A brilliant 18 minute documentary available on YouTube. The “Amen Break” is a 6 second drum loop from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. It is surprising how many times it has been used in different tracks over the years especially in Hip Hop, Drum & Bass and Jungle.


Direct link to Actual YouTube Video

There are many sample CDs available today full of samples and while a lot of them contain some excellent sounds and loops, I believe that you should stay clear of them as much as possible when selecting samples for your music. This article explains why I think that way.

Sample CDs can cost a lot of money, mainly because what you are buying is a license to use the sounds in your productions legally and not just to listen to like a standard CD. I don’t want to make out all Sample CDs to be evil because some of them are great and can come in very handy when looking for that certain orchestral instrument sound for example which you can’t get hold of yourself. But there are many Sample CDs out there containing nothing but sounds and loops which I believe can slow down creativity, the learning process (especially for beginners) as well as making musicians lazy.

They slow down creativity because they stop people from creating and developing their own sounds and if everyone sticks to the same old sample CDs (especially genre based ones) then they aren’t going to be creating their own unique sound or take on a certain genre.

They can also slow down a musicians learning process because many of the sounds have had effects and processing galore put on them to make you go WOW! While this sounds amazing for the individual sounds, when all these sounds get put together into a track they end up sounding mushy, all fighting for the same space in the mix. Beginners to music creation then learn from tutorials and books that they then need to add more effects and mix down their tracks only to find they can’t get the sound they want as they have nothing to work with. This stops and hinders them from learning about sound creation, how to add effects and mix sounds together properly. This then leads to “why doesn’t my track sound as good as the ones in the shops” questions you see a lot on message boards.

The truth is that you can easily find alternatives which are a lot of the time a better choice. I would advise anyone before buying a sample CD to ask themselves can I record these sounds myself with a microphone myself or can I use a synthesizer to create those sounds myself. Can I recreate that drum loop using my own samples, can I then mix it up, change it and make it sound better. Can I be limited only by my own creative abilities and not what some some sound engineer decides is a good collection of sounds.

I also know that as a musician using your own sound creations you will start to look upon your own music with a lot more pride. You may even find yourself creating a new unique and personal sound in your music and surely that can only be a good thing.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation

One thing that every electronic musician should have is a big collection of samples in which they can come to when composing and quickly select one needed or to experiment with, these are my tips on sound sample collecting which can help you expand your collection, keep organized and create some interesting results.

1. With samples one of the most important things to do is to stay legal and organized. A simple way to do this is to sort your samples into different folders on your hard drive by license type (for example folders called Royalty Free, Free To Use Non Commercially and Creative Commons Samples). Then within those folders put the samples into more folders entitled by the source you found them (for example a folder called The Freesound Project). Using this method you can easily see the license and source of sample when choosing.
2. Some days when you aren’t feeling musically creative it is much better to have a day of creating samples instead. I’ve had many a day when I’ve either sat in front of a synth experimenting making patches or in front of a microphone recording sounds. Splitting the making samples process from the writing music process can really benefit both areas
3. Experiment as much as possible with different sounds in front of a microphone. You can get some great sounds from simple household objects. One of my favourites is pots and pans (Now everyone thinks I’ve gone mad!) but I’ve ended up layering these sounds together with other drum sounds to create whole new sounds. Try reversing them too and you get these metallic sounding whooshes from pots and pans (I hear them in films all the time). Sounds like you banging on cardboard boxes or slamming doors layered with kick drums can create whole new sounding kicks. Go round your house finding different things to hit with different things. The list is endless, family will think you’ve gone mad but the results can be amazing, interesting and really add something different to your music. That band called Stomp with the metal bins comes to mind.

4. Lots of sounds can be made with the mouth too, check out HumanBeatbox.com. Now you might be thinking but I can’t beatbox like that Gavin TyTe (The guy in the vids). No maybe not, but on that site there are some excellent tutorials on how to replicate kicks, snares and hats with your mouth which can on their own be done quite easily and quickly (the hard part is putting it all together). Then create your own personal HumanBeatBox drum kit in your favourite drum machine software or in Propellerheads Reason or Fruity Loops. The results can be very good especially with some reverb, delay and chorus effects on.
5. Keep a look out on eBay and in your charity shops, I’ve managed to buy some shakers, tambourines for next to nothing. Sampled them as much as I could and then got rid by reselling on eBay or donating back to the charity shop.
6. Make shakers out of containers and those dried peas and rice you can get from the supermarket. Sometimes they might not sound like the real thing but with a little bit of reverb on they can sound pretty good. Plastic drinks bottles or those plastic yoghurt drink bottles work really well for this. Small gravel from the garden is good too.
7. If you have friends who are musicians and create their own samples then maybe you can swap ones you’ve made with ones they’ve made, this can increase your collection and theirs very quickly.
8. Borrow instruments off of friends or relatives, sample them and then give them back. Ask to go round and sample their piano, guitar or violin. Maybe you have a wannabe singer in the family, ask them to do some simple vocal singing phrases.
9. There are some music making magazines which regularly have CDs full of samples on (make sure you check the licensing though and put them in your appropriate folder (see tip #1). I regularly visit my market where there is a magazine stall which sells magazines that are a couple of months old and I pick up these for £1 each. Libraries may also have them if they stock the magazines.
10. Subscribe to our RSS feed or bookmark this site in your favourites as we are going to release lots of sample packs over the coming months which are free to use as well as links to other sites with free samples.

Hopefully from this list of tips and ideas for samples you can go away and maybe introduce something new into your music or create some personalised sound samples. I shall release a few of my own samples which use some of the ideas in this article over the next couple of months so look out for them.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation

Recently I completed a remix as an entry into a remix contest. I haven’t done too much remixing before but I think I did pretty well with the track I remixed and thought I would share my thoughts, tips and ideas about the remixing process and what seemed to work well for me when remixing.

The track I remixed was called Nude - Dreams for their remix contest. You can hear the end remix that I came up with on my MySpace Page.

I found myself approaching the remix very differently to the way I would normally go about making a track completely from scratch. The reason is that most of the musical ideas are already there in front of you in the original and it is less about musical creativity and making sounds and more focused towards musical arrangement.

The main aim I started with was to take the track, try to keep the main elements and feel but add my own style to it. It is a balance I think you want to try to get right. You don’t want to sound too much like the original mix, but you don’t want to stray too far from the original that it wouldn’t really be classed as a remix. To achieve this aim I think it is a good idea to limit the amount of times you listen to the original. Listening too much could slow your creativity as the original might stick in your head.

In the contest I took part in, you were given the loops of each part/instrument of the track and the vocals. The first job I did was to cut these loops up and save individual hits of drums/instruments ready for import into Reason. For example I took kick, snare, and hat samples from the drums, a few bass notes from the baseline etc. I then cleaned all these individual hit samples up slightly by fading in or out the first and last few milliseconds to remove any of those nasty clicks you get.

Next I decided I wasn’t keen on the original 135bpm as I found that speed slightly too fast for my style of drums so I slowed it down to 124bpm. I noticed that most of the other current entries had stuck to the 135bpm and that is just fine, but if you do want to change the bpm your going to have to do either some time-stretching of any loops or your going to have to cut up each note in the loop and retrigger the samples.

It’s probably best if your using the loops to decide on a bpm and stick to it, otherwise it can be a real pain going and re-timestretching loops later. Timestretching can introduce some unwanted effects such as echos so you don’t want to go too overboard with huge changes in tempo (unless you want these effects).

I found that cutting loops into phrases allowed me to be a bit more experimental as you have more control over when each phrase will get triggered. It’s better than just putting the full loop over the top as you can start to add your own timings and variations of these phrases much easier later on.

Once I had the loops and samples in the shape I wanted them in, I started to import them into Reason. Using a sampler such as those in Reason which allows multiple samples to be allocated to different keys on the keyboard really worked well here. You can set out all your cut up loop phrases so they can be played in order. You will also find it easier if you tune any of the individual samples to their appropiate keys at this point too.

As you can see I spent lots of time preparing the samples and importing them before even trying to lay any sort of track out. I had basically setup every part of the original mix and made it possible to play every part easily on the keyboard too. This can be a bit time consuming at first but once this is done the fun begins.

I started to play with the drums as this is where I usually start with my own tracks. I wanted to try and keep as many of the original drum samples in as possible, I think this is a good way of trying to achieve the aim of not go too far away from the original but the drum tracks is the place in a remix where you can really give a remix your own style. I only introduced a few new drum sounds when I couldn’t get the sound I wanted by layering these new samples with the originals.

For each of the instrumental parts I was to play along to the original track and then to go and play along to my own beat and try and vary it slightly in both timing and note sequence but sticking to the same set of notes used in the original. It seemed to work for me and the track built up reasonably quick.

Adding your own parts to make the track stand out from other remixes in a contest is I think a good idea. Use the same scale/notes as the other instruments and try to make it fit well. As long as you don’t make it too different and have enough sections from the original you should be ok. I added two new main sections that were not in the original.

Firstly a synth line that just went for 16 bars, it is smack in the centre of the track but it fits well, uses the same scale, it’s short as I don’t think you should make any personalised sections that stand out too long as that would have broken my main aim. Next I added a guitar sound but I faded it back into the mix a lot to disguise it. Putting a sound further back in the mix allows you to make a section go for longer without going too far off track.

When adding your own sections it is a good idea to not use any copyrighted samples that you don’t own if your entering a remix contest which has the possibility of release. It saves hassle later and there are loads of great sites for free sounds.

Effects is where you can again add your own mark to the track so you will want to do this similarly to how you would normally. Careful not to add too many effects especially if the samples you were given already have a lot of effects on. During mix down stage try to emulate the original in terms of overall frequency levels, if the original mix down sounds brighter than yours, then your remix is going to sound dull. Same goes with overall volume, use a limiter to bring your track upto the same volume levels without distorting your track.

Anyway those are my thoughts on producing a remix that came out of personally doing one. If anyone has anything to add that they think is important or different views on remixing please add them to the comments of this post. If your looking for a remix contest to have a go at, try the site Reeemix.

Article written for Rhythm Creation by Edward Cufaude