Drum Samples - Make Your Own
Anybody with a PC or Macintosh computer can indeed make their own drum samples quite easily. Sometimes to start with, the learning curve can be a bit daunting, but once you get the hang of it, it is quite easy to edit and crop different sounds to make your own unique samples that you will then be able to use for all of your production efforts.
Common tools for the task include audio editors and wave sound compatible sequencers and plugins. There are free audio editors like Audacity that you can download at a moment’s notice. These types of programs are usually a snap to install, so if you haven’t used one, don’t worry; you’ll get it installed within seconds in most cases, even if you’re not all that comfortable with computers. Editing in a program like this, although very powerful and accurate, is not as hard as many make it out to be. There are usually some simple operations that need to be performed to trim and crop, nothing more!
You can also develop your drum samples in programs like Propellerheads’ Reason and FL Studio. Simply make the changes you want in the programs using the in-built editors, effects units and reverb before exporting just the channel for that one sound and its associated effects. Then crop it up if you set the length to be the whole song, otherwise export just a single bar or beat if the sound occupies that amount.
When editing drum samples, you obviously need some sources. One place to get some great drums and other sounds is off old records. Simply connect a turntable to your audio interface and start recording the parts of the songs where drum breaks exist (with no other instruments) and then crop to your desire. This is called sampling, and it’s actually more popular now than it has ever been, and you can get started today if you have the equipment. You can get great samples out of this process!
Now that we’ve discussed sampling, we should probably look at the other extreme, which is to synthesize your own drum samples. Yep, everything from kicks to conga sounds and hi-hats can be replicated on drum machine hardware quite easily. You can get a very inexpensive drum machine from eBay, but if, like some people, you’d like something from the 80s or 70s, be prepared to pay a lot more money than this. Being able to alter a lot of the parameters, you can certainly get some unique sounds.
We now know how to find drum samples, what sort of equipment goes into modifying them and sourcing them, but how do we alter them? Well, you can start with effects like compression and EQ; these are techniques that have been around for decades and still work wonders today. If you can experiment with the different styles, you’ll definitely be better for it, as you’ll have your own opinion on the technology and processes and will be able to help others.
Did you come to find out how to make your own beats? Well, nearly everybody tells themselves “I want to make my own beats“, but not many take up the challenge. Get started today!







