Compress the Drum BusĬompression can glue your drums together into a coherent whole.

Parallel distortion can be great for beefing up drums without destroying the original sound. Maybe to break up any repetition, add movement or as a transition effect.

Unsubtle distortion can have it’s place too, used wisely. Subtle distortion can add character and depth to your drums. Use EQ on each to avoid any nasty build ups then blend them together to form a big, coherent whole. For example, you may have one with a nice mid range punch, another with a nice snappy top end and a third with some great width. But this shouldn’t be done just at random. The idea being that instead of using just one snare sample, for example, you blend together two or three. I’ve also been advised that DnB benefits from extremely hard EQ cuts, allowing each part to sit in a very clearly defined portion of the frequency spectrum. This means you’ll need to EQ out the low end of your kick and make it hit in the upper-low frequencies, around 90-100Hz for example, leaving room below for the bass. However, DnB tends to favour the sub-bass which resides below the kick. In many electronic music genres the kick lives in the lowest frequencies with nothing below it. You will find plenty of free samples out there but they don’t come with a guarantee of quality… that said, if you do know of any good free sample sources let us know in the comments! Bass Below Kick Check out respected sample suppliers such as Loopmasters and Vengeance for some great quality sounds. It almost goes without saying but you will not make good quality drums without good quality samples. They will add that organic groove which is synonymous with great DnB. Then slice them, dice them and process them to compliment your main kick, snare and percussion. Or even make your own! Which is something I like to do using realistic drum programming software like EZ Drummer. I spent far too long trying to recreate that classic DnB beat by sequencing drum machines and samples, only to finally realise what I kind of knew all along… The good old ‘amen’ style breakbeat sounds awesome and really ties together the hats and percussion element of your beat.īeg, borrow or buy a few high quality breakbeats. Here are the big tips I pulled out and will be sure to apply to my ongoing work. My digging revealed a number of very interesting articles, which I’ll link to at the end of this. In order to improve my game in programming and mixing drums for my own tracks I have been doing some research online to find out what advice is out there. One big influence, however, is Drum ‘n’ Bass. I haven’t yet found myself slotted into any one genre and tend to draw on my influences from many different styles of music. As you may or may not know, as well as writing for this site I also produce electronic music under the name HUMJUNKIE.

How to make a bass drum