5 Reasons Why Using Drum and Bass Sample Packs Will Improve Your Mix
People often ask me if I use any drum and bass sample packs in my productions. When I answer “yes” they look at me like I'm a fraudulent producer that uses Dance eJay (who remembers that). When I talk with other producers and ask the same question they often say they feel like they're cheating by using them. When asked what they use to make their drums, their answer is usually “I sample them”. Which is funny because a sample CD, and a sample are both somebody else’s work. It's probably worse to sample yourself because the samples are not royalty free.
Here are my 5 reason why using drum and bass sample packs will benefit, and improve, your overall track and mix.
- Quality: Samples found in commercial sample packs are already professionally mastered. It's as simple as dragging and dropping samples into a mix.
- Multiple File Formats: Sample packs can be purchased in a range of various formats. If you use Reason, you can download the Reason Refills. If you use Logic, you can download the ESX24 format. Halion and Kontact are also popular formats.
- Save time! If you're not a drummer, or don't own a drum kit, then chances are the only way you're going to get the required sounds to produce your drum loops is to sample yourself. I'm not against sampling, I have a huge vinyl collection and an MPC 2500, but when you're producing 1 new track every week you don't really have the time go crate digging.
- Downloadable: Sample packs can be downloaded from the Internet.
- Royalty Free: When you purchase a sample pack you have the rights to use those samples in your own productions and all samples can be used for commercial music.
If you're one of these people that thinks using samples is cheating, you need to understand that using drum and bass sample packs is only providing the producer with a set of building blocks. It's your creativity that creates the final production.
You can even use the samples to create something totally unique and original by layering samples with other instruments. Speak to any producer in any genre and I can guarantee the majority of them will use sample packs. Creativity is the key.
