Drum Samples in Three Genres | Lifestyle

by JohnGellei

These days, selecting drum samples for use in electronic music production should be as easy as pie. So why is it so hard and frustrating? There are literally hundreds and even thousands of free drum sounds for anybody to download right onto their computers and then even take onto hardware samplers and such. One of the main complaints often voiced concerns the time needed to sort through these samples; a lot are not organized correctly, and even the ones that are organized are misnamed and mismatched a lot of the time. This all leads to many hours of needing to audition sample after sample to get a good batch together.

Rap, Urban and Hip Hop styles: There are so many ways to alter drums to fit these genres. In fact, it's easier than producing for anything else because some of these styles - hip hop and rap specifically - are basically just mixtures of different cultures and different music, and they contain sub-genres for all different types of music. So fitting samples to these genres is quite easy - most samples could pass for hip hop drum samples. To get an old-school type sound, you could really do it the authentic way and start chopping up vinyls - not physically, of course - just extract the audio using a turntable and look for the drum breaks to 'chop.'

RnB and Soul: These styles are very different from the urban genres we've discussed. To start with, the obsession with bass-laden kick drums and snappy snares is not as evident when listening to these genres. You can go far by just using some well-shaped drum samples that are not over the top. Variance is the keyword here, with everything being coherent at the same time. There is not as much sound selection freedom here, however.

For Dance music: Dance is quite complicated, as simple as it might seem. The drum patterns are very predictable, with the kick hitting on every beat in the vast majority of dance songs. For dance, you can safely add some character and tone or pitch to your kick drum and be met with a receptive ear, whereas in hip-hop the kick drum is usually monotonous. There are some other differences concerning frequencies that you can find out by Googling the production techniques discussed.

Using the techniques is only part of the process, however. You need to read up on the other rhythmic aspects of the genres you want to produce for. Syncopation, timing and bar count and tempo play a big role in distinguishing the styles from each other, so learn about the standards in your chosen genre.

A final word on altering drum samples: make sure you're organizing the altered versions so you can easily relocate them for later use. If you're already tired of having three thousand samples to look through for samples that you like, you'll be much better off!

DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as information only and is not to be taken as financial advice.

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