Tag: music production

Music is an essential ingredient in our worlds. It makes up our internal rhythms that keep us going and drags us out of our funks so that we can move on with our lives. Music has been known to make and break relationships, and half of the population was conceived specifically because of what was playing on their parents radios at the time.

Babies are born and bred on the right mixture of music and lighting and not only that but you can tell a lot about a person based on what they listen to every day. You learn their beliefs and disbeliefs, their dreams and hopes and fears. All of it is in the music and one site that understands that best is ManuelMarino.com, or Marino Sounds.

Along with Manuel Marino, a talented composer himself, you can critique innovative new songs as they are released. Manuel Marino has made it a mission of Marino Sounds to share appreciation for good music with other music lovers out there.

As a portfolio and blog site ManuelMarino.com lets you listen to music online for free, a collection which includes Manuel Marino’s very own compositions from 1999 and on with the Free Mp3 Player.

There’s a news section that keeps the avid followers up to date on the latest developments in the musical industry. There are an assortment of blogs written by Manuel Marino that you can enjoy as well as articles that cover a list of musical categories.

There’s also a news section that helps you keep tabs on latest releases and other music happenings. Anyone interested can check out Marino’s newsletter which is called Music and Thoughts when they’re not busy enjoying whatever else Marino Sounds has to offer, since the newsletter is aimed towards and wider audience.

If you are like us, then you like to listen to music online. Why would you pay money when you could listen to music free? In the world today, when the net is booming, this is something to look into.http://manuelmarino.com

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Make Drum Samples Yourself

Anybody with a computer (both desktop and laptop styles) can these days develop their own drum samples. While it may take some amateurs a lot of time to come to grips with the technology and settings, the workflow is quite adaptive after a few weeks and you can be making your own signature sounds. You can start today if you have an audio editor.

Tools for the task can be found online, but if you are into audio then you may already have some of the programs installed. If you have some drum samples to start with, that is the best way to go at the beginning instead of synthesizing your own sounds. You can grab free audio editors like Audacity, which is a free software program that can be downloaded (just Google it, it will be the first result!) and installed within seconds (it only works on PCs, though). If you are on a Mac, there are some free programs as well. The operations that need to be performed can be as varied as you want them to be, from cropping to equalization and more.

If you are more comfortable in programs like Reason, FL Studio and Sonar, you can do what you want to the audio and then simply export the wav sound. So if you’ve applied some good effects and want the drum sample as it stands right now, simply export that channel by itself. Chances are, you will probably have some silence at the end of the sample unless your program is smart enough to cut it out. In any case, you will be able to crop this in an audio editor easily.

When editing drum samples, you obviously need some sources. One place to get some great drums and other sounds is off old records. Simply connect a turntable to your audio interface and start recording the parts of the songs where drum breaks exist (with no other instruments) and then crop to your desire. This is called sampling, and it’s actually more popular now than it has ever been, and you can get started today if you have the equipment. You can get great samples out of this process!

Synthesizing drum samples is another option for the budding music sample connoisseur. The machines with this capability also date back many decades, including old Roland and Korg drum groove boxes with synthesizer functionality. Usually, a number of parameters are there to be modified by the user, and the traditional sound offered by that particular box usually remains with any changes, generating a nice mix between the structure of that sound and the special characteristics assigned to it.

Now that you know how to source the different drum samples, you need to be able to manipulate and alter to your liking. There are plenty of effects to change the sound of a sample, including equalization and compression techniques, so you’ll need to experiment. You will come across some methods that go well with your workflow, so just keep an open mind and try any and all recommendations until you can make your own judgment.

Did you come to find out how to make your own beats? Well, nearly everybody tells themselves “I want to make my own beats“, but not many take up the challenge. Get started today!

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Types of Kick Drum Samples

There are many different types of kick drum samples available for music producers today. Beat making is such an involved activity that having to use the same samples over and over can really kill your creativity. This is especially true with kick drum sounds as these are an elemental ingredient to just about every rhythm and blues, hip hop, rap, pop and rock song on the charts and underground today.

There are a few different sound stages (or phases) in every sample, including the ever-present kick drum. The first, and at the starting line, is called the attack. This first phase really determines the ‘shine’ factor of the kick, and whether it can be heard with a whole bunch of other sounds competing for attention. A slow attack (which means a weak starting point) will need to be compensated for by the other phases of the drum sample.

The second phase that we should talk about is the sustain, which is the long part of the kick that the attack introduces. This bulk of the sample can be long and booming or short and pointy, but it does matter as this is the memorable part of the sample. Having a very weak attacking phase can be disastrous if it’s coupled with a very weak sustain phase, too. Either have the best of both worlds or one good phase to get you started and get it heard.

Adjusting the volume envelope of a kick drum sample is very easy with the right tools. Most samplers will include an envelope modifier for the volume or can be modified to do this very easily. If your drum sampler or sequencer does not permit this, look for some free tools that will help you; there are literally thousands of free virtual sound generators and effects plug-ins available on the internet for free personal use.

If you do not wish to use any device or plug-in inside your host or hardware unit, you can certainly adjust the volume in any one of the editors (both free and paid-for versions) that are available. Most already have the functionality or offer different plug-ins to help you crop and adjust volume and fading. The free programs like Audacity are great and even match the professional edition programs in many departments.

Different programs and libraries contain different drum samples for your personal and professional use. If you’re serious about audio and music production, then getting a varied selection is your best bet. Combine the samples contained in programs like FL Studio with others you can get off the internet and in different programs, and you will soon have your own choice of go-to samples that you have developed yourself.

If you want the best drum samples available, check out My Drum Samples here: http://www.mydrumsamples.com/

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Panning with Drum Samples

In rap and hip-hop music production these days, sequencing is still very important. Panning, though, is fast becoming a skill to really treasure, as it is one way to easily make 20-30 drum samples and sounds fit in a track without crowding the room so to speak.

In the mixing process, the technique of panning is second in line after adjusting volume. While it may seem hard at the start to some, it seems quite the easy deal to others. It all depends on how you like to work. In any case, it becomes much easier with time and experience.

The process and study behind panning is quite simple to explain and even to grasp for beginners. It basically works by distributing sound across the left and right speakers. If this was done evenly, it would be called volume mixing, but you are taking volume away from the left speaker and leaving the right intact or making it louder, and therefore changing the perceived location of that sound in the stereo phase. Especially useful with obscure drum samples and such, it’s a favorite of mixers.

When panning drum samples, there are a few things to keep in mind. For instance, you should not pan the kick and drum samples beyond a percentile or two, and I will explain why very soon. An example panning board would see the snare and kick in the center while supporting drums like the hi-hat and cowbell would be panned to the left or right, and the amount would depend on each project.

Now, why on Earth would we want to not pan the kick and snare drum samples at all? The reason comes down to sound distribution. This mainly applies to clubs, but there are other instances where it could be a problem. Here it is: clubs often lay out their speakers among the floor not in pairs, but in channels. So all speakers playing the left channel of a song could be toward the front while the speakers playing the music in the other speaker are located in the back. What does this achieve? Well, that depends on the venue, but it sure does not tend to support our own music if we’re panning the kick nearly all the way to the left side, and the snare to the right. One half of the venue wouldn’t hear the other main sound just hear whatever is on their channel, like the kick or snare. That’s why panning is best for supporting sounds and not the backbone of a song.

When drum samples occur more frequently than others, it can be good to try to pan the sounds out proportionally. What I mean by this is pan further to left for instruments and drums that don’t occure often. Take the cymbal for example, it may only appear once every four bars. So why put it right in the center and stop something else from being there? You could put the hi-hat pattern which is much more regular in the center and pan the cymbal all the way to the right for example.

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