One of the things is underrated in popular music is using reverb on drum samples. Although at the same times there a lot of people who, whilst trying to make use of this effect for their drum tracks, manage to degrade the sound of their drum tracks and make them sound annoying.

If you are planning to use this effect on one of your drum samples, think about the type of sound and effect you want to achieve. Is it going to drive the listener crazy after a while? Is it going to be constant or just every now and again? When you figure out the exact thing you want to achieve with reverb then you will certainly be one step closer to achieving your goal.

The length of the reverb you put on your samples is one of the main things you need to focus on. A lot of people believe that songs with a much slower tempo warrant a longer release on the reverb sound patch. Other people would tell you to simply experiment with both long and short releases on medium and fast tempo songs and just see what works for you personally. Sometimes a longer amount of reverb will help to fill up the track and will mean that the other instruments will not need to perform as much. Basically it will take the burden of performance off the other samples and give you much more freedom.

Adding certain reverb to your projects can help you to create a certain tone to your song. You can even imply a location for the song such as an opera house or large venue. Although this might sound like a daunting task that would be hard to accomplish, using reverb will make it simple. You can achieve it simply by adding a different reverb setting to the entire selection of drum samples you have loaded and sometimes maybe even a bit of reverb to your instrument tracks. You will need to play around to try and create the most realistic listening experience you can.

Although I have mentioned a lot of ways of doing things so far in this article it is important to remember that as long as you manage to find something that actually works for the song, nobody will know what effect you have placed on it or the amount of reverb you are using. It is important to play around and allow a little improvisation.

If you take into amount what we have covered in this article and also use your natural instinct for applying these effects to your tracks then you will be well on your way to becoming a good music producer and will soon be ready for anything.

In this article we are going to be discussing quite a few questions regarding Hip-Hop (and other urban musical genres) drum samples. You will often see these types of questions in online music production forums and beat making forums. There is very rarely a ‘good’ answer on these forums however and it is pretty much impossible to get unbiased opinion on any of the subjects, especially with e-rep so prevalent in online communities these days. You might think it but the music production and beat making forums are definitely not exempt from this online observation. Let’s begin our questions.

Should I Pay for Sounds?
Certainly not! Of course you can, if you want to, buy a variety of drum sounds both online and offline in places such as guitar centres and music shops but if you don’t have all the money in the world to spend on professional drum sounds then that isn’t a problem. Many of the world’s leading Hip-Hop producers have done perfectly fine without stocking up on every single company’s drum samples.

If you have a decent knowledge of audio compression and some other filtering and processing techniques then you can more than likely manage to develop your very own small set of drum samples that you can use over and over again and will come in useful all the time. There is only one problem with doing this and that is that if you are not careful then you will end up with a collection of hip-hop samples that all sound alike. This is because all of your samples are coming from one source and you will need to take care to make sure they don’t all sound alike, otherwise your recordings could sound a little stale.

Is it possible to use Dance Sounds for Gangster Rap?
Of course it is, all you need to be aware of is the arrangements. With a gangster rap loop, a gangster rap loop is exactly what you get, regardless of samples. A dance loop is just that also and so long as you keep the pattern right then you can use just about any samples you like.

Simply by doing a Google search for ‘Free Loops’ you will manage to find some great MIDI files available for private use. Also you should listen to some of your favourite artists and analyse the samples they are using and the way they are arranged and layered. If you apple what you learn from this to your own work then there is really no way you can fail.

Some drum samples seem louder than others, Why?
The reason for this is simple. These days there seems to be what I like to call a ‘Loudness War’ in music. More than ever it seems that drums are the make or break element, even in non-mainstream songs. This means that for the companies selling these drum samples, simply turning up the volume using compression on their samples could mean a much higher volume of sales. Exactly how much better they fare I’m not sure, but for the companies that are selling well treated drum samples that haven’t had the volume tampered with are losing out, just for doing the right thing. Most companies believe that noise influences sales; this is why you will find TV ad’s to be louder than the actual programme.