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Sampler Basics: The Drumloop (Pt. 1)

Date posted: June 1 1999
By AnalogX

AnalogX is a musician, a programmer, the King of all Midia and currently pumping out all sorts of music programs from his web site. Here he explains how to sample, loop and integrate drums into your music.

Just what IS a Drumloop?

Although this does say 'Sampler Basics', it's not THAT basic, so if you don't know what a drumloop is, you should probably look elsewhere to first learn what sampling IS, and then come back here, to find out how to do it better. The way I will describe most actions in this article will be geared towards people using a sampler, such as the ESI-4000, or the Emu Emax 2, but the concepts will work equally well with computer based sampler.

Finding the samples

One of the first hurdles you will encounter in using drumloops, is actually getting the drumloops. There are two ways you can go about getting samples; download or trade samples from someone who already made them, or make them yourself. Now with the former, you have the advantage of being able to just load up the sound, and get jammin; and there are literally gigabytes of drumloops floating around on the internet, and available on sample CD's at your local music store. The quality of these sounds can run the spectrum, from some of the most poorly sampled, low bitrate, LP drumloops to studio, CD quality bitrate, custom drummers. If you choose to use premade loops, them just resign yourself to spending several hours (at least) sifting through tons of crap before you find that one gem; but believe me, that one gem can make all those hours of work well worth it.

Now, for those of you who wish to have their fates not controlled by the whims of other sample-gods out there, then you have to realize a few basics:

  • Try to sample from the highest quality source you can. It's easy to introduce noise if you so desire, while it's much more difficult to remove it.
  • Try to identify a part in the song where the beat plays by itself. No bassline, no strings, no vocals. Sometimes having little clips of a fragment of a vocal or bassline part can be desirable, but until you fully understand what you're doing, I would recommend keeping it simple.
  • Look for beats outside the genre you write in. You can sometimes find the most original and interesting drumloops from the most unlikely sources, like a Gospel album or 40 Funky Hits.
  • Check out CD singles! One of the absolute best sources for good drumloops is from singles, which normally contain 3 to 6 remixes of a popular song. On a good single, there will be a good variety of beats.
  • Your local DJ is your best friend. As with CD singles, the LP singles that your local DJ spins will have some remixes you won't be able to find anywhere else. You'll also get 'fresher' samples, since whatever he has in rotation is usually what's hot at the moment. But be warned! This is a double edged sword, since you can also end up with samples which sound 'played out'. .
  • Just because it's stereo, doesn't mean you have to be. I've found it to be fairly rare where I've preferred a stereo sample over a mono, most of the time stereo simply means copying the left channel to the right. While some drumloops can benefit greatly from being stereo (most notably being live), the bulk of your samples run just as well in mono as they would in stereo.

Sampling the samples

Now it's time to turn that rhythm into something you can use. Sampling is very specific to whatever device you happen to be using, but here's a couple of tips to getting the most out of your new sample.

1. Lower sample rates can be your friend
Depending on what sampler you use, you can get some great sound from lower sample rates. A good example of this was the old Emu Emax 1, an old 8bit sampler, which had great filter. When you sampled something at a very low rate, you didn't get the tinny-cheap sound, you got this very rough interpretation of the loop; VERY COOL. When I bought a Emu Emax 2, which could load the Emax 1 samples, instead I sampled the Emax 1 playing the sound on the Emax 2. This way I got the great sound, which the Emax 2 lacked at low sample rates. This is VERY subjective, so play and decide for yourself.

.2. Keep the loop as small as possible
Try to limit your drumloops to one time through, since this smaller size will give you greater flexibility in composing later. If there is a breakdown or some variation on the 4th iteration of the loop, instead make two samples, one of the first loop, and one of the variation loop.

.3. Always start the sample on the beat
Most of today's advanced samplers allow you to start at a different offset than 0 in the sample, which gives you the ability to use one loop to create a patch that starts on the bassdrum, while another starts on the snare. It's usually much more difficult to do this with a sample that doesn't start on the beat.

.4. Trim it as tightly as you can
Whenever possible try to have the sample start as close to the first bassdrum hit as possible, and with no overlap at the end. A good way to do this is have the sample looping while you trim it. Try to trim as much as possible, but make sure not to disrupt the flow of the sample.

.5. Experiment with chopping up a loop
There are several program that can do this for you, most notable being Recycle, which chop up a beat into it's component parts (as best it can). This usually works marginally well, but when done correctly, you have all the pieces to make a cool rhythm that sounds like a loop.

Continue with information on Creating The Patch

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