Drum Samples with Swing Settings
Music producers - veterans and newbies alike - mostly do not pay attention to two of music's topics that are vital to a great beat and great song - density as time goes on and the swing applied to drum samples and instruments. The second topic, swing, will be the focus of this article and hopefully we will all learn something on the topic.
A lot of music producers (especially ones just coming into the game) will often question all the fuss about using swing on drum samples and other tracks in a beat. The answer given on a lot of forums and blogs is usually something like this: the human ear loves variance. If every drum beat was to fall on the exact time grid of quantization, it wouldn't sound very pleasing. This is also the reason concerts are so popular. We've heard all the great songs already - countless times - but hearing them with some variation in drums and vocals is very appealing! If the artist instead simply played their CDs for the audience while lip-syncing, it wouldn't be good at all. Not half as appealing as live instruments with the possibilities of mistakes.
If you're tapping out drum samples, then using swing is like quantization - it will help you keep on time if you're not very accurate at the moment. Even if you are spot-on, it will apply your hits to the groove/swing template.
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.
Swing templates are especially useful when combining drum samples tracks with electronic instruments like synthesizers - these 'synths' do not have any swing applied to them by default (most of the time), so using a swing setting on them along with a straight drum track, or the other way around, can get you some good results. You can also just quantize the drum samples and the electronic synth and simply use a swing setting on one other sound in the song.
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.
A lot of music producers (especially ones just coming into the game) will often question all the fuss about using swing on drum samples and other tracks in a beat. The answer given on a lot of forums and blogs is usually something like this: the human ear loves variance. If every drum beat was to fall on the exact time grid of quantization, it wouldn't sound very pleasing. This is also the reason concerts are so popular. We've heard all the great songs already - countless times - but hearing them with some variation in drums and vocals is very appealing! If the artist instead simply played their CDs for the audience while lip-syncing, it wouldn't be good at all. Not half as appealing as live instruments with the possibilities of mistakes.
If you're tapping out drum samples, then using swing is like quantization - it will help you keep on time if you're not very accurate at the moment. Even if you are spot-on, it will apply your hits to the groove/swing template.
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.
Swing templates are especially useful when combining drum samples tracks with electronic instruments like synthesizers - these 'synths' do not have any swing applied to them by default (most of the time), so using a swing setting on them along with a straight drum track, or the other way around, can get you some good results. You can also just quantize the drum samples and the electronic synth and simply use a swing setting on one other sound in the song.
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.
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