The best songs featuring the iconic TR-909 drum machine
The TR-909 drum machine is renowned for its punchy and crisp kick drum, its bright, sharp snare snap, and its tight, metallic hi-hats. It’s been featured in both chart-topping hits and experimental tracks, and we’re exploring the entire range of the TR-909 in a Spotify playlist created by Native Instruments’ manager of sound design, Antonio de Spirt in honor of our new Expansion, Drum State.
Drum State captures an essential drum machine in all its vibrant colors and shades. With more than 241 loops, 539 drum samples, and dozens of kits, you can explore every sonic detail from this essential building block of pop and electronic music.
Let’s dig into the top 10 picks from this Spotify playlist to get you inspired to create your own legendary sounds.
The best songs featuring the iconic TR-909 drum machine
The TR-909 drum machine is renowned for its punchy and crisp kick drum, its bright, sharp snare snap, and its tight, metallic hi-hats. It’s been featured in both chart-topping hits and experimental tracks, and we’re exploring the entire range of the TR-909 in a Spotify playlist created by Native Instruments’ manager of sound design, Antonio de Spirt in honor of our new Expansion, Drum State.
Drum State captures an essential drum machine in all its vibrant colors and shades. With more than 241 loops, 539 drum samples, and dozens of kits, you can explore every sonic detail from this essential building block of pop and electronic music.
Let’s dig into the top 10 picks from this Spotify playlist to get you inspired to create your own legendary sounds.
The best songs featuring the iconic TR-909 drum machine
The TR-909 drum machine is renowned for its punchy and crisp kick drum, its bright, sharp snare snap, and its tight, metallic hi-hats. It’s been featured in both chart-topping hits and experimental tracks, and we’re exploring the entire range of the TR-909 in a Spotify playlist created by Native Instruments’ manager of sound design, Antonio de Spirt in honor of our new Expansion, Drum State.
Drum State captures an essential drum machine in all its vibrant colors and shades. With more than 241 loops, 539 drum samples, and dozens of kits, you can explore every sonic detail from this essential building block of pop and electronic music.
Let’s dig into the top 10 picks from this Spotify playlist to get you inspired to create your own legendary sounds.
The best songs featuring the iconic TR-909 drum machine
The TR-909 drum machine is renowned for its punchy and crisp kick drum, its bright, sharp snare snap, and its tight, metallic hi-hats. It’s been featured in both chart-topping hits and experimental tracks, and we’re exploring the entire range of the TR-909 in a Spotify playlist created by Native Instruments’ manager of sound design, Antonio de Spirt in honor of our new Expansion, Drum State.
Drum State captures an essential drum machine in all its vibrant colors and shades. With more than 241 loops, 539 drum samples, and dozens of kits, you can explore every sonic detail from this essential building block of pop and electronic music.
Let’s dig into the top 10 picks from this Spotify playlist to get you inspired to create your own legendary sounds.
5 free Kontakt libraries for ambient music
How do you add ambient sounds?
Adding ambient sounds to your music can be as simple as downloading one of these free Kontakt ambient libraries. Some of them need the full version of Kontakt 7, but others run on the Kontakt Player, which is completely free to download. Once you’ve installed these ambient sound libraries, you can use them to create affecting pads, melodies, and more. Just remember the golden rule of ambient: if in doubt, add reverb.
5 free Kontakt libraries for ambient music
1. Vapor Keys Sakura
Named after the famous Japanese cherry blossom, this free ambient sound library gives you three delicate synth patches ideal for pads and melodies.
5 must-know bass riffs: how to recreate their sound
The clean signal was pretty easy to create. We simply added the Bass Pro amp and used the EQ controls to reduce the bass frequencies and boost the mids. For the distorted channel, we used another instance of Bass Pro, but with a distortion effect before the amp. Commerford has used all manner of distortion effects throughout his career. Fortunately, Guitar Rig 7 has over 20 characterful drive and distortion components so it wasn’t hard to find the right one for the task.
In this case the Distortion component did the trick. This models the sound of a well-known distortion pedal that has been used on stages and in studios for decades. This effect on its own wasn’t quite aggressive enough, so we added an EQ before it to further boost the high frequencies. Using the Solid EQ component, we boosted the high-mid (red) band by +12 dB at about 2 kHz to bring out the bass’s attack.
With our clean and distorted signals ready, we used the Crossfade control in the Split Mix component to balance the two. The aim was to get an even blend of power from the clean channel and aggression from the distorted channel. We found about 60% distorted and 40% clean did the trick. Finally, some compression from Solid Dynamics at the end of the chain helped even out the sound.
Top five amp sim EQ tricks to sculpt your tone
5. Adding width with mid/side EQ
Traditional amping has plenty to offer when it comes to stereo processing. Guitarists who are serious about stereo simply get two stacks. But what about mid/side processing? Guitar Rig allows us to quickly apply mid/side EQing to our guitar tone, unlocking powerful mixing tricks that are typically the domain of studio nerds.
What exactly are the “mid” and “side” parts of a signal? The mid band contains all the parts of the sound that are the same in both the left and right channels of a stereo signal. The side band, meanwhile, contains all the sounds that differ between left and right. Guitars tend to be in mono, meaning they’re all “mid.” But effects such as chorus, phase, and delay – so long as they are stereo effects – can add juicy “side” content to the sound.
We experience this additional content as “width.” By processing the side band with simple EQing, we can enhance this feeling of width, emphasize the effects used, and create a glossy, immersive guitar sound. This trick works particularly well with heavily processed guitar parts that are intended to feel dreamy and expansive.
The key to unlocking mid/side processing in Guitar Rig 7 is the Split M/S component. Apply this component to your signal chain and then drop Solid EQ into the “side” band.
5 tips for working with hip hop vocal samples
By chopping and sequencing vocal samples to create new riffs, you can add a lot of sonic interest to any beat, whether you’re producing instrumental hip hop or a backing track for a vocalist to topline over. I wrote a whole article on how to create vocal chops but, for this piece, we’re going to look at how easy it is to make a new vocal chop phrase using Glaze 2.
One of my favorite features of Glaze 2 is that it includes several “Riff & Run” presets which make those chopped ’n’ screwed vocal phrases super simple to make. For this demo, I loaded up a preset called “Boy Please” and then used my Komplete Kontrol S49 to trigger the various hip hop vocal samples included in the preset. This is what I came up with, overtop the original beat:
Kick drum EQ essentials: how to create punch and presence
What is the ideal EQ for a kick drum?
The ideal kick drum EQ settings depend on what your kick sounds like and the kind of track you’re working on. But there are a few basic steps you can follow to EQ kick drums in a consistent, methodical way. Most kick drums are made up of a few discrete frequency areas. By paying attention to each of these areas in turn, you can make sensitive EQ decisions that will improve how your kick sounds – whether you’re working on a pounding club track or delicate sound design.
Start with the lowest frequencies. Kick drums tend to have a loud “boomy” element in the 40–100 Hz range. This is what gives the kick its power. If your kick has unwanted sub bass frequencies below this point, you can use a high-pass filter to remove them.
Proceed with caution here. The bass frequencies are what make your kick drum sound heavy, and if you cut too much then the kick will lose its power. Start by identifying the fundamental frequency of the kick – its dominant low frequency. You can do this by temporarily applying a narrow Q bell filter with a strong boost and sweeping it around the bass frequencies until you find the loudest one. Once you have identified the fundamental frequency, set your high-pass filter comfortably below this point, so you can be sure you’re not cutting out anything important.
Now for the fundamental frequency itself. Boosting this frequency range with a gentle bell filter will make the kick sound heavier. But make sure it’s balanced with the rest of the track – particularly other low end elements such as the bass. A too-bassy kick will make your track sound muddy and muffled.
Next, look at the low midrange. The zone from around 100–600 Hz is what gives a kick drum its body and character. But too much in the midrange can make the kick sound dull and claustrophobic. Consider a gentle EQ cut in this zone to improve the clarity of your kick. Live-sounding “rock” kicks often benefit from a cut at around 300 Hz to reduce boxiness.
Finally, the upper midrange. Most kicks have a clicky “attack” in this range, somewhere around 1–4 kHz. Boosting with EQ can make your kick sound clearer and more punchy. Or, if your kick is too sharp, cut this range to soften it.
Not every kick drum will require EQ in all of these frequency zones. But by paying attention to each zone in turn, you can make methodical EQing decisions and consistently improve your kick drum sound.
How to compose music: a beginner’s guide
In this case, the melody uses notes from the minor scale as the chord changes happen. Sometimes, we can find songs that have melodies that don’t display the minor or major quality of the key that clearly, and that can be quite the opportunity to play with both chord sets and change things underneath.
If you pay attention at the end of a jazz song, many times you’ll hear the pianist play a set of improvised additional chords underneath a long sustained final note of the singer to add a little extra embellishment and drama before the song ends. That takes quite a bit of practice to do smoothly, but basically, what’s happening is that the pianist is listening to the held note and adding chords that might not be from the home key but that still work together with the melody and that way they can create a mini harmonic journey for that final statement.
3. Getting “chromatic”
The idea of chromaticism has to do with the changes in color that we get from moving on half steps; since unavoidable, if we move in contiguous half steps, we’ll be going in and out of our main scale and touching upon all the options in between. If we do that, then we are finding what we call the “chromatic scale.”
Here is an example from my own songwriting to exemplify chromaticism. I was playing with 7th chords. A 7th chord is a triad with one more third stacked on top.
If we take our C major triad, in order for it to become a “C major7,” we add the note B, which is a major third above the fifth, and the chord will be spelled C-E-G-B.
I was not in the key of C at that time. I wasn’t really thinking of any key in particular. I was just moving 7th chords up and down the fret and reacting to how they felt next to each other. I was alternating major 7th chords with minor 7th chords. I remember starting on a Gb Maj7 and then going down a half step to F minor7.
Then I took that and made it into a sequence, going up a whole step and repeating the motion starting from Abmaj7 down to Gm7. Finally, since that was feeling good, and we love balance and things that are full circle, I went back to the beginning and played the Gb Maj7 to Fm7 again. At that point, the final landing Eb chord was an absolute necessity.
In this case, the song is clearly in Eb Major. The only chord that doesn’t belong to the Eb major scale is the Gbmaj7, which is borrowed from the Eb minor scale.
Chromaticism isn’t quite happening in this situation since there is a whole step between F and Eb, which takes us back to Eb major, but it’s pretty close! And the fact that the progression departs from a Gb to F in a chromatic step makes the whole progression feel a little more colorful than it actually is.
Here are the chords of the intro and verse, which follow the same structure: