The 1980s is the decade where studio drums changed forever, moving from typical 1970s session drummer acoustic kit style to heavy effects processing, and ending up with beats coming from samples and drum machines. The CM Plugin Suite contains period-correct drum sounds, like those in the AudioRealism ADM CM plugin, which emulates Roland’s 1981 TR-606, and you can also enjoy free samples available online to create a diverse kit that encompasses a variety of 80s sounds. We’ll use Ableton Live for our walkthrough, but any decent DAW will let you work in a similar way. We’ll add the samples, and at least one important audio effect, and then we’ll be good to go! The samples are sourced from www.samples.kb6.de, a truly fantastic online resource which is the world’s largest free drum machine sample library, with 309 kits, totalling 5.27GB. Although this library is free, please consider making a donation if you can (you’ll also unlock a few more kits as a reward for doing so). Download those kits and we’ll begin our walkthrough.