What Makes Our Drum Beats THAT Good?

Monday, April 4th, 2011

There are tons of sample CDs, drum loops and other drum beat libraries, but the drum beats you’ll find here on DrumTracks.com are different!

World-Class Los Angeles Drummers

All of our drum beats were recording by drummers that have credits from recording and touring with top-selling major label artists. When you play our drum beats, you’ll be inspired to write better songs!

Drum Editing That Makes YOUR Life EASY!

The drum beats on our site are perfectly aligned to a grid. Each and every drum beat within the drum tracks are locked with the tempo. If you want to cut/paste and move sections around you can do that easily without cross-fading or complicated editing.

Mixed By A Grammy Nominated Mixing Engineer

Our drum beats were mixed by Studio Pros’ Grammy Nominated mixing engineer.  You’re not only going to get great drum source tracks, but you’ll get a drum mix that was mixed by a pro!

Superb Drum Sound

We’re using the same drum recording studios that Studio Pros are using for recording LIVE drum tracks for TV shows like the American Idol and other FOX shows. As well as drum beats for bands like “The Script” (reached #1 on billboard’s top 100!) and over 1,500 other recording artists.

Download free drum beats and hear for yourself! (You must be logged in to download.  Join us to create your own account)

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Making Drum Beats Sound “Natural”

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

One of the hardest things to do is get a natural sounding drum track without hiring an actual drummer. But getting a fabricated-sounding drum track can throw off the rest of your recording. Since drums are the basis of most recorded music and the first thing we lay down for a song, they can dictate the feel and vibe of every instrument that comes afterwards. So it seems pretty clear why having the most natural sounding drum beat possible stands to take your song to higher levels than robotic, artificial-sounding drums.

There are many options when it comes to manipulating your drum beats to sound more “human.” Here are a few that may help your next recording.

Variety is the spice of life

One problem with drum loops is the lack of variety. Most drummers don’t just play the same pattern over and over again throughout a song. Usually there are multiple sections, fills and crashes that give the song a little more variety. Therefore, adding variety to your drum track makes it sound much more real. If you’re using loops, find some that include more than one version of each pattern and various fills. You can even use a combination of loops with samples to add cymbal crashes and other fills. If you’re sequencing drum patterns with samples, be sure to program in your own fills and switch up the drum track throughout the song.

Randomizing

Drummers aren’t robots–one of the things that makes a drum track sound natural is the very slight variation with which the drummer plays his kit. They don’t always hit the snare drum exactly on beats 2 and 4 for every single measure… There are tiny differences in timing for each drum hit, and while we can’t usually directly perceive them with our ears, the variation makes the track feel more human to us, and we connect with that as listeners.

Most digital audio editors have a randomizing function. If you’re assembling a drum beat out of samples, it may be worthwhile to use the randomizer to shift various beats slightly off the click. You can determine how much you want to move the beat around by adjusting the randomizing percentage.

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Drum Tracks With The Slapstik

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

Pushing your boundaries is fun… It’s even more fun with a slapstik! Drummers – if you haven’t heard about this neat new contraption, don’t worry. I’m here to tell you all about it!

The slapstik http://www.theslapstik.com/ is a new and exciting tool that can bring your creativity to a whole other level! It basically consists of a regular drumstick, with a small bendable attachment on the end that lets you create upstrokes and down-strokes on the hi-hat, or anywhere else on the drum kit, with amazing speed and agility. It is intended to be used in the dominant hand, with a regular drumstick in the other hand. With the slapstik you can produce AMAZING new rhythms, and styles that haven’t even been invented yet!! – and anyone can use it! Whether you’ve played the drums for 7 years, or 7 days, you’ll find sounds coming out of your sticks you never thought could be possible!

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Recording the Bass Drum – it’s Bass-ick

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

For me, the bass drum is the heart of the song. It’s what drives the song and keeps the mix together. So, when I’m setting out to record my music, I need to make sure I get the perfect kick. But how? The truth is, there’s no right or wrong way about it. Once you know the basic rules, observation, experimentation and and brainstorming are the key. But what are the basic rules?

First, you need to make sure the kick is tuned properly. It needs to sound great naturally before you try to get a good sound through the mic. A good source will produce a good recording.
Once the the drum is tuned and set, choose your mic. A dynamic mic, which can handle loud sound pressure levels, is the typical choice. Classic dynamic mics for the kick drum are the AKG D112, Shure Beta 52, and the Sennheiser 421. If you decide to go with a condenser mic, be mindful that the sound pressure may hurt the fragile condenser diaphragm. Follow the basic rule of thumb; use it only if you can put your ear in front of the sound sourse without hurting your hearing. That being said, good condenser mics to use are the Neumann 47 FET and PZM microphones.

Bass Drum Recording
Yamaha SubKick Low-Frequency Capture Device

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Drum tips from the drum tech.

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Tuning Your DrumsPaul Hurd is a Los Angeles based drum tech who has worked for years with Drum Paradise, one of LA’s top of the line drum providers for session musicians and recording artists in the area. Hurd shared with DrumTracks.com some of his tricks of the trade he’s learned from being a drum tech and working in the music industry.

Say a drummer is setting out to get a new kit. Do you have any advice for them to get the perfect matching kit?

I would say the most important thing for a beginning drummer would be to get a drum kit that is well balanced. If you are getting a small drum kit, you want to match it with an equally balanced kick drum. SO the rack toms and cymbals can be placed at a level that ergonomics come into play. Being physically comfortable behind your drum set is the first thing you should think about when getting your kit. Be aware of your size and your musical needs. It’s very important to get into the headspace of what’s going to be comfortable for you while you’re drumming.

What’s the difference between buying a kit for live performance and recording?

It’s important to find a kit that’s versatile and can be used for both recording and playing live. The first thing is absolute experimentation with recording. There’s so many different styles and configurations that can be applied to recording. Drums come in so many different sizes, shell configurations, that you would want to experiment with your sounds and use your ears. I’ve found experimenting and finding what most comfortable works is best.

As a drum tech, you’ve set up drums for many artists in the Los Angeles recording studios including Henson, The Village, The Record Plant; What’s would you consider to be #1 thing you have to keep in mind when setting up drums for recording artists?

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Drum Tracks sounds from the 60’s

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Recording Session

Everyone always seems to be moving forward in music. New ideas are being brought to the table every day in the music business. Technology changes, things become digitalized. People replace live drummers with machines. But what about when we want to bring it back? I thought it’d be a good idea to take a minute and look back to what has worked in the past and use it today. Drum tracks for the future, using the tricks of the trade from the past. Good idea? I thought so.

Sometimes I get sound alike projects where customers are looking for the old sounds of the sixties. As a producer, I have to go into the studio and set up the kit to get that “old sound”. Here are tricks I have found to work to get that 60’s drum sound:

  1. I use my Rogers Dyna-Sonic snare drum that captures that old sound
  2. I use two condenser mics as left and right overheads and a SM57 in front of bass drum
  3. I try to make the drums sound as natural as possible and capture that sound

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