Snappy Snare and Kick Drum Samples
In this modern musical era, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the way snare and kick drum samples sound; specifically, whether they can cut through a mix of several different, heavy instrument tracks like strings and electric pianos. They way your samples sound in a tough mix is referred to as snap in a lot of circles. If you can get your main drum track to snap, your mix will be a lot easier to handle later, but you need to take care in your journey, as too much sound manipulation and be degrading.
Making your own drum samples ‘snap’ is not very hard with a little practice. You can even use free tools, these days. Just search “free sound editor” on Google to see a list of results; Audacity is a great one! Using compression and equalization are great to begin with. If your work-flow already includes these, good on you – you have a head start now, so use it wisely. Besides using these effects, you can edit sound waves manually, and in this case you would be looking to alter the sound spikes, accentuating the initial attack manually for your drums.
Whether you are using software or hardware solutions to edit and change your drum samples, there are some features you should be aware of. The main feature is the likely inclusion of factory-shipped effect patches. It will be sound editors that have compiled the library of effects settings, so start to use them critically. Listen to the sound before and after applying the effect to gauge the impact, and then relate it to the settings on the device or software. Hopefully you will be able to base creative decisions based on your learning here.
Compressing your drum samples to add snap is a very common road taken by mixers and music producers alike. Sometimes it can be a bit hard working out what the knobs and dials actually do, so writing down – in your own words – what the changes do to the drum samples, will help you out a lot when making critical decisions later on. Try out different software and hardware compressors, as they also sound a little bit different and you will have trouble with some, while others will be easy to work for you.
So, by now you probably understand that really writing stuff down can give you a huge advantage. When describing the effects that a compressor has on drum samples, you want to make several observations, including the sound sample that you were working on (describe its sound), the supposed effect of a particular parameter (as the manual suggests) and also the actual, perceived sound (how you hear it). Describe it in plain English for maximum comprehension later on when comparing different experiments.
Finally, choose the right drum samples to start with. This will always help you achieve the desired sound you are hearing in your head (and have probably heard even before having started to make this beat) and get it down into your sequencer program. To explain it simply, less tweaking equals more time for the music!
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