Drum Samples

I wonder if you’ve made some okay beats and now want to take your music to the next level…

It’s loud and clear: successful producers all have their own secret sauce. Their own bag of tricks, and their own methods. Most importantly, their own sounds. Signature sounds.

But at the heart of every great producer’s toolkit… is a stable of drum samples. Drum samples that never grow old. They are classic and yet timely and in fashion all the time. They always sound like the in-thing, but they wouldn’t be out of place in a 90s RnB classic.

Maybe you can’t help but listen to music on a different level, appreciating the drum programming and composition of tracks. The non-producer mind doesn’t hear on the level you hear. You can hear a thumping kick… and wonder why it sounds so much better than the one in the last song? What makes this so special?

You can do this easily without much experience. One of the main uses for your computer may be music production. Sometimes energy will spike through you when you think about making a beat, but when you actually sit down and start to program your drums or compose your melody, it’s different…

Perhaps you’ve experienced that sometimes there is a bit of that energy missing… and when you start to go through your drum sample library, it can feel more like work. You may start to become uncomfortable, constantly adjusting your posture as you sit at your keyboard. Why doesn’t this feel like the times when you had an amazingly energetic vibe making music?

At a music production workshop in late 2010, I was asked whether I thought all drum sounds were made equal. I said, plain and simply, no. The follow-up question was: what I would avoid? I answered with the following examples which are wide-spread on websites and in even popular (and expensive) drum sample packs:

When you have the perfect musical ingredients, you are inspired to make music and there is not a dull moment. You can literally jump-start your creativity at any point.

You may in the past have made beats and looked at the clock in the middle of a beat making session… Shit! 1am? Where did the time go!? It’s one of those moments of lost time caused by immersion. Immersion in an art you love. The right ingredients help to set this mood all the time.

The future greats of music production do not like to be kept in the dark. They want to know, they want to learn. They want to possess the same tools. I know I do, because my music has to be of the highest quality. I haven’t had an angry client in 8 years!

And when you analyse a drum track – a simple drum track in a hit song – and wonder what makes it pop, the answer is not the drum structure or arrangement – because you’ve composed patterns like that yourself. The answer is not mixing and mastering – because even in the how-to videos for those beats the drums knock hard, and that’s pre-mixing. The answer is the tools used.

You can discover the tools today… and start making music knowing that you have the most prestigious sounds in the industry. I’m not kidding, and you’ll see why they are used by the best producers in the game in 2011.

Drum Quake is the baby of hundreds of hours of work and a ruthless, yet creative, process that achieves the best. The best in quality, the best in sonic character and the best in versatility.

Ever heard of bread and butter sounds? They are the type of sounds you can use anywhere. A lot of people maintain that bread and butter cannot have character.

They’re wrong.

Those who’ve listened to my Skype voice messages are astonished at the feedback others leave. Producers that have been on the Billboard radar (and much bigger than just a blip) just can’t believe they’ve been working without Drum Quake until now.

The MPC.

The backbone of 80% of all classic and popular hip-hop and r&b hits. I wonder if you know Dr. Dre has four of them. He daisy-chains them!

Everyone from Jermaine Dupri to Timbaland’s engineer Marcella Araica have sworn by the MPC mono convergence technique.

The MPC does something to the drums you feed into it. Something that is beyond description, but at the same time, you can hear it and recognise the character because it’s part of all the songs you grew up loving. Everything from MJ to Tupac to Wu-Tang and Eminem.

To be perfectly honest, the MPC is, in my mind, horribly overpriced for what it is:

But there is one thing that it does do well: it adds the legendary MPC character to everything that goes into it.

When my MPC 2000 XL arrived I put it to good use. I fed Drum Quake through it; the same sounds that have been lauded by producers since 2004. Wow, that took a while. I’ve been told it was worth the wait, so I’m happy.

There isn’t really a trick to this stage of my drum creation process. And I’ll tell all my private clients that, too. I have only one use for the MPC because I’ve found software to be better for my workflow. But nothing beats the hardware sound… as I found out…

I did what only a few producers have revealed they do; I fed my samples back into the MPC and I let the analog character of it waft across my sounds again. The entire collection.

The results… are superb.

I spent about 15 days on the initial “MPC run” (through the mono output of course) and I didn’t want to do that again because of the effort involved. But I had to do it.

As far as I’m aware, this is the ONLY MPC-fed drum collection…

I definitely KNOW that it is the only collection that’s been through the pipes TWICE… and going into an extremely transparent Apogee Duet audio interface on the way out.

These samples have scraped the gold of this legendary drum machine twice over.

When you have a precision-engineered product with the characteristics that historic analog equipment provides, you have a winner every time. And you’ll sit down to make amazing music whenever you like.

This is what you’ll get:

Best of all, each and every one of the 346 samples has been through the MPC 2000 XL two times for that authentic hint of analog smoke.

When you start to use these drum samples, you’ll notice there are two sections.

One section is all the samples stashed together.

The other contains the samples in tight-knit groups of samples that sound amazing together. They sound like they just belong with one another, and this organisation is the perfect antidote to can’t-make-a-beat-itis. Get inspired every time. Be ready… every time.

Join the Club: Start Using Drum Quake today: Just $27
until Tuesday the 22nd of May (Click Here!)

 

We all know the impact of the Roland TR-808 drum machine. In fact, it’s become so overused a reference in popular culture, I’ve heard young guys talk about any kick as “an 808.” But they aren’t correct. The 808 kick is very unique in its sonic quality. It’s the snap-less winding boom that became a pillar of modern and classic rap music, having also founded the disco age.

What you’ll get is the same set I paid $345 for in 2004 (through a private recording circle; these aren’t retail). These sounds aren’t for sale usually and they are not a rip-off set like you see being pushed by other websites and publications. These sounds are the most transparent ones I’ve ever heard, and you’ll be able to immediately recognise the quality as you go through the samples today.

Drum Quake sounds are compatible with Reason, HALion, EXS24, Kontakt, FL Studio, and more; basically any software or hardware sampler/drum machine (or instrument with sample input) will work.

If you don’t like the samples for any reason whatsoever, I’ll give you your money back, no questions asked. It’s as simple as that. I have complete confidence in my product and, on average, not even two people out of 100 request refunds!

You have absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain. It’s your music, and I know what this will do for you, so I want you to not be worried about anything.

Have a great time using these drum samples!

Marcel, BeatFuse.com