The Art of Picking the Right Drum Samples

Todays post is some thing I find very important for all producers of all levels. But we only experience it with aspiring producers. Please watch the video posted below before you continue to finish reading this blog post.

First off all I don’t want to go ahead and dis-credit my man Kayne West. He’s an awsum producer and I have loads of respect for him. However this video shows one of the most important factors in producing music. With my background as a producer of dance music a few years back, I can’t stress how important it is to pick the right drum samples for your song.

Picking the Right Drum Samples
Loads of times when I mix tracks for aspiring producers I have to deal with wrongly sampled and/ or picked drum samples. Samples including to much crackle and noise or even worse samples with nothing to it. In short samples we hardly can work with or do any thing with it at all. Sonically choosing the wrong samples does affect your final product in a major way sonically. You can hear Mr. West talk about it:

“Although the song is hot, the drums ain’t right.” – Kayne West about Stronger.

On top of that he added that because the drums aren’t right, the kick drum doesn’t hit in the clubs.

The main reason why that happens is perfectly explained by Timbaland in the very same video example above:

“You can’t compress some thing that isn’t there.” – Timbaland about the kick drum in Stronger.

Please keep these two quotes in mind at all time. Write it down and live it, is basically what I want to tell you.

The lesson for today: Every time you produce a track go and find clean samples with body.

Layering Your Drums
Another thing I can’t stress how important layering your drums is. Timbaland shows that more then clearly in the exampled video above.
A lot of tracks I receive for mixing from seasoned producers like Brian Michael Cox, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, and others have three kicks, three snares. The reason for this is that some samples lack frequency respons, or you want to accentrate a certain frequency region such as the low end or attack. Therefore layering your drum sounds to make up for this and support your overal drum sound will make your beat sound much and much stronger. Also make sure when you use EQ during this stage that it is way more better to cut then boost.

The lesson on this for today: Beat making starts with your drums, so you have to make sure they’re tight before building on top of them.

Editing Your Samples
Adding to these issues it is also important to edit your samples when building your beat. Make sure every single samples starts from the start of the sample. There’s nothing more annoying and lacking in “punch” than tracks with a beat where the samples aren’t tight. Note: I’m not talking about quantizing or it’s vallues, especially not the fantastic rythmic quantization groove of the Akai MPC’s.
Another thing with editing your drum samples I want to address is to pitch them to the right root key. We need to tune them a lot of time and if you have got the luxury of an engineer during your production sessions, it isn’t a problem but for those who work outside of their bedroom studios and can’t effort that luxury, please listen and re-tune your samples to the right root key that will save you at the end of the day a lot of money and your demo’s will sound sonically way better, more pleasant, and tighter.

I hope I have helped you in some way by posting this blog. Please be adviced if you are about to let me mix a session or you have questions in general please contact me via email on royalcollegeofsurgeonsinc @ gmail . com or via iChat/ AIM screenname mirrormixing.

Signing off,

Yours sincerely,