For example, take a beat with an 808 sub, kick, clap, and open hi-hat. But this doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with putting unconventional effects - or unconventional use of effects - on these 808 drum samples. Putting some light reverb on snare drums and hi-hats isn’t abnormal, by any means, but 808 drum kits can often be very powerful without many effects. When it comes to the 808 drum kit, it’s pretty common to leave most of it dry, meaning no reverb, delay, or various creative effects. On his song, “Blast,” many of the drum samples are taken way down in pitch, giving them a more dreamy and unique character. The more you pitch, the more you’ll need to EQ them to sound good, but don’t be afraid to experiment here.Ĭlams Casino - who’s produced for The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, and Lana Del Rey - is a pioneer of pitch-shifting drums (and really anything that makes its way into his DAW). You can do the same thing with hi-hats or other elements to give them a unique sound.

Pitch your snare a whole octave down, or automate the snare so when it hits, it rises in pitch from an octave down back to its original pitch. But instead of just doing some mild pitching like taking a snare a whole step down, really try pushing the boundaries. You can do the same thing with electronic drum samples like in the 808 kit. For example, you might really enjoy the sound of a snare sample, but taking it down a whole step might give it a darker tone that better fits your overall track. Pitch shift your samples - a lotĬhanging the pitch of drum samples is a common practice among producers to give them a new sound. But in this modern era of production, taking the time to make your 808 drum kits unique will go a long way in helping you to stand out among the rest. This isn’t a bad thing - most acoustic drum kits sound similar, whether it’s Led Zeppelin or The Who. When listening to a handful of hip-hop’s most popular trap tunes at any given moment, can you really tell who the producer is without the producer tag? Certainly Metro Boomin is going to produce differently than Mike WiLL Made-It, but in many scenarios, their use of 808 drum kits ends up sounding very similar. In rap music today, the 808 drum kit can be found everywhere from Grammy-winning artists and producers like Kanye West and Jay-Z.īut with such prominence also comes a lot of repetition. Though, producers today may not be using the actual drum pad, they’re using the samples: booming bass drops, digital snares, tinny hi-hats, artificial claps, etc. And despite being decades old, it’s as prominent as ever in modern music. It was among one of the first programmable drum machines.

In 1980, the Roland Corporation introduced the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer - what we know as the 808.

Tr-808 drum kit