Drum Samples with Swing Settings
In beat making, there exist two spatial factors that are often overlooked: time-sensitive density and swing. We’ll be taking a look at the latter in this article, as there are a lot of beat makers who have not paid enough attention and have not applied the most basic principles of using swing on drum samples and instruments.
First of all, why use swing? Swing is useful in two situations. It is first of all useful when having used an editor or a click-in interface (like Reason’s Redrum or the FL Studio sequencer), and in this case it serves to humanize the drum samples loop. If it weren’t for the swing, all the samples would be precisely on point, and the human ear likes to perceive variance, not 100% accuracy in everything. This is what makes concerts such an appeal; if your favorite artist sang the exact same notes with the same tones and timing as the CD versions of his or her tracks during every live performance, there wouldn’t be such a demand.
When using it for drum sample tapping, swing is similar to quantization and it will help keep you in check to make sure that you’re not hitting off-notes.
By now you may be wondering what exactly swing is, and some examples of it. Swing is, in beat making, a quantization setting that is not 100% accurate. The level of off-time adds to the realism and humanization of a drum line or other instrument, so while the ear knows what’s coming, it’s not sure of the exact timing and this adds suspense that goes up and down with the music as the musical bars go on through the song’s time. A fifty percent swing is even with the grid snap, while fifty-one percent allows for 1% variance.
When composing a beat or music project and using electric synthesizers – it can be neat to apply the swing template to just a few elements of the song. This way, you could, let’s just say, have the drum samples track with swing and the synth without swing and then just introduce one other element. This element on its own could be subject to a swing pattern, which can egt very interesting results depending on the sound device and the sound patch used in MIDI.
When beginning to use this type of technique in music production, you may want to start with template percentages of fifty one to sixty three percent. Try them out on drum samples first and just mute the other tracks. Un-mute and play the track back again. Getting to know the difference in your mind as well as in your ears is an important step, especially true when you’re just starting to do this on your own. Move onto other instruments and try other percentages as you get more comfortable.
If you’re a music producer and want the highest-quality drum samples to use, click on: http://www.mydrumsamples.com/.
