Let’s look beyond subtractive synths and straightforward sampling to find tools to create weird, ear-catching and thoroughly modern drum sounds

Making drums the old fashioned way…

In the electronic music realm, there are three ways to create drum sounds - synthesis, sampling or recording. The latter will always result in the most ‘authentic’ percussion parts; even with the immense power of modern sampling technology, for realism there’s still no beating a skilled drummer at a well-recorded kit. We covered tips for capturing drum recordings in last issue’s cover feature, but this month we’re turning our attention to the other end of the spectrum, foregoing realistic sounds in favour of weirder, more creative percussion.

What synths and samplers lack in realism when it comes to creating drum patterns, they more than make up for in creative potential. Once you move away from attempting to replicate traditional percussion sounds, there’s no limit to how weird and unusual your sounds can become. As powerful synths and effects have become cheaper and more accessible, it’s become easier than ever for producers to step away from using the same old sounds and begin to push the boat out when it comes to sound design.

Generally speaking, classic drum machines tended to use a mixture of simplistic sampling and subtractive synthesis to create drum sounds, and these remain the go-to paradigm for a lot of electronic music today. The appeal of one-shot sampling as a source for drum sounds is pretty obvious - it’s incredibly simple in a modern DAW to drag and drop a sound for instant playback, and with the wealth of samples readily available online, almost any drum sound you can think of is readily available. Similarly, subtractive synthesis remains an appealingly simple way to synthesise percussion sounds. The fundamentals of doing so are pretty straightforward: take a simple source sound, such as a sine wave for kicks or toms, or a noise generator for hats and snares, then shape its percussive qualities using short pitch sweeps and tight amp envelope or filter modulation.

Sure, there’s little reason not to use these straightforward approaches for drum creation, but from a sound design perspective it can be both fun and inspiring to branch out into less traditional realms every now and then. On the software front, most modern ‘power synths’ let users combine multiple approaches to create sounds that use a mixture of analogue-style synthesis, sampling and approaches such as FM, additive, wavetable or granular synthesis. A plugin such as Arturia Pigments, Kilohearts Phase Plant or NI’s Massive X, for example, will let users layer multiple sound source and apply audio-rate modulation to create complex timbres that can work great for percussion.