Drum Samples with Swing Settings

In beat making, there exist two spatial factors that are often overlooked: time-sensitive density and swing. We’ll be taking a look at the latter in this article, as there are a lot of beat makers who have not paid enough attention and have not applied the most basic principles of using swing on drum samples and instruments.

A lot of music producers (especially ones just coming into the game) will often question all the fuss about using swing on drum samples and other tracks in a beat. The answer given on a lot of forums and blogs is usually something like this: the human ear loves variance. If every drum beat was to fall on the exact time grid of quantization, it wouldn’t sound very pleasing. This is also the reason concerts are so popular. We’ve heard all the great songs already – countless times – but hearing them with some variation in drums and vocals is very appealing! If the artist instead simply played their CDs for the audience while lip-syncing, it wouldn’t be good at all. Not half as appealing as live instruments with the possibilities of mistakes.

When using it for drum sample tapping, swing is similar to quantization and it will help keep you in check to make sure that you’re not hitting off-notes.

By now you may be wondering what exactly swing is, and some examples of it. Swing is, in beat making, a quantization setting that is not 100% accurate. The level of off-time adds to the realism and humanization of a drum line or other instrument, so while the ear knows what’s coming, it’s not sure of the exact timing and this adds suspense that goes up and down with the music as the musical bars go on through the song’s time. A fifty percent swing is even with the grid snap, while fifty-one percent allows for 1% variance.

When composing a beat or music project and using electric synthesizers – it can be neat to apply the swing template to just a few elements of the song. This way, you could, let’s just say, have the drum samples track with swing and the synth without swing and then just introduce one other element. This element on its own could be subject to a swing pattern, which can egt very interesting results depending on the sound device and the sound patch used in MIDI.

Starting to implement these methods can be a bit daunting to start with. What you should probably do is perform some controlled experiments. If you can start with swing template percentages of 51% to66% or so, you’ll be well off to a testing start. Apply the groove to a drum track (dry preferably) and then remove it. Go back and forth and try to catch the difference. Your ears will start to hear the effect that the swing has on your drum samples, and you will then be able to make creative decisions easier.

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