Tutorials - Drums - Some Tips And Tricks

(1) Transpose a sampled hiphop drumloop (old school, not the timbaland variety!) a few notes above normal pitch and you will get something like a basic jungle beat. Cut the loop into pieces beginning on bassdrums or snares and rearrange those bits. That's how many Drum&Bass loops are created. Combine this with single drum hits from the sequencer if the result isn't punchy enough.

(2) For Trip Hop beats, do the opposite of jungle: Take a hip-hop beat, slow it down a few notes, cut it up. Try putting some dub effects on it (echo, reverb,delay) for even more strangeness. Try boosting low frequencies.


(3) Timestretch a drum loop to 150% using a sampler or hard disk recording and combine it with the original loop. The original loop will be repeated three times while the stretched one loops just two times. The outcome will be pretty mad so use a rather empty and straight loop to start with.

(4) Crossfading two drumloops:Program your sampler so that two drumloops of equal BPM count are started by pressing the same key. Use an LFO to modulate the volume of the two loops. Apply inverse modulation for one loop so that this loop is silent when the other one is at maximum volume and vice versa. This method is great for making background loops and percussion lines more lively. Try also modulating the frequency of a low pass filter instead of volume. This method can also be used for lead sounds.

(5) Ringmodulators sound very unique on drumloops. (There are ring-modulator plug-ins that can be used in wave editing software.)

(6) Connect a dictaphone up to the mixing desk and run the drums through it while tweaking the eq and distortion. Then record the result into your sampler and layer it with the original loop or else use it on its own. The dictaphone adds a nice compression and really can warm up lifeless sounding loops.

(7) "for really mad results , use a reversed version of a drum loop to trigger a noise gate on the original ,use this for a pumpin' rhythmic loop."


(8) "Make an arpeggio with some synth or other. Then run that midi data to a drum machine or sampler with un-pitched sounds on each key. Hey presto! Unusual drum parts ahoy!"


(9) "These are some drum tips to get the heaviest dub sound possible... use a shamois (that thin leather thing they use to dry cars) on your snare drum and tape it down. also, for a thundering bass drum tape a quarter where the bass drum mallet strikes the head. wooden mallets work the best (this is coming straight from SCIENTIST) finally, make sure the toms are as dead as possible."

Added by - Looperman

Date - 2006-05-16 18:40:00

Viewed - 19923 times

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