Editorial Staff

Commercial music has had something of an “ear lift” over the past five years. A familiar – once unavoidable – sound and texture has returned to contemporary radio and is showing no sign of leaving anytime soon. The 80’s Drum Machine. Whether it’s the softer type of CR-78 or Dr Rhythm sounds heard in “Tainted […]

Sure, people dance to the kick (most of the time), but that back and forth groove is snare city. If you’ve spent hours crafting the perfect kick drum to help power your beats, don’t limp out with an amateur snare. Your beats deserve so much better! This article explores every possible snare you could desire. […]

Percussion is one of the least sexy and most overlooked aspects of a production. Adding a shaker to add more top end to your beat doesn’t sound as pro as reaching for the Pultec emulation, does it? It can be a lot more efficient, though.   I have rarely found an EQ able to add groove and crispness […]

Whether it’s four on the floor Electronic Dance Music, or drop tempo Trap, the kick drum is going to be a prominent force. Are you struggling with maintaining a smooth low end in your beats? Are you comparing your beats to the hottest in your genre to find you’re a million miles away? Can’t quite […]

Wait, it’s not what you think. I mean, yes, discussions about drum samples usually end up with you looking through hundreds of sounds that you may or may not end up using, but let’s try to mitigate that (as much as possible, at least). I think the biggest problem with going through dubstep drum sample […]

Though Trap features in late 90’s Hip-Hop, it didn’t announce itself onto the music scene until the early millennium. Fast hats, crisp snares, cinematic booms and the legendary Roland TR-808 drum machine are but a few key ingredients to the unmistakable trap aesthetic. One of the most observable features of Trap is its heavy reliance […]