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For music producers today, it is essential that we use high quality drum sounds in beats and instrumentals. Many upcoming producers often buy drum sample kits with famous producer’s names on them. For example, a beat maker may want to create an instrumental to sound like producer Dr. Dre or Timbaland so he/she will try to buy their drum sounds. Often times these kits will be labeled “Dr. Dre drums” or “Timbaland drum samples”.
The problem with many of these kits is that the sounds are often recycled from stock drums in keyboards (Roland Fantom, Korg Triton, Yamaha Motif, etc). This can make a producer’s beats sound bland and un-authentic. It also contributes to beats “sounding the same”.
Welcome to the Exclusive Sounds
Since becoming a music producer in 2004, I have purchased plenty of drums and sounds, but in 2010 I was introduced to Traumahdrums.com. Traumah is a music producer that specializes in the engineering and crafting of unique drum samples. Upon visiting Traumahdrums.com, I signed up for his mailing list to download a free drum kit.
Over the course of the next year, I received periodic emails from Traumah with music production tips, videos, and plenty of free drums kits. After receiving tons of good information from Traumah I finally decided to invest in one of his drum kits.
The Traumah Drum Library includes 187 organic drum samples exclusively crafted for producers and beat makers. It includes “50 crispy ear stabbing snares, 50 back cracking gut punching kicks, and 37 foreign sounding percussion ranging any where from Western Indian influenced shakers to South African inspired Congo drums”. The drum kit also features 30 unique drum loops.
Upon receiving my drum kit, I uploaded the drum sounds in to my music production software. I currently use Reason 5 to make my beats. I uploaded one of the kick drum sounds into the Redrum rack in Reason and was immediately blown away at the thickness and uniqueness of the drum sounds. I went through all of the kicks, snares, claps, percussion, and hi hats in the package and I could tell that each one had been crafted to “knock”. With my production roots in hip hop, this was especially pleasing to my ears!
Compare and Contrast
To ensure that the sound I was hearing was not all “hype”, I uploaded some of my favorite drum sounds and compared them to the ones in the Traumah Drum Library. Quite frankly, the sounds I was using did not cut the mustard! My favorite kicks, claps, snares, hi hats, and percussion instruments sounded weak compared to Traumah’s kit.
I then began to ask the question. Why? Why did Traumah’s drums sound better than my favorites? I sought to do an EQ analysis. I brought Traumah’s drums and my favorite drums into ProTools to compare and contrast them.
When comparing Traumah’s drums to mine I noticed that each drum sample was crafted to fill up the sound spectrum. Kicks had plenty of lift in the low end frequencies as well as some mid. Snares and claps hit hard! In addition, all of the sounds were pre-mixed which was huge for me!
The sounds I was currently using were not pre-mixed. Anyone one who’s actually taken the time to mix instruments together knows that it can be an extensive process. The fact that the sounds were pre-mixed saved me valuable time in the engineering department!
Final Verdict
Overall, I am very pleased with the Traumah Drum Library, I use it often in my beats and instrumentals. Since using Traumah Drums, I’ve noticed an increase in beat sales as well as increased interest from independent artists. The drum library is well worth the purchase price. I would recommend the kit to any serious producer looking to enhance their sound and sharpen their skills.
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