This blog was written for primeloops.com – check them out for some ace samples and to see my blogs 2 months earlier!

So you’ve just got a new sample pack and you’re looking to do some interesting stuff with them.   Here are 10 suggestions to help you make the most out of your samples…

1. Stutter – Cut up your samples into tiny little pieces and place them next to each other.   Try it with a snare, cutting a 1/32 long slice and repeating it to create a brand new, glitchy, stuttery snare!

2. Filter - Try an extreme high pass above 3khz on a clicky kick drum to turn it into a hi hat, or a band pass on a snare to create some really unusual mid-range electro-percussion!   Filtering opens up a massive range of new sounds.

3. Drastically EQ - Emphasizing usually less prominent frequencies can change the focus of a sample so it sounds entirely different.

4. Cut – Cut a sample short to make it tighter, cut out little sections to give a more interesting, stutter-like effect or even cut out quiet parts of the sample, normalize them and use them as entirely new percussive samples!

5. Distort - Pretty self explanatory, you can seriously change a sample’s tone with some distortion.   It can make it hit harder whilst still maintaining the characteristics of the sound if you’re careful with how much you apply!

6. Layer – Put samples on top of each other to create new ones, really useful for making massive snares.

7. Compress – Make samples much punchier with compression, or add heavy multi band compression to make them feel bigger and give them a completely different tone!

8. Reverse - Not just for build ups; reversed samples, when cut short, can make for some interesting percussion!

9. Pitch Change - Turn your hi hat into a bass drum or your bass drum into a multi-sampled synth! (You can make a great Venga Boys style synth with a hardcore Gabba kick drum pitch shifted!)

10. Slow/Speed up – Get some massive, heavy explosive sounds by slowing a kick drum, or some really sharp Jungley snares from speeding up slower, Hip-Hoppier ones!

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to check out the “XXL Hip Hop Drums Sample Pack” from primeloops.com – I used it in my 7 day song Hip Hop tutorial, so I’ve got a decent amount of experience with it!

Before anyone asks – I do get paid for adverts on my site from primeloops, but I was not paid to make this review – I do completely independant reviews so they can be credible and objective – if this pack sucked, I’d say so.

Contents

Introduction
The Samples
Making a Song
Versatility
Value for Money
Overview

Introduction

Hi, I’m Dave from boyinaband.com and welcome to my review on the Hip Hop Drums sample pack from Primeloops.com.

I’m really into my hip hop. I’m all about big beats, arrogant rhymes and catchy hooks. While you’ll have to go about making your hooks and being an arrogant ass on your own, this pack can definitely help you with the beats.

When I started making my own beats, they tended to sound weedy and thin. I now know it’s because the samples that came with the software I was using weren’t powerful enough. They lacked the punch of the professional tracks I longed to match the quality of. This pack punches like Jackie Chan after drinking some powerthirst.

To show you, I’ve put together a quick beat using the samples from it.

The Samples

This sample pack contains a collection of
individual hits. There are 30 crashes, 39 closed hats, 17 open hats, 140 kicks, 27 shakers and 111 snares. There are a LOT of samples in here.

The only disappointment in this area is that there isn’t a section for claps, though one or two of the snares sound kinda clap-like.

The samples are great though – the kicks really shine, giving a variety of roomy, bassy and tight kicks depending on the style of beat you’re going for!

The kicks are separated into Kicks and Kicks XXL for those really unrelentingly heavy bass drums, so the more industrial and bassy sounding kicks tend to be found in the XXL folder. The snares are similarly separated too.

Making a Song

I found making a beat really easy with these samples – I had inspiration to make something big and epic sounding, and the kicks and snares were right on the nose. If I hadn’t been inspired, though, just cycling through the samples would have brought some inspiration since some of them are really distinctive and cry out to be used in certain tempos or styles of hip hop.

There are also some mental sounding kicks and snares with fx layered on them which are great for some weirder beats or for hits at the start of your loop.

Versatility

I’d say the kicks are definitely geared towards hip hop, big beat and Dubstep music, but some of the snares could easily be used for some quality Drum and Bass (there are some really punchy snares) or Dubstep (for the more reverby, snappy snares). The hats, crashes and shakers are all really useable cross-genre as well.

Value for Money

364 samples at £9.95. That means a wallet-loving 3p per sample, and I’d say at least 80% of these are really useable, with 25-50% being ones that really stand out as awesome samples. Definitely worth it.

Overview

This pack is:

• Seriously good for Powerful, Heavy Productions
• High Quality
• Useable in Hip Hop, Dubstep and Drum & Bass
• Awesome Value for money

As I said – my only criticism is that the pack doesn’t have a “claps” section.

This is a must for hip hop producers who prefer heavier productions. It’s great for beginners, since it’ll be a fantastic starting point to making professional productions and for more experienced producers, this will be a fine addition to your sample library for making those punchier, speaker shaking drums loops.

All in all I give Primeloops’ XXL Hip Hop Drums sample pack 90% – amazing value for money and some seriously awesome samples.

Be sure to check out the Demo mp3s on Primeloops.com as well to check out some great examples of what this pack is capable of:

If quality Trance samples are what you crave, then look no further – a collection of some seriously driving, punchy, filling percussion for your Trance music absolutely free in…

The boyinaband free Trance sample pack!

Check it out…

This one contains 37 pumping samples including hard hitting kicks, punchy snares, filling claps and some sweet hats ideal for some intense Trance productions! Why not try combining it with some Electro House samples for even more intense music?

NOTE: If you don’t know how to open the samples or put them into Reason, click here for a video tutorial!

Download the sample pack here!

If you make anything sweet with it you should totally tell me!

Want a sample pack for a different genre of music? Suggest it in a comment below!

In the interests of furthering my video content, I’ve decided to, instead of just playing the song with a write-up, make a proper video review of the sample pack as well as the text review if you prefer to read than to listen!   If you have any suggestions to improve the review, be sure to leave a comment!

Oh, and before anyone asks – I do get paid for adverts on my site from primeloops, but I was not paid to make this review – I do completely independant reviews so they can be credible and objective – if this pack sucked, I’d say so.

Contents

Introduction
Value for Money
The Loops
Making a Song
Versatility
Overview

Introduction

Hi, I’m Dave from boyinaband.com and welcome to my review of the Drum and Bass Drum Loops sample pack from primeloops.com.

I’m a big fan of Drum and Bass.   I’ve produced several songs incorporating elements of the genre in my band, done a 7 day tutorial on it and from that I know the key to good DnB is, shockingly enough, quality drums and bass.

Bass-wise I’m an advocate of making your own synths from scratch, just so you can get something a little different from the crowd of people using presets, but this review is not about the bass – it’s about the drums.   From laborious trial and error I have discovered the best way to get great sounding percussion is by starting with great samples.

I’ve been using Primeloops’ Drum and Bass Drum Loops sample pack in my productions for a while now, so I have a lot of practical experience with it, but to show you some of the things you can do with it, I’ve thrown together a quick drum and Bass song.

Value for Money

I usually leave this ’til near the end, but I just have to say it straight away – this pack is crazily good value for money.

113 drum loops at £12.95 – this equates to 11p per loop, and when you hear the quality of these loops that’s when you’ll realise how amazing this is.

The Loops

With 113 DnB drum loops you’d be excused for assuming there’d be a tonne of repetition within them.   I was pleasantly surprised upon flicking through the loops to find very few amen breaks, and even more surprised to hear so many variations – I actually struggled to find a generic sounding Drum and Bass “uhn—tsh…uhn-tsch” sequence in here.

If I have any criticisms to level at this pack, it’s that it’s geared towards heavier, more intense productions – chilled liquid dnb producers will find that only about maybe 20-30% of the loops are suitable for their productions.   This pack really shines on its heavier loops, meaning dark and mainstream DnB producers will love this pack.

Within those heavier loops though, there’s loads of variety – Minimal, massively compressed, glitchy, ethnic percussion… even Clownstep, this pack is full of interesting beats and sounds.

Making a Song

As I mentioned, there are not many generic DnB loops in this pack.   Of course, you could make one on your own by re-arranging an existing loop, but the point is that this pack exudes creativity.   It helps you come up with more varied DnB, it inspires you to write things to a differently syncopated beat, while maintaining the pace the genre is known for.

For example – in this pack I’ve got this “Iron Virgin Break”, which has a ridiculously cool syncopation to it, and I put the bassline and lead synth down to follow that syncopation, making for a cool, different feel than I would have got had these samples all been the stereotypical Drum and Bass Beat.

It was horrendously easy to chuck in some quick loops, add a bit of compression or EQ to them and have instant fills to the track.   Layer these loops up and re-arrange them a bit and you’ll have some unique sounding beats which retain the professional quality this pack provides.

Versatility

Not only are these loops perfect for Drum and Bass, but some of them are ideal for other genres too… Hip Hop sprung immediately to my mind when I slowed down this loop “Sine Break” and it was about 15 minutes later that I had a fully fledged hip hop loop on the go.   I’d say about half of the loops could be turned nicely into a slower paced genre without feeling too cut up and unusual – though if you’re a glitch hop producer that could work out nicely for you!

Overview

This pack is:

• Brilliant Value for money
• Inspiring to work with
• High Quality
• Versatile

As I said – the only thing I could potential criticise is the lack of loops suited for liquid DnB, but perhaps that should be another sample pack altogether.

This is absolutely brilliant for any beginner DnB producer who wants to take the leap into producing high quality tracks, or for a more experienced producer who could use some inspiration and fresh sounding samples to give new life to his tracks – these are ideal for layering too, so there’s no need to feel like you’re cheating by just using pre-made loops.

All in all I give Primeloops’ Drum and Bass Drum Loops sample pack 95% – it does what is says on the tin and it does it well – 113 brilliant quality drum loops ideal for producing Drum & Bass.

Be sure to check out the Demo mp3s on Primeloops.com as well to check out some great examples of what this pack is capable of:

If Chiptune is your thing, then look no further – some of the blippiest, lo-fi-iest, white-noise-iest samples for your chiptune music absolutely free in…

The boyinaband free Chiptune sample pack!

Check it out…

This one contains 33 8 bit-tastic samples including kicks, snares, fx and hats ideal for some old school lo-fi productions!   Why not try combining it with some Glitch Hop samples for even quirkier music?

NOTE: If you don’t know how to open the samples or put them into Reason, click here for a video tutorial!

Download the sample pack here!

If you make anything sweet with it you should totally tell me!

Want a sample pack for a different genre of music? Suggest it in a comment below!

I’ve had loads of people asking me how to open the sample packs I’ve made and how to put them into Reason, so I figured I’d make a tutorial!

I’ve actually made two – one for how to open the sample packs and one for how to import them into Reason.

Check them out!

Get ready to make some seriously sexy synth sounds over these superb samples!   All Alliteration aside, we all need quality kicks, snares, claps and hats in our electro house tracks.   So without further ado, I present…

The boyinaband free Electro House sample pack!

Check it out…

This one contains 15 meaty kicks, 5 snares, 5 claps and 5 hats ready to get your tracks bouncing!

Download the sample pack here!

If you make anything sweet with it you should totally tell me!

Want a sample pack for a different genre of music? Suggest it in a comment below!

It’s all about the Gangsta Funk this week on boyinaband, so here is the sample pack to help motivate your rims to spin extra fast!   So without further ado, I present…

The boyinaband free G Funk sample pack!

Check it out…

This one contains 15 claps, 10 kicks and 5 hats and with some other samples you can get seriously creative!   Try layering the (already massive) claps with some DnB snares for a huge punchy backbone to your beat!

Download the sample pack here!

If you make anything sweet with it you should totally tell me!

Want a sample pack for a different genre of music? Suggest it in a comment below!

I’ll have to do this review a little differently to the other boyinaband.com reviews – The Pure Chronic Hip Hop Grooves pack from Primeloops.com isn’t a set of individual samples, so I won’t be making a song out of it. Instead it has taken a different approach.

Comprising enough loops to make up 11 tracks – all the loops are there ready, you just have to decide their arrangement. It’s a construction kit for an album’s worth of hip hop songs.

Introduction

This method means ease of use is on of the biggest advantages here. While the more seasoned producers may find this useful for creating quick tracks if they have deadlines coming up, I think the people that would find this most useful are beginners.

Here is a chance to get some really high quality (The string loops in the more orchestral hip hop tracks are absolutely lush in this pack) loops to put together a song that, provided you understand what a “tempo” is, will sound professional. It’s a brilliant place to start; even vocalists with no producing experience could put together a decent track with this pack.

All that said, the loops are all very usable separately, especially the drum loops which are ace, so if you just consider the collections they are in suggestions you can be a lot more creative with this pack.

The Sounds

The best sounds in here as I mentioned earlier are the orchestral ones. You can just feel the quality of the strings, which makes all the difference. There are a variety though – from some really dark and dirty Gangsta Hip Hop loops to some more light and airy tracks which could almost be RnB if the beat wasn’t so head-noddingly hip hop.

Overall

If you were to combine this pack with some of your own synth samples or existing loops I think that is what would give you the most out of it – to me it would be best as an inspirational tool rather than a complete construction kit – different people would find the pack useful in different ways.

I think the people that would find this most useful are:

- Seasoned Producers with deadlines to hit
- Producers who want a bit of a kick start when they feel uninspired
- Beginners who want professional sounding tracks
- Vocalists who want more control over their song than just one beat looped for the whole thing
- People who want a top up of high quality hip hop loops

Take a listen to the demo on the primeloops website to hear the quality of the pack!

Pure Chronic Hip Hop Grooves from Primeloops.com

Since discovering the genre I’ve wanted to make a Glitch Hop song, but wasn’t sure where to start.

And since Boyinaband is sponsored by the awesome Primeloops, I offered to do a review for their Glitch Hop sample packs, since the demos on their site sounded frickin’ ace.

As will become customary with my reviews, I believe the best way to show how good a sample pack is is to make a song with it. So here it is: My first ever glitch hop song, made with the Glitch Cuts sample pack and the Glitch Hop Drum Loops sample pack.

I suggest playing the song, then reading through the review. The song is called “How the mighty have fallen” and I’ve put it on my solo project “Trikkaan“, since this genre has inspired me to make a Glitch Hop project of my own.

Oh, and there are a few samples from the Primeloops “Minimal Synthesis” sample pack too, which has some amazing soundscapes, but I’ll review that properly another time.

Contents

Introduction
Glitch Hop Drum Loops Sample Pack
Glitch Cuts – Electronics
Glitch Cuts – FX
Glitch Cuts – Glitch Kit
Glitch Cuts – Shots
Making a Song
Overview

Introduction:

I think the best way to start this review is by saying that as a direct result of the Glitch Cuts sample pack, I was inspired enough to dedicate a week of boyinaband blogs to Glitch Hop. I find this genre is more powerful, interesting and cooler than anything I’ve heard in years. I even prefer it to Dubstep – and I frickin’ love my Dubstep.

After my review of the Dubstep Producer Sample Pack last week, I have learned a bit more about using samples in Reason. Layering in NN-XT has been a big part of making this track, with sometimes 3 separate samples making a sound (such as that painful yet awesome synth just before the chorus cuts in.)

This time, I decided to use a few synths as well to back it up, which I feel now is the best way to work. Though in this song, for every lead synth sound you’ll find the main texture of the sound has come from a sample in the Glitch Cuts sample pack, sometimes combined with a bit of Thor.

I’ve rewired Reason 4 into Sonar 8, which is what I used to record and process my vocals.

Glitch Hop Drum Loops Sample Pack:

This is a review for two sample packs – the first one I’ll discuss in depth is the Glitch Hop Drum Loops pack – this contains 77 drum loops, all with a glitchy edge to them. But by no means are they repetitive.

I get the feeling I’ll be saying this about most of Primeloops’ sample packs; I adore the variety.

There are some seriously funky loops, some crazily heavy ones, some dark and evil ones, several which made me actually say “wooooah!” out loud at how ridiculously gangstuh they were, some that are glitched up to the max so they don’t even sound like drums any more, some with an old school hip hop vibe, some with an electro aura about them and one or two that actually sound like regular drum loops.

Listen out in the song I made at the start of the second verse – those two loops are chopped versions of some of the drum loops in the pack. How ridiculously cool are they? They sound so *professional*, it’s ace. I thought to myself “I want something different here” and opened up this sample pack and literally a few minutes later I had found inspiration for making that part of the song more interesting. It seriously helps your workflow having good loops to hand.

Glitch Cuts – Electronics:

Now onto the second sample pack, “Glitch Cuts” – Starting off on the “Electronics” folder. There are 34 of what they call complex loops, and 42 sequencer loops. There are some AWESOME sounds here, both percussive and melodic – they stand out to me as ideal fills for your glitch hop tracks, or sounds to cut up and turn into percussive elements if you were feeling creative. Though scrolling through the sequencer loops I can hear some amazing Glitch hop songs just crying out to be made from them.

Glitch Cuts – FX:

Christ on a bike there are a lot of samples here. I used loads of them in the song above. The categories encompass 8bit, clicks, distortions, guitar fx, hisses, klangs, lfo fx, lo fi fx, mechanical fx, mod fx, noise fx, other fx (Some weeeird sounds in the other fx one!), pitched fx, trigger fx and voice fx. There are HUNDREDS of samples in this pack.

I used one of the guitar fx to make most of the gritty lead synth in the song above. I used a sample from the Mechanical fx in the painful (I tend to use the word “painful” in a good context quite a lot with this pack) fill that kicks in half way through both verses. The noise and 8bit samples are dotted around there too. They are just so *useable*.

There are some really cool voice fx in there for people who want to make something a bit less vocal-heavy than the track I made, but still want a memorable phrase or two in there for people to latch on and remember the song. Some amazing old school robot voices saying cool robot-y things like “resistance”, “computer” and I’m pretty sure one said “Mahjong”. A lot of them are cool vocal-sounding glitches though, which are sweet, they could even be used as percussion.

Glitch Cuts – Glitch Kit:

My second favourite part of the pack. There are so many weird and wonderful sounds in here that I don’t even know where to start. So the beginning would be logical – 56 bass drums, 48 claps, 36 hats, 50 snares, and 43 percussion samples (these tend to be hits with a metallic edge or blips), but treat the labels with a grain of salt – I could imagine a bunch of the snares as bass drums, the bass drums as snares and the percussion as lead synths if used correctly!

The main beat in the song is composed with samples from here. Again, versatility is key, more so than usual in this pack – you could make drum beats for just about any genre of music from the samples available in here, as well as some which pertain more to glitch hop. This pack is absolutely FANTASTIC for layering samples, meaning you can always get that perfect percussive sound you’re looking for.

Glitch Cuts – Shots:

Now we get to my favourite part of the pack – these shots are awesome. By shots they mean one-shot samples, though I found the best use for a lot of them was actually in synths. They add a professional touch to otherwise generic synth sounds, so combining these with thor can make for some awesome sounds.

Examples in the song – Check out the arpeggiated melodic synth in the intro, that’s made from a synth shot combined with a bit of thor magic. The hollow-sounding pad in the first verse is derived from an awesome soundscape shot (they’ve really covered all bases here – soundscapes, synths, hits, buzzes, basses and more. Did i mention this pack is stupidly massive?).

These tend to be the more melodic hits, whereas the FX category is mostly percussive. The quality is so good and again, if you’re stuck in songwriting, a few clicks and you’ll be freshly inspired just because of the amount of interesting sounds in here.

Making a Song:

Here I started with the Glitch Hop Drum Loops pack, picking a sweet loop to build a beat around with the Glitch Kit – this means the beat is more unique and also more powerful, since the Glitch Kit in the Glitch Cuts pack has some really good kicks and snares.

After making that, I made the guitar fx/thor combined lead synth riff, which I used to build the rest of the track around. I wanted to get the dark, powerful feeling going on, so I added some hollow sounding pads – one over the chorus with a simple thor synth and another over the verse with a soundscape shot (I LOVE this sound, I don’t know how they got it sounding so hollow, that’s the beauty of these samples – most of them I wouldn’t know how to go about replicating from scratch, but it’s so good being able to use them.)

Once the basic song structure was put together, I started adding more synths – the painful one that comes in every 4 bars of the chorus, which is comprised of 3 soundscapes from the “minimal synthesis” pack (just goes to show the big ambient sounds don’t need to be used in an ambient context!) and the arp synth to fill out the beat with a bit of dark melody.

At this point I added the vocals – as I said, this was done in Sonar 8, then I stuttered the hell out of them and added a stupid amount of effects. Cutting, timestretching, filtering, flanging and distortion were the orders of the day.

Once the vocals were down, I went back through, adding in drops to emphasise certain vocal lines, a couple more drum loops from the Glitch Hop Drum Loops pack and another redrum instance just for glitches. There are so many amazing percussive glitches that I had to add an extra instance of ReDrum for them all. I also learned a cool technique – linking the mod CV from a malstrom instance to the pitch of a redrum channel means you can make samples’ pitch dynamically follow an LFO, giving a cool, breathing kind of effect when combined with the right samples (which this pack has.)

Lastly I went through taking away a lot of the overlapping percussion (There used to be even more going on in the song, I had to take out some of the glitches since it’s so tempting to add in a million of them in one go that you tend to ignore the fact that it’s difficult to pick out individual parts!)

Overview:

Lets go for the Glitch Hop Drum Loops sample pack first.

An inspiring, varied and generally frickin’ cool collection of glitch hop loops. Going through these, there were at least 20 standout loops where I stopped and thought “I actually really want to make a song with this.” – I’d say that is a good indication that the loops are good. There are some *amazing* sounds in the loops that I really want to cut up for use as hits. Definitely worth it for any aspiring glitch hop or hip hop producer. I could also see Electro producers getting a kick out of this one.

Glitch Hop Drum Loops

Then there’s the Glitch Cuts sample pack.

I think the biggest thing about this pack that I haven’t already mentioned (Variety, quantity, quality) is the value. There are over 1000 samples in here. And it’s, at time of writing, £13. That’s 1.3p per sample. 1.3p for a sound that will make your songs feel so much more interesting and professional. I’d think this would still be good value even if it had half the amount of samples. Maybe it’s ’cause Glitch Hop is a relatively new and evolving genre?

I can’t imagine anyone buying this being disappointed with the samples in it, because there are simply so many; chances are you will find one that will fit what you want. I never once found myself lacking inspiration at all while making this song.

All in all this is my favourite sample pack at the moment. I can see myself coming back to it time and again, for glitch hop and hip hop tracks sure, but also for other genres – after I’ve written the body of a song I’d poke through to add in some of those amazing shots and FX to just add that perfect cherry on top.

Glitch Hop Samples

Have you tried the Glitch Cuts or Glitch Hop Drum Beats Sample Packs out? What did you think? Leave a comment below!