Unique Drum Production: How to Stand Out From The Masses
Intro: The Problem
There are a lot of producers out there and between free sample packs, free drum samples, free drum kits, percussion loops, and free samples in general which are usually royalty free, there is no shortage of material to work with or people to make music.
This is not a bad thing. Having a huge, global community of people making music in every genre imaginable is awesome. It's never been a better time to learn from other people.
But this has also served to create a new challenge: standing out.
Saturation and obscurity
Even once your tracks and songs are mixed, mastered, and released, its hard to stand out from the pack. Music marketing tactics are very much their own world and beyond the scope of this article, but we want to take a step back and consider what you can do in your production to be different from everyone else out there making music.
Yes, there's plenty of generic pop music that does well because of the marketing, but if that's what you're interested in you're reading the wrong website.
We're much more interested in how to make the drums on your project really different and intriguing, which will only make getting out there to the right people more straightforward.
Common Drum Production Problems
Drum programming is a very discussed topic in all of electronic music with techniques, equipment, and specific patterns varying depending on the genres you work in. But we hear some common problems in lots of different genres that can be distracting even if you're doing everything else right.
Definitely try experiments, layer sounds, see if you can get weird unconventional patterns to work, but you don't want to miss the mark because of a common and easily solved problem.
Here are some of the big ones we recommend you check for as you work. Keep them in mind as you product, but
Why Your Drum Machine Sounds Wimpy
Ever wonder why simple loops from vintage drum machines sound amazing on your favorite records, but when you program them or drag in loops from a sample pack they just don't feel as dynamic and exciting?
You put on a Kanye West album (Yeezus is a good example) and the drum machine loops all sound HUGE. Yours do not.
Why?
They're almost certainly using some processing you are not. Compression or transient shapers can sometimes be part of the signal chain, but the big one is saturation or distortion effects that add overtones. This can be as simple as a guitar fuzz, or very complex multiband distortion. Also, certain analog or analog modeled compressors like the LA2A or 1176 or SSL G Comp add subtle overtones even when not compressing the signal, so the are acting like saturators to juice up the sound in a subtle way.
Lots of people use plugins like iZotope's Trash or Fab Filter Saturn which not only let you do multiband saturation, but also mix the dry and wet signals. Sometimes a little bit of heavy saturation mixed with the clean signal works better than the plugin set to 100% with less processing.
Many of the best free drum kits (like our DUST DMG pack of course) have a little of this baked into the sounds so they hit hard right out of the box.
Overcooked or Harsh High End
In our magically glitchy opinion, a lot of modern music has high end problems. This includes big commercial Top 40 releases, free drum kits, drum samples, and stock drum loops.
There are a lot of reasons why this happens but what we hear most are producers getting too enthusiastic with the high end boost, not using de-essers properly, or just trying to cram too many high end heavy elements into a mix then "fix" it with processing like multiband compression.
Pick your reference tracks carefully
Just because a track has a billion streams doesn't mean it makes a good reference. It means the market accepts it. But if you think its overcooked or too harsh, have the courage to pick references you believe in. Maybe the market deserves better and you're the person to make it.
Roll off high end
In a digital environment, it's really easy for high end to build up because everything is additive. Don't be afraid to use low pass filters and high shelves to be very exact about what you want to occupy the high end. In our experience, you really can only have 3, maybe 4 elements up there. And they can't be stepping on each other.
For example in a drum collection, you might decide your hi hats and snare have the high end bite to them, and everything else gets rolled off to make room for them.
De-Essing Correctly
Letting high end accumulate then trying to de-ess the entire mixbus later is heavy handed and just doesn't feel good a lot of the time. Usually most compression effects (which is what a de-esser is) works better in thin layers. Think of it like coats of paint. You should really do this kind of processing on the track level to the elements that need it so the elements that don't can breathe.
On your drums samples and drum loops, the thing you will most likely need to look at are cymbals. Your drums collection may not need it and this may be done for you already. If your drum library does not have drum loops that are cymbal heavy, you may just skip this. You may also consider only de-essing only cymbal one shots, not the whole drum bus.
Out Of Tune Drums
This is a simple one. Not all drum elements are pitched like certain snares and cymbal or hat sounds.
However 808s and kicks usually do need to be tuned. We're not going to always tell you to tune them to the root key of the song. That's boring.
Plenty of hip hop in particular has the "wrong" bass notes in the drum loops and it feels awesome. The point is you want to have some intent behind what you're doing. Don't just throw a sound in and leave it on whatever pitch it is. Figure out where it hits a nerve and feels good.
No Groove, No Drum Fills, Stock Percussion Loops
This issue is basically a lack of customization and effort. It's fine to throw some placeholder loops in a track sometimes, but you should experiment with how you do drum loops to find some things that are unique to your voice.
Don't just program everything exactly on the grid. At very fast tempos, the groove will generally tend to get straighter, but this isn't set in stone. Try using swung rhythms or patterns that don't line up with the measures. A simple example is use a 3/4 loop in 4/4 time so it only lands on a downbeat every 3 complete measures.
Don't just use stock loops that everyone else has. Cut them up or program fills with one shots. Even if its challenging at first, this will push you to develop your vocabulary.
The Building Blocks of a Unique Drum Library
For music producers, the sounds you use are a huge part of your style of music. With bad ones, nothing feels right and with good sounds it can feel like you can do anything.
So how do you build a great library of unique drums sounds?
The first thing we recommend is setup a space for them. Get a hard drive just for your samples and sample packs, keep it as organized as you can, and build it up over time. You want to make it easy to find sounds you love in a moment so having a curated hard drive is a great place to start.
So, where do you get sounds?
Sample Marketplaces
You can of course use large collections of drum samples from sites like Splice or Landr, but these are huge marketplaces with millions of producers looking for sounds there. We will use these to fill in gaps or in a pinch, but its important not to become too reliant on these places because you're using sounds that everybody else has.
Indie Sample Companies
This is the category we fall in and there are many others. These sample pack companies can range from a single producer who does everything or a team of 40 producers cranking out thousands of sounds everyday.
With our obvious bias aside, we like to source sounds from these companies when we produce because less people are going to have the sounds. It's more exclusive. Some companies even go as far as limiting the download of certain sample collections to a certain number of customers to keep the sounds rare.
Homemade Sounds
Every producer should try their hand at making some of their own sounds, even if they are simple foley samples from stuff on your desk or in the kitchen.
Try making your own sample pack. Try making some tracks using 100% of your own percussion loops, serum presets, one shots, drum loops, everything. Refuse to use any external drum library or instrument samples. Play every part by hand. Learn to synthesize every sounds on the 808 drum machine from scratch. If its an option, you can also try inviting a drummer in to come record custom drum loops.
This isn't mandatory for every track you make, but it will really push your production skills to new places and give you some unique assets that nobody else has, which will help you to develop a unique voice.
If you do a lot of this sort of thing, it works better. After a while you accumulate a private sample library.
Techniques for Crafting Unique Drums
Once you have a few sources of percussion loops and a sample pack or three in your collection, you need to start bringing it all together.
Transcribe Drum Patterns
Load up you favorite drum loops into an audio track. Then, you're going to transcribe, note for note, that pattern as closely as you can. Try to catch every snare hit, every kick drum note, every ghost note. If you do this a lot, you'll learn tons about what makes a good drum pattern.
But for the full version of this activity, you're going to mute the original pattern and try to get it to feel good using only one shot samples from your drum library. This teaches you a lot about what works and what doesn't and where you can substitute things with your own ideas.
The Foley Loop
We're big fans of using foley samples for the texture they add as well as how easy it is to break into new territories with foley loops. Here is how to do it:
Take a foley sample with some kind of irregular non-repeating rhythm. Doesn't matter what it is so much as what it could be. Could be something like wind chimes, a loose wheel on a grocery cart, a jingling set of keys, or a toolbox falling down a flight of stairs.
Then you're going to cut out a slice of that recording and quantize it to a tempo. Stretch and warp it until you can get it to loop smoothly. The first couple times you try this, it might suck. Let it be bad. The point of this method is its a little unpredictable. You'll probably make a bunch of junk, but it's worth the effort for the moments when you strike gold.
Layer From Different Sources
We like to layer sounds that have vastly different origins. For example, you might combine vocals with a synthesized drum machine loop with a few foley samples over the top to add texture to the very precise, digital sound of a synthesized loop. Then you can sidechain that to analog noise to add texture and motion.
Or try inverting that. Use a foley loop as your base, program drum machine one shots over the top of it, then mix in a squashed, heavily filtered breakbeat for texture.
Pros and Cons of Free Drum Samples
There are tons of free sample packs out there, as well as public domain sources of sounds that are free to use. These a great asset to tap into.
But.
Everyone else is also using them, so it can be easy for artists to lean on cliche sounds that everyone and their uncle uses in their productions.
If you go this route be prepared to spend a lot of time processing sounds and re-imagining them into something completely different. This is not a bad thing and will make you a better producer, the only catch is it is a big investment of time and involves trial and error which may not always be practical.
They're there so you should use them, but know what you're getting into ahead of time.
Technology and Tools for Unique Drum Production
There is some helpful gear to have for making unique drum sounds.
You need something to record with. Pretty much everybody has a phone, so you should start there. You can upgrade the mic, or get field recorders and standalone mics later if you don't already have them.
The stock plugins of your DAW are extremely capable. Learn every trick and technique you can find to maximize what they can do for you.
Weird, misused, and less common plugins. Certain 3rd party plugin companies make very sophisticated tools (Zynaptiq comes to mind here) but there are many other ones. Don't be afraid to use tools you have the "wrong" way for synthesis. A good example is take denoising and other corrective tools and use very extreme settings to create aliasing and other artifacts, then mix this back into your drum sounds or render them out separately. These plugins tend to kick out interesting, novel sounds, because not as many people think to do this.
Odd physical objects. Some people even build "sound boxes". Basically a wooden box used as a resonator (like an acoustic guitar) that they attach things to and excite in various ways. You can record these and process them to make sounds that will leave a lot of people scratching this heads as to how you did it.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, we're big believers that experimentation and out of the box processes are the key to doing drum production that stands out from the pack.
You want to avoid the big mistakes and use proven enhancement techniques like saturation, distortion, careful tuning, tasteful compression and de-essing with unorthodox sample processing.
Ideally, you're going to build a very extensive personal drum library. This is the ultimate collection of samples from the styles you work in. Sample packs from companies you like (hopefully we're in that club 🤞) are absolutely part of that, but you want to be intentional about where you source things and consider things like whether or not they are royalty free.
By utilizing a mix of technology and experimenting with unconventional methods like foley loops and physical sound creation in ways you develop yourself, producers can develop a distinctive sound that sets their music apart in a saturated market.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a collection of drums called?
A collection of drum sounds used for music production is usually called a sample pack, a drum library, a drum loops bundle, or a synonym of one of these terms. They all basically mean the same thing. It's a bunch of files that you can load into your DAW, hardware sequencer, or sampler to make drum beats or drum loops with.
Are old drum sets worth anything?
Sometimes old vintage drums or cymbals can be very valuable and have a high resale value. But you need to know what you're looking at and be aware that the vast majority are worth very little. Just because something is "vintage" doesn't automatically mean it's a collector's item.
However, for making a sample pack or recording percussion loops, old drums can be very valuable in a different way. If they sound unique or you have a unique idea for how to use them, you can potentially make tracks with those sounds that help build your reputation as a musician.
What is the best drum sample library?
There's no single "best" drum sample library. An big room EDM sample pack is going to be pretty hard to use if you're interested in making old school hip hop or 90's drum and bass. The core sounds are just very different and if you're trying to re-create a specific style, you'll need to use sounds that are common in the genre.
But we're all for trying to invent your own thing by using uncommon sounds. Just don't expect to find everything you need all bundled up in one place with a bow on it. You'll need to collect sounds from a few different places and put them together yourself.
Where can I download drum samples for free?
Most sample pack companies offer free drum sample packs, including us.
What is the best free drum kit?
Even among paid sample packs, there's not a single perfect drum kit. A lot of what makes a sample pack good is what you're using it for. An amazing lo fi hip hop pack you got for free during a promotion might be pretty useless if you want to produce hard techno bangers.
Instead of searching for the best free kit (which doesn't exist) get a hard drive and make that your sample library. As you collect or make more and more samples for your library, start to organize it in a way that makes sense to you and allows you to quickly find what you need. A lot of people do this by genre.
What is the best website for drum samples?
Ours? Duh. Kidding, but not actually. We make things we would want to use in our own music. Plenty of other websites crank out as many samples as possible every day, so the best site would depend on what you need. If you want a huge marketplace, there are several of these run by corporations. If you want something smaller and more curated, look at smaller companies like us or even individual producers selling packs independently.
Is it illegal to sample drum breaks?
Yes, it is illegal to sample copyrighted material without permission. A lot of people do it anyway. A lot of great music has. been made with illegal samples. We're not going to tell you what to do, but its important you understand what you're getting into. The main risks with this are your music might get taken down from streaming platforms & music stores at any time, demonetized on platforms like YouTube, or hold back bigger career moves. For example, maybe a sync agent wants to use your tracks in a movie or TV show. Uncleared samples could kill that opportunity. This is why we sell royalty free sample packs. You buy the sounds once and then you're free to do what you please with them, as long as you aren't reselling them or giving away copies for free. We think this is more in line with how the artistic process actually works.
What is a ghost note in drums?
Ghost notes are quiet, less prominent notes in a beat that add feel and fill in the empty spaces. For example, you might have a drum pattern that hits on beats 2 and 4, but lots of quiet 16th notes between those at 1/3 of the volume or even less. You might not notice them immediately, but if you took them away it would be very obvious.
