How to fatten up your Acoustic Drum Grooves

An acoustic drum groove can easily be fattened up by layering in some synthetic drum samples.  This technique has been used by hip hop producers for ages.  Often times, they would sample an old school breakbeat and then spice it up by layering in their own drum samples.

Today, we’ll look at how to fatten up an acoustic drum groove:

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Getting Started…

Step 1 – Fatten up your kick.

Find a kick sample with a good bit of low end to it.  Layer it underneath your existing acoustic kick to beef it up.

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Step 2 – Layer your snare with a clap.

Add a clap to your snare groove.  If your snare groove is elaborate, you may only want to layer your clap over the snare on the 2nd and 4th beat to accent those main hits.

You also notice we added a second clap to spice up the groove.  Both claps are panned slightly (to opposite sides).

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Step 3 – Add a reverse cymbal to accent your main snare hits.

Adding a reverse cymbal preceding a snare hit can create a neat building effect.  In Ableton, you have a library of samples that you can browse through.

Find a crashing cymbal, drop it into your arrangement, and then reverse it.

You can layer it in anywhere you like, but don’t over do it.  As you can see, we used it to accent the snare on the 4th beat of every bar.

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Summary

Most of the time, you can get the best of both worlds by layering acoustic and synthetic drums.  You get the dry, authentic feel of the acoustic world, and the fat, punchy nature of the synthetic world.

Try adding some Reverb to your clap and cymbal samples for a ‘larger than life’ vibe.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial!  Check back regularly for more great info from Loop Galaxy!

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