This week I’ve been taking a look at different ways producers tackle drums within a mix. I’ve stayed within the confines of OWSLA (label) and found some pretty interesting processes.
I’ll start by outlining the way that I like to get my drum sound. I will generally use one shot samples of kicks, hats, snares, claps and cymbals and drop them onto a grid. When I’m happy with an arrangement i’ll usually consolidate out a 4 or 8 bar section then duplicate that section and add embellishments or variation later to suit. I’ll talk about processing in next weeks blog as that will deal with effects and processing.I haven’t really strayed to far from this process as It’s habitual for me now and the only time I use MIDI to trigger samples is when I work with a preset within a sampler such as Kontact or the Drum Racks within Ableton Live.
When it comes to some of my favourite acts its seems they work very similarly to me. Koan Sound, Phonat, Kill The Noise and Skrillex all use the same principles when building their main rhythm sections; single shot samples loaded onto the timeline as opposed to within some sort of sampler or drum rack. I know that I do this because it allows me more freedom when it comes to processing and i can only assume that the same reasons apply here as I could not find any relevent information regarding why they choose this method.
I do appreciate and understand the concept of using a drum rack to essential build your own drum kits but i just never put it into practice until recently. During class I have endeavoured to continue using drum racks but I have this unrelenting urge to scrap the plugins and get back to dealing with audio clips. I guess having started out using Roland Cakewalk and Sony Acid studio as my DAW’s I grew accustomed to importing audio samples or recording my own drum sounds before drums racks within a DAW became more prevalent.
I’ll leave it there for now but take a look at the video above. Koan Sound have the funkiest groove and really tight drum programming I’ve heard, especially when it comes to electronic music producers. If you know anything similar please link it in the comments section as I’m always keen to hear more sounds.
As always thanks for reading and come back for next weeks blog where I’ll be discussing Effects & Processing.
Matt
mattemoore 