Using uncompressed drum samples can be very unappealing to new music producers and beat makers, but anybody who has a real love for audio and an unbridled admiration of music and sounds that are true to their source will venture into the compression-less world sooner or later. Compression is basically the process of increasing the volume of the quiet parts of a song, piece of music or drum sound. It has been around since at least the 60s, possibly earlier.
Compression as it applies to drum samples can meet you at several points of a beat making session. The earliest stage possible is probably the process where you select your drum sounds. As you’re browsing, you probably realize that most of the samples sound very loud. This is the compression in action. Most samples have already had all their subtleties and creative tendencies removed by whoever made this sound library. It can be very tiresome to try to locate samples that you can modify, knowing that the original characteristics will still shine through.
The second phase at which the compression could meet you is the mixing stage. The way that this would happen in this case is if you, yourself, elected to use compression selected drum samples or other instruments. The main difference here is that instead of being subjected to reckless compression by sound library editors, you are making creative decisions and have no limits. You can choose to keep, remove or outline the subtleties of any samples quite easily.
Nearly every song that plays on the pop radio stations has a great drum pattern, with all drum samples cutting through the mix. This is very important as a lot of car radios still have speakers that aren’t so great at getting all the frequencies across, so a good mix is essential. While over-compression has had a lot of ‘stick’ in the audiophile community, creative uses are not scarce. You just need to look to dance music and analyze the ‘ducking effecting to see how popular some creative compression can become in a genre.
If any of the sounds you pick are necessary but overly compressed nonetheless, there are ways of adding some color back onto the canvas, and one of the first steps you could look at is editing the actual wav sample. You should be able to see the spike at the start of the sample if it does not encompass all of it. Then lower the volume of that section but allow it to blend in. What you may want to do is mix this with a similar, uncompressed sample and set the latter to about 30% mix. This will give the sample some extra crispness, and while some of the same frequencies will be boosted, the overall effect will be much more natural.
One of a few compression techniques for drum samples is the NY compression effect. In essence, it’s achieved by combining an original sample with the same sample heavily compressed. Having both allows the volume to be maximized while the dynamics are not totally diminished.
If you want to make rap beats, good on you! It can be easy for some, hard for others. An important step when making rap beats is learning rhythm, so if you have that, you’re one step ahead of the pack.
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