was the introduction of the affordable digital sampler that allowed everyday producers to work with sampled drum sounds without the need for expensive studios.
Fast forward to today, and sampled drums are still the most common rhythmic devices in the producer’s toolbox. Using prerecorded audio means you can call up any drum sound in existence: classic one-shots from expensive machines, strikes taken from the world’s best drum kits, iconic grooves from old records, and even entire pre-produced loops that are more polished than ever.
Using sampled drums effectively is a skill in itself – which is where our guide comes in. Over the next few pages, we’ll show you how to overcome the limitations of pre-recorded beats, use one-shots, add loops to your advantage, and become a true master in the art of working with drum samples.
Programming prowess
When laying down beats, amateur producers grab the nearest drum samples they can, then immediately lay down the hits in a pattern that resembles a track. This haphazard approach is often what gives sampled dance music its robotic, generic reputation. Beatmakers with a little more experience, however, understand the naivety of this approach, and are able to employ many different tricks – some subtle, some not so subtle – to counteract the rigidity that sample-based drum programming can cause.
Putting the sounds in the right position is merely the first step, of course. Understanding ‘real’ drumming is the first step in understanding how to breathe life into electronic beat programming. When a human drummer strikes a drum, each consecutive hit will vary in dynamics and timbre. Plus, a human is exactly that – human – which means that every single hit will differ in timing ever so slightly, unlike the predictable repetition of machine-driven sequencing.
Therefore, the downside of sampled drums is that the same piece of audio is repeated over and over, perfectly locked to a grid, which will result in a flat, lifeless, obviously programmed drum beat. There are several ways to counteract this, many of which we’ll explore in a later tutorial, but purely understanding this concept in a broad sense is the first step towards beatmaking mastery. Confusingly, many electronic genres such as house and techno demand some form of rigidity, so finding the balance between man and machine is key.
The power of processing
Effects and processing can be used to imbue any kind of drum signal – a real recording, a ready-rolled loop or a collection of sampled one-shots – with a pro quality unachievable through other means. When working specifically with samples, however, there are many choice techniques that are worth mastering. Again, we’ll dive deeper in our step-by-step tutorials, but some broader concepts will lay down the groundwork and help you get your head around the underlying principles.
As a beat comprising individual samples will lack the dynamics of a human-played drum kit, the technique of drum bus processing – specifically compression – can imbue these disparate elements with a sense of ‘push-pull’ at the subtle end of the scale, and all-out ‘pump’ when forced to extremes.
A punchy, SSL- or dbx-style bus compressor strapped over the grouped drums is a staple process for this – using one, you can ride over the kit’s collective dynamics and help it all ‘dance’ as one unit. Parallel compression, meanwhile, when mixed side-by-side with the dry signal, allows you to be more extreme with your dynamics-squashing, with the added benefit of pushing up a solid chunk of weight and ‘fatness’.
Furthermore, a sampled drum kit is generally formed of multiple elements taken from different drum machines or recordings, leaving the whole thing sounding disjointed and ‘separated’ if you’re not careful. This is where group compression (and, to some extent, saturation) can help meld those hits together into one cohesive ‘kit’. Virtual ambience is also handy for this: by sending each drum to a single reverb auxiliary, you’ll place everything in one virtual space. Then, if you want one particular hit to stand out, you can remove it from the reverb and position it elsewhere in the mix.
Learn to counteract the rigidity of sample-based drum programming