the majority of us go about creating our drum sounds on a

day-to-day basis.
CHAPTERll
Later in the book, when we look at mixing and effects
Sound Design: (Chapters 16 through 19), we will be covering how to use
compression and EQ to enhance different types of sounds,
Rhythntic and including drum and percussion sounds. Here we're deal-
ing with actually creating the sounds, rather than how to
Percussive Sounds get them to cut through in a mix or how to handle the
dynamics. You can always jump forward to those sections
as you are working on creating your own sounds if you
lik e.I
INTRODUCTION
There are three different categories of rhythmic and per-
DRUM KIT SOUNDS: KICK DRUM
cussive sounds: the main drum kit type of sounds, trad-
itional percussion sounds, and all other sounds that are The most obvious drum sound to any dance music produ-
used as percussive sounds without necessarily being re- cer is the kick drum. In pretty much every genre of dance
lated to anything "real world." We cover all of these in music this is one of the fundamental elements of a track
this chapter, beginning with the main drum kit sounds, and, sometimes, the choice of kick drum sound can make
as these will form the backbone of any remix you work on. or break a groove. Kick drum sounds range from the au-
I will not go too deeply into the harmonic theory sur- thentic "acoustic" sounding to the totally synthetic, and
rounding each particular kind of drum sound, as that a million shades in-between. Some are "pure" and are a
subject in itself would be enough to fill half of this book direct sample from a real kick drum, others are 100°/o
on its own! There are many great books, articles, and web- synthetic and have been wholly created on a synthesizer,
sites that cover the complex physics involved in recreat- some are hybrids, and others have been sampled from
ing drum sounds if you're looking for a more detailed in- other records. These sounds are often endlessly sam-
vestigation into the subject. For the purposes of this book, pled,resampled, edited, and reincorporated with others
I will cover more practical applications and explain how until their true origins are indistinguishable. If you're

3037
thinking about trying to recreate a favorite kick drum After all, kick drums are also called bass drums, and that
sound, you could be in for quite a struggle as the sound is for a reason! With that in mind, we can start to think
in question could, potentially, be made up of a huge num - about a kick drum in terms of four separate frequency
ber of elements and layers. Trying to recreate all of the components with different amplitude envelopes, with
subtlety of that could be a mountainous task! the higher frequency components generally dying away
quicker than the lower frequency ones . But how do we go
Better to come up with your own, unique sounds! You
could, if you like, use a sampled kick drum from one of about choosing how to create each of these components
the ever-increasing number of (often very good) sample and, ultimately, mixing them together into one, coherent
libraries . It would be misleading to tell you that I have whole? Well, in order to do that let's take a look at the
differences between a sampled "real" kick drum and the
never done that, because I have. But more often than not
almost ubiquitous Roland TR-909 synthesized kick drum.
I will layer different kick drum samples with synthesized
sounds to create something that is totally unique to me In a real kick drum there is a constant presence of lower
and perfectly suited to the track I am working on. frequencies in addition to the higher ones (which are har-
monics of the fundamental frequency generated in the
Let 's break the sound down into a few components to see
vibrating drum skin and drum shell). In a TR-909 type
how these work together and how we can come up with
kick drum there are only higher frequencies in the initial
ways of building our own kick drum .
attack phase . The reason for this is that the body of the
Kick drums, like most drum sounds, can be broken down TR-909 sound is made up of a single oscillator output-
into attack and sustain portions, with the attack part ting a single waveform . So there are higher frequencies
being the initial hit of the sound and the sustain part in the attack phase when the oscillator is tuned to a
making up the body of the sound . There are four differ- higher pitch, which then drops to a lower pitch to pro-
ent frequency ranges: subbass, bass, midrange, and treble. vide the deeper sustain. There is also a filtered white noise
Even without knowing too much about the theory behind burst to further emphasize the attack of the sound and
a kick drum sound, most people would automatically rec- add a variable degree of snappiness, without having to
ognize the sharp attack of the sound and the softer sus- fundamentally edit the basic sound . As such, synthesized
tain. Most people also automatically know that any high kick drums have only a very tiny delay before the low
frequency (and some upper midra .nge frequencies) only frequency body of the sound actually kicks in . This is only
normally occurs, if at all, during that initial attack phase . a matter of a few milliseconds, so it is pretty much imper-

3056
ceptible to the human ear . However, it is worth consider- The best way to illustrate this is to walk you through the
ing if you are building your own sounds from scratch. process I use to make a kick drum . I will start off going
through kick drum samples (from sample libraries, not
There are also many things to take into account when you
consider the genre you are working in, as this will have a from other tracks as that would be an infringement of
copyright law, even if those kick drum samples were then
great effect on the type of kick drum you are looking to
edited and manipulated or combined with other sounds).
create. Breakbeat and drum 'n' bass genres often have kick
drums that have a very "real" feel to them . Funky house These may be real or synthesized kick drums. As I audi-
tion each of them I look for elements in the sound that I
kick drums often have a combination of real elements
and synthesized ones . Electro, progressive, tech, tribal like . Note that I am not looking for one kick drum sam-
ple that does everything I want it to do. On one sample
house, and many forms of trance and techno have more
I might like the woodiness of the attack portion of the
TR-808/909 style synthesized kick drums . All of this is
sound, on another I might like grittiness of the midrange,
relevant.
and on yet another I might like the weight of the sound .
In sta .rting to build a kick drum of your own you could I will probably pick out more than three samples, having
look at synthesizing all of the four frequency elements, multiple options for each of the weight, midrange and
and this is something I certainly recommend doing, if attack parts. I then load them on to audio tracks and mute
only for the experience and depth of knowledge and and unmute different tracks to give me different combin-
understanding of the kick drum . It can take a lot of time ations of the sounds. I may end up using multiple treble
so it is perhaps best to experiment with different sound and midrange samples. On rare occasions I may even use
sources to see what works best. As a guide, and a warn- multiple samples for the bass component, but this hap-
ing, when using totally synthesized sound sources it is all pens less often as multiple bass components often don't
too easy to end up with kick drums with an obvious pitch match up, with unpredictable results!
to them. This isn't always a problem, but it is something
Once I have a few options I like, I experiment with chan-
to bear in mind. An alternative to this is to use a com-
ging the balance of the different samples and then start to
bination of sampling and synthesis to create a kick drum .
use EQ to further cut away frequencies from the different
This can give a sound that's deep and interesting, and
samples. I might also use a noise gate or simply change
has a great deal of flexibility and adaptability. Intrigued?
the length, and fade out different samples to provide
Then read on .
different amounts of snap to the different samples . There

3078
are a few examples of this on this book's accompanying wave with an appropriate amplitude envelope applied .
website that illustrate these points; it might be simpler to This offers a great deal of flexibility because you can ma-
actually listen and see what I am talking about on screen nipulate the sub bass level of the kick drum independently
rather than have me try to explain here. (using level as opposed to the less predictable and accur-
ate method of automating EQ changes to the main kick
The reason I initially mentioned four frequency ranges
drum sound) and it allows you the option of fine tuning
and in the last few paragraphs I have only mentioned
the pitch of the subbass component to perfectly match
three, is because there are a couple of different options
the track. It doesn't always work exactly as you hope , but
for dealing with the subbass component. The first, and
in some wayssimplest, is to just boost the really low fre- when you get it right, it has the effect of being an almost
imperceptible extra weight to the track that it also very
quencies in the bass component. This can work, but it can
clean .
also lead to a rather unpleasant boomy kick drum. It can
also cause further problems down the line when trying to We now come to the question of how to combine all of
balance the levels of the kick drum and bass line. The sec- these into one complete new sound. We could simply keep
ond option is to find another sample to use as a subbass them as they are, but copying and pasting upwards of
component . Often this involves removing all but the low- three of four audio files every time you want to duplicate
est frequencies from the sample . This has the advantage an individual kick drum hit is impractical. You might in-
of giving you more control over the lowest frequencies in advertently miss one while copying, which would result
the sound; it was the method I used for quite a long time. in an unexpected change in tone of the kick drum. So
But it still isn't the most flexible or, in my opinion, the best what do we do? Well, I normally start by routing all of
approach. the individual samples to a bus and then make sure that
the channel levels on each sample are low enough to avoid
My secret weapon of kick drum programming is the hum-
ble sine wave. What I have been doing a lot recently is overloading the bus. Then I might apply some overall EQ
to the sound. This is done mostly to help glue the sounds
creating a kick drum as described earlier using all but the
subbass component (or perhaps just reducing the level together. At this stage I might also go back and tweak the
individual EQs of the samples to help them all blend bet-
of it) and then bouncing it to a new sample for ease of
ter. I would also apply some light compression to help pull
use (more on this in a moment). I then have a separate
all of the components of the sound together before finally
subbass component, which is simply a synthesized sine
adding some very light limiting at the very end, just

3100
to make sure that nothing is clipping following the EQ the best sound you can, you will be pleasantly surprised
and compression. From this point I would simply bounce by the results!
the combined sound and then drag that combi kick into
There is also a final option to consider, the
Logic's Arrange window. From here I can work with the
excellent Metrum plug-in from the Vengeance
sound while still keeping the original files intact, in case I
Producer Suite (www.vengeance-sound.de/eng/VPSMet-
want to go in and tweak the sound again once I progress a
rum.html) . This does, in plug-in form, much of what I
little further with the track .
described earlier in terms of layering different samples,
Depending on just how many individual components each with its own independent amplitude envelopes. It
were used to make up the sound I might even bounce includes one dedicated oscillator layer along with three
several variations of the kick drum by muting individ- sample layers, plus a modulation matrix and several use -
ual components or combinations of components to give ful built-in effects . The Metrum has the convenience of
different results. Perhaps the most useful is a version being self-contained and, because it is a plug-in, there is
where all the bass components aremuted, leaving only no need to bounce the combined sound to work with it
the midrange and the treble components active . To some in a convenient manner. I have used it with great success
extent, the same effect can be achieved by applying a on some recent tracks. That said, I still use my tunable
high-pass filter to the combi kick. This is a good alterna- subbass layer underneath the sounds produced within
tive to have, given that it is relatively little extra work to Metrum, simply because I like the way it can be tuned to
just mute the bass components of the sound, bounce the follow the bass line.
combined sound, and drag into the Arrange window as
well.
DRUM KIT SOUNDS: SNARE DRUM
If this all sounds like too much work for what is, in effect,
a very small part of the final track, remember that you are The snare drum (along with the clap) is the second in
dealing with one of the most important elements of your the Holy Trinity of groove-making drum sounds in club
finished track! If you want to you can always try to find music. If the role of the kick drum is to provide a solid
everything you a.re looking for in just one kick drum sam- and regular beat for people to dance to, and the role of the
ple . There's is a good chance that you might find what you hi-hats (along with things like tambourines and shakers)
need, but if you take the extra time and effort to design is to provide the pace and movement in the groove, then

3122
what does the snare drum do? Well that isn't always an the process for recreating a snare drum sound would be
easy question to answer. The snare drum can provide very similar to that of a kick drum, albeit in a higher fre-
some extra rhythmic interest in terms of syncopation quency range and without the subbass considerations to
but, more often than not, it is simply used as an accent on deal with. There would be the snappy attack (this time
beats two and four of the bar. caused by being hit with a drumstick rather than the
beater from the pedal) and the resonating sustain caused
Many of the choices you make when choosing and pro-
by the drum shell and the skins.
gramming snare drum sounds depend on the genre you
are working in. Some genres go for quite small and tight- But the addition of the snares brings in a third factor .
sounding snare drums, others for bigger and brasher The snares themselves are actually just a group of coiled
sounds. Some do away with the snare drum completely in wires under tension held against the bottom skin of the
favor of a clap sound. So rather than go into detail for each snare drum . When the top skin is hit with the drum stick,
genre, I will simply go over the basics of programming the pressure created inside the drum shell causes the bot-
snare drum sounds and finish with some potential ways tom skin to vibrate and, as it does so, the up-and-down
to modify and adapt those sounds to take it more in the motion causes the wires to bounce against the surface of
direction of the genre you happen to be working in. the skin. This alters the vibration of the snares and the
Once again the snare drum has separate attack and sus- bottom drum skin as well. And it is this distinctive rattle
that gives the snare drum its unique sound. From a sound
tain components to the sound, but they might be a little
design perspective this can be seen as an additional mid -
harder to distinguish because of the inherent qualities of
range to high-frequency component with a less snappy
a snare drum. The attack component of a real kick drum
amplitude envelope and a slightly longer decay time . So
is made when the beater of the kick drum pedal hits the
to create a convincing snare drum sound from scratch we
drum skin. The high frequencyharmonics generated in
the vibrating drum skin die away comparatively quickly need to consider all three components: the "stick" noise,
the drum shell and skins, and the snares themselves.
but the deeper frequencies continue on. In a snare drum,
however, we have an additional factor to deal with. A Given that a real snare drum is hugely difficult to
snare drum is, in many ways, similar to other drums but model with conventional synthesis techniques, perhaps
differs in that it has snares drawn tightly across the bot - the easiest option is, once again, to use different sam-
tom skin of the drum. Ifwe were to remove these snares, ples layered up and edited for each of the components of

3143
the sound you want to recreate . The same techniques we 130 Hz would develop as 100 Hz, 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz,
would apply to choosing samples to create a composite and so on. Based on that you can see that we are getting
kick drum apply here, albeit with slightly different attrib- closer to what we want. All we need is a way to some -
utes . how offset the harmonics by adding 30 Hz to each . We
can do this with a device called a frequency shifter. Fre-
What if you actually do want to synthesize a snare drum
quency shifters work by doing exactly what we require:
sound yourself? The two main factors to consider are
adding a fixed frequency offset to the harmonics within
the sound of the drum skins, shell, and the sound of
a waveform. So if we ran a 100 Hz square wave through
the snares themselves . In order to accurately synthesize
the snare drum shell and skins we have to consider a a frequency shifter with an offset value of ?30 Hz we
would get the resulting frequencies we wanted. There are
complex harmonic structure. Because of the "closed sys-
tem" of the two drum skins and the drum shell and the a couple of problems with this though. The first is that
frequency shifters aren't exactly standard equipment in
complex interactions between them, the frequencies pro-
duced aren't nicely harmonically related, so conventional most synthesizers. They are normally reserved for the
likes of expensive modular analog synths or perhaps Ar-
oscillators wouldn't be up to the job here unless you used
turia's excellent Moog Modular V plug-in . The second
individual sine wave oscillators and a basic additive syn-
problem is that you will need two of these set-ups, as the
thesis analysis to create the individual frequencies .
nature of the snare drum has two of these inharmonic
The problem lies in the fact that the frequencies produced series combined (along with other elements). It's starting
don't follow on in a ratio system where each is a multiple to look like a great deal of work, and that's before we have
of the previous one . Rather, the frequencies produced even gotten to dealing with the sound of the snares them-
here have a (relative ly speaking) fixed interval between selves!
them. By that I mean that the harmonics follow a se-
quence along the lines of 130 Hz, 230 Hz, 330 Hz, 430 Hz, Is there a way to create something that sounds approxi-
and so on (adding 100 Hz each time) rather than 130 Hz mately like a snare drum without going through all this
I
trouble, or should we just revert to samples? Well, fortu-
260 Hz, 390 Hz, 520 Hz, and so on (which is the pattern
nately for us, the clever engineers at Roland came up with
for the harmonics of a square wave). You might be seeing
an answer in the form of the (did you guess?) TR-909
some kind of similarity.
snare drum. Most of us know that it doesn't sound espe-
A "normal" harmonic series starting at 100 Hz instead of cially like a "real" snare drum, but it gives us all of the

3164
essential characteristics of a real snare drum. And you (around 7 KHz cutoff frequency seems to sound about
can rest assured that they didn't use complex frequency right) and then we run that through its own amplitude
shifters or the like to create this trademark sound. envelope. Whereas the tonal parts of the snare sound had
a pretty short decay /release time, here we can extend that
What they actually did was strip the sound down to the
essentials . Out of the many harmonics present in a snare to around300 ms or perhaps even a little more . It is this
component of the sound that really contributes the most,
dru .m sound, there are two main frequencies called the
so if you wanted to increase the tightness of the sound
j'0,1 modes." Without going into unnecessary detail about
you could reduce the decay and release times accord-
what these are or how they are calculated, the engineers
worked these out to be around 18 5 Hz and 3 3O Hz. So you ingly. Once you have added this in you will start to hear
something that sounds a little more like a snare drum.
form the basis of your sound by having two triangle wave
oscillators set at those frequencies (which work out to The TR-909 also had a snappy" control and this added
11

in an additional layer of white noise (this time h igh-pass

F#3 and £4 in case your synth doesn't allow you to set ab-
filtered at around 600 Hz in addition to the low-pass fil-
solute frequencies) and then set the amplitude envelopes
tering already described) but with a much shorter decay/
to have the attack as short as possible and a decay /release
time of about 100 ms (possibly a little less on the 330 Hz release time of around 1 70 ms. The level of this could
then be controlled independently to give a degree of adju-
waveform if you have the option of giving each its own
envelope) . These two combined won't, at this stage, sound stability to the sound.
very much like a snare drum. And that is why we add in You could use a compressor with appropriate settings to
the filteredwhite noise component next. further emphasize the attack of the sound or to give it
more body (more on this in Chapter 1 7) and a little EQ
The purpose of the filtered white noise is to emulate the
to make it sound fuller or brighter, but what you have
sound of the snares. If you think about it, with a real
snare drum, when it is hit with anything above a medium now is pretty much snare drum-like in its tone. It 's un -
likely you'll fool anybody into thinking that it is a real
strength, you hear more of the snare sound than the res-
snare drum, but remember, we don't always go for real-
ona .nce of the drum skins and shell. That is what we are
ism in dance music, we go for what sounds good . And the
aiming for here with our TR-909 type snare . So we take
TR-909 snare drum sounds so right in this context!
a white noise source and then we run it through a low -
pass filter to take off some of the really high frequencies

3186
The best part about creating a sound in this way is that sound, but don't be afraid to use a few different sounds if
it allows you to actually change the sound as the track it gets you the result you are looking for!
requires it . You could, for example, change the balance be-
tween the pitched part of the sound and the noise part of
the sound, or you could change the decay of the sound. In DRUM KIT SOUNDS: CLAPS
short, you have much more flexibility than you might get While claps are not, strictly spea .king, a drum kit sound,
from using a sample. In much the same way as an original they are closely related (both sonically and in terms of
TR-909 had controls that allowed you to alter certain as- the context of use) to snare drums so I havedecided to
pects of the sound, creating your own synthesized snare include them here . We all know what a real hand clap
drum allows you to build a little more control and vari- sounds like but how would we go about creating that
ation into the sound. sound? If you look at the classic TR-808 handclap sound
With that being said, there is nothing to stop you, once you might be surprised! Once again we have a filtered
again, layering your synthesized snare drum sound with white noise source (this time with a band-pass filter set
a sample of a real snare drum . You could use only the at- at around 900 Hz with quite high resonance) that is, this
tack portion of the sample to give the sound a little more time, fed through an envelope generator that creates four,
bite and still have the flexibility of making changes to the very closely spaced and very quickly decaying "spikes" at
underlying sound you created. Or you might choose to around 10 ms apart. Each of these is designed to simulate
use a high-pass filter to remove the body of the sampled a single person clapping, so the four together gives the
sound. feel of a group of people clapping at once. In addition to
this there is a very simple reverb circuit to give a bit of am-
One final point to mention before we move on to claps is
bience to the sound.
that, unlike kick drums, it isn't unusual to have two (or
even more) different snare drums used in the same track. Another alternative is to take the same filtered white
Often you might find a main snare drum being used on noise source but this time use an amplitude envelope
beats two and four and one or more slightly different, per- with a longer decay/release time of around 80 ms and
haps softer sounding, snare drums used for offbeat hits then use a sawtooth LFO set to around 100 Hz to modu-
and ghost notes. This can be achieved using programmed late the amplitude in addition to the main envelope. This
(perhaps velocity dependent) changes within a single LFO gives the effect of a repeating minienvelope with a

3208
time period of about 1O ms, which is pretty much what the raw noise source.
we had previously but we use the main envelope decay/ Not having a sharp attack may not be a problem for you.
release time to prevent this sound from continuing ad-
After all, not every sound needs a razor sharp transient
in.finitum.
and, in fact, there has been a trend recently toward snare
As you can see, in terms of recreating the classic synthe- and clap sounds that almost seem to reverse into them-
sized clap sound there really isn't a lot to it. We can vary selves. There are a number of ways of doing this, includ -
the filtering on the noise source, the spacing and envelope ing bouncing and reversing the sample and mixing it in
of the four initial spikes (or the frequency of the LFO, if at a lower level, and, of course, moving it forward so
we use the second method), and the decay and level of the that the end of the reversed sample matches up with the
reverb portion of the sound, but that's essentially it . How- beginning of the normal one. Another way might be to
ever, much more can be done with effects and many of the add a short reversed reverb (Creative uses of reverb are
classic clap sounds used (especially in trance music) tend discussed in Chapter 18.) to each hit. Either way, in cases
to have a much higher level of reverb on them than the likethis, there will be, to some extent, less of an impact
reverb generated within the TR-808. In addition they are when the sound hits, so not having a super sharp attack
often layered up with snare sounds, and there are times might not be much of a problem.
when the line between the two is indistinct. You can move
across the full spectrum of snare drum sounds and then
across into handclap sounds quite easily without a break. DRUM KIT SOUNDS: HI-HATS
I find programming my own drum sounds hugely reward- Cymbals are among the hardest things to actually syn-
ing and interesting, and I feel that it adds a unique flavor thesize because they are incredibly harmonically complex!
to the percussion on my tracks and remixes. But claps can There is so much complexity and variation to the sound
be pretty hard to get as you want them. It's sometimes based on how hard the cymbal is hit and where it is hit.
hard to get the initial attack right, and then the sound can The best we can really hope for through purely synthetic
end up sounding a little soft in comparison to a sample. means is something that gives the feeling of a cym-
This could be due to a number of factors including the bal while not striving for absolute authenticity. Hi-hats,
minimum attack and decay times of the synth you are though, do make life a little easier for us because they are
using to create the sound and even the filtering used on generally shorter in length since the two cymbals are ei-

3229
ther tight ly pressed together (closed hi-hat) or relatively think about it, this makes a lot of sense because the sound
loosely pressed together (ope n hi-hat ). Two cymbals in of a real hi -hat varies enormously as a drummer plays
contact creates less of the metallic ring of, say, a crash or it. We find ourse lves again in a situat ion where var iation
ride cymbal, where the sound is, harmonically at least, is a good thing, and we could, as with our snare drum I
more chaotic and random. try to introduce dynamic variation within a single hi-hat
sou nd and choose a few variations to give tonal interest.
The best place to start when synthesizing hi -ha ts is with,
no prizes for guessing , white noise! It 's starting to be- It is probably true that dance music h as fewer variations
an d subtleties (for the most part at least) than live music,
come a very good friend of ours when synthes izing drum
sounds . In fact , grab yourself a white noise source, run but that doesn't mean it has to be 10 0°/o repetitive. De-
pending on the genre, there is quite a spectrum from com-
it through an amp litude envelope with the attack set as
pletely and obviously programmed and synt h etic drums
quickly as you can get it and a very short decay, app ly
a high-pass filter and adjust the cutoff frequency until through to more natural and livesounding drums. Exact ly
the sou nd is suitab ly thin for you, and there you'll have where your sounds sit on this spectrum will dictate
how much variation you have within your drum sounds
a quick-and-dirty closed hi-hat sound! Gradually increase
the decay time of the amplitude and filter frequency enve- within a sing le track. But hi -hats are generally one area
lopes, and you will hear the hi-hat gradually opening. You where subtle var iat ions in the tonality and the openness
(or decay) of the sound can really emphasize a groove in
could either program these as modulation destinations
a way that quantizing or even the most subtle timing
controlled byt .he modulation wheel (or another MIDI con-
troller ) or simply save the sett in gs as a separate patch. changes simp ly cannot.

There are some terrific sample libraries available that

have hundred s (if not thousands!) of fantastic hi-hat DRUM KIT SOUNDS: CRASH AND RIDE
sounds. As stated earlier, having a programmed sound CYMBALS
means that you can introduce subtle changes in the
sound through aut omation in a way that could be very Now we come to the really difficult stuff! Unfortunately,
difficult to achieve when using a sample . there is (current ly) no way to accurately recreate the
sound of a cymbal with any form of synthesis, as the
With hi-hats, especially, you can, and even should, include
physics behind what happens when a cymbal is struck
a number of variations within a single track. When you

3251
is mindbendingly complex! If you start to factor in the to program your own . Of course, layering two or more
variations you get based on where the cymbal is struck, samples can be a good way to go if an instrument is fore-
with what material and with what force, you have some - front in the mix. If it's just a background sound, there's lit-
thing that is almost impossible to comprehend let alone tle point in spending too much time changing an already
recreate! So this is one area where I would say that, if you good sample, especially if you have a deadline to meet.
want realistic sounding cymbals, you really have to use
There are many great sample libraries of some of the more
a sample. When placed in a mix with other fully synthe - exotic percussion instruments so by all means take ad-
sized drum sounds, the cymbal samples by themselves
vantage of them.
shouldn't harm the groove.
It's tempting to go for an obvious choice, such as a tam-
A number of early drum machines included synthesized
bourine, but you can always choose an alternative sound
cymbal sounds but these rarely had anything close to the that's similar to a tambourine but isn't one. Choosing an
character of a real cymbal. Even Roland admitted defeat exotic instrument over a regular one, and playing with
with their TR-909. Whereas its predecessor the TR-808
the sample a bit to change, say, its pitch, will give your
had a cymbal that was entirely synthesized, the TR-909
rhythm track an extra edge. If you had a splash cymbal,
adopted the emerging technology of sampling as the basis for example, which already has quite an abrupt decay, you
for its cymbal sounds. And it has pretty much been that
•
cou ld put that into a sampler and pitch it up an octave or
way ever since. more and you might end up with something that isn't a
tambourine but does the same job. Need a replacement for
OTHER ''REAL'' PERCUSSION a shaker? How about the sound of a match being struck
but edited, shortened, and pitched up? Both things that I
There are literally hundreds of other percussion instru- have done and have worked really well.
ments from around the world, possibly even thousands,
Drum and percussion sound design doesn't always have
which isn't surprising considering percussion instru-
to be about trying to recreate a particular instrument; it
ments were among the earliest noisemakers, and each
can also be about making a percussive type sound out of
continent and culture has its own unique collection. In
something that isn't so obvious.
terms of the sound design aspects of percussion instru-
ments, I'd recommend using samples rather than trying

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''UNCLASSIFIABLE'' PERCUSSION You can find sounds like these pretty much anywhere! I
already mentioned the idea of cutting little slices of other
Beyond these well -known and recognizable percussion audio files (from sample libraries or your own record -
sounds is a whole world of sounds that we can poten- ings but not from copyright material) and using those.
tially use as percussive elements. In fact, pretty much But if you want to program your own sounds then FM-
any sound that has a sharp attack and a relatively quick based synthesizers can be a great place to start. In fact,
decay/ release (or can be made to have one by editing) can the EFM- 1 synth built into Logic is fantastic for this, not
be used as a percussive element within a track. They can least because it has a "randomize" feature that can come
be sounds that have an obvious pitch to them, in which up with all kinds of unexpected little treasures of sounds!
case they can be played just rhythmically or rhythmic- And once you have a nice collection of these short sounds,
ally and melodically, or they can be un -pitched. They can you can experiment with processing them with effects,
be synthesized from scratch or they can be brief slices of reversing them, combining, and then sampling them. I
audio from another source . I have even taken very short actually have a folder on my hard drive for snippets of
slices of a vocal track to use as percussive elements in a noises exactly like these, which I have collected from vari-
track, and it worked! ous places. My most recent set of sounds came from a
By using quite a few of these kinds of sounds and placing recording I made on my iPhone while I was on a journey
them low in the mix, or by having them only happen to London from my home. I set the phone recording and
occasionally, you can add a lot of variation and movement captured everything on the hour-long journey. Conversa-
to your drum and percussion tracks without overly com - tions, train announcements, cars, street noise, drilling on
plicating things. Because of the repetitive nature of a lot of a construction site, the guy who was serving me in the
club music, these little percussive elements can be used to cafe, it was all there! And although it took a bit of listening
subtly build up the pace and energy in a track without the and editing, I got some really interesting sounds from it .
need to introduce more obvious sounds that might inter- At least I know that nobody else wil l have those sounds!
rupt the dynamics of the arrangement.

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