Drum Samples And Reverb Effects

Reverb, when applied to drum samples, is grossly underused in popular music. At the same time, though, a lot of the people who make use of the effect for their drum parts abuse it and degrade the drum samples to the point of annoyance.

When considering using this samples, make sure to specify (at least to yourself) the role that the sound is supposed to fulfill. If it’s for a single sound, you run the risk of making the other drum samples take a backseat to the reverb of this one instance. So if it’s a noise that plays all the time and consistently, you should turn down the bleed/return.

The length of the reverb is one of the main points of debate. Some people claim that songs with a slower tempo warrant a longer ‘tail’ (release) on the reverb sound patch, while others ask you to experiment with long and short on both medium and fast tempo songs to see what works for you. Sometimes, a longer reverb will allow the other drum samples to have a little bit more freedom and not need to perform to fill in empty space. If one of the samples takes that burden off the rest, you’ll have a lot more freedom!

There are so many practical applications for using this effect with the kinds of samples we’ve got. You can apply special files called IR files (Impulse Responses) which are environment simulators. What this means is that you could make your drum samples sound like they were recorded in a famous museum, like the Louvre, for instance, or anywhere else. IR files even exist for Grand Canyon locations and more spots – your creativity is the limit here. You can also apply the impulse response to other tracks for coherence.

Having said all of this, though, just about anything goes with certain types of electronic music. As long as something actually works for the song, nobody can tell you that it’s not worthy of inclusion as an effect.

If you experiment and see what works for you, you’ll be well off to a natural instinct for applying effects like reverb to your drum samples in a way that is unobtrusive and even adds character to your tracks. Start by testing out the effects of it on single sample tracks and then to the drums as a unit, before moving on to the whole song in varying degrees of application. Also make sure to try different types, like plate and room reverb, then hall and open spaces. You’ll find that each adds something else and once you know when to use a specific type of patch, you’ll be ready for any beat making situation.

If you’re a beat maker and want the best-quality hip hop samples to use, go here: drum samples.

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