SYNTHESISING DRUMS IN CUBASE

We all love the big, fat thump of an 808 kick as much as we love the tight crispness of the 909’s snare. If you could audit every computer and device in the world, you would likely find petabytes of storage given over to these tiniest of samples. But as iconic as these sounds are, if you want your beats to sound original, you should forswear the often clichéd tones of classic drum machines and begin building your own drum and percussion sounds – and, if you’re a Cubase user, you’re already equipped to do so.

The idea here is not to create realistic emulations of acoustic drum kits, nor faithful recreations of classic drum machines – there are enough of such samples around; don’t waste your time reinventing those wheels. Instead, what you should want to do is craft original, distinctive sounds. To do this, you need to think about