Welcome to... /SM 48 samplemagic.com House Nation For SM48 we’ve returned to the roots of house music. Taking inspiration from the pioneering 80s and the golden-era 90s, we’ve dusted off our vinyl collection for inspiration: Dance Mania, Strictly Rhythm, Madhouse, King Street and more. The goal? To create a collection that defines the true spirit of house music; a cultured blend of classic influences and modern production techniques. House Nation seamlessly fuses elements of early Chicago house, classic disco, contemporary tech and bass-heavy house. It nods to the past but exists firmly in the present, reflecting the sound of the underground, from Sankey’s in Manchester to DC10 in Ibiza via Trouw in Amsterdam. All of the folders reflect this retro-future aesthetic. In the beats you’ve got classics like the Roland TR-808 and 909 rubbing shoulders with modern machines and esoteric sounds to ensure an authentic jackin’ vibe with a subtle tech sensibility. It’s a theme repeated in the tops and percussion folder: dusty loops fuse with authentic tribal rhythms and stripped-back tech layers. House Nation In the melodic folders the entire house spectrum is covered. The basslines range from big-room sub-smackers to funk licks and acid-injected gyrations. The synths and keys run the full gamut of retro-leaning house: raw cut-up Rhodes, deep filtered synths and old school organs oozing with analogue charm. As always, we’ve included a prime selection of our famous music loops: full melodic song-starters ranging from soulful disco-dubs to deep-ndirty jams, served with associated MIDI for added production control. Finally, there’s a healthy dose of killer cut-up vox, expertly-sculpted FX tools and stacks of MPC-processed kicks, snares, claps, hats and percussion hits and drum kits to give you even more bang for your house buck. This is real house music! The Producers /3 Kit list Dynaudio BM6A MKII Akai MPC60 Akai MPC1000 Roland TR-808 Roland TR-909 Yamaha RX21 E-mu E4XT Korg MS-10 Moog Prodigy Roland Juno-60 Roland SH-09 Roland SH-101 Roland JX3P Yamaha DX-7 Nord Lead 2 Ensoniq Mirage DSK TL Audio M1 Tubetracker SSL Duende Rack GSSL Stereo Bus Compressor Thermionic Culture Vulture Manley Massive Passive Empirical Labs Distressor Lynx Aurora 8 House Nation /4 Producer tips Hit it Drum hits in retro-leaning house tracks are sourced from trusty old classics like the Roland TR series. The mixing of individual elements is usually more modern though. Creative EQ and compression are applied generously to give sounds more contemporary tone and punch. Gently cut any overbearing resonances – 909 hats, for example, can be brought bang-upto-date by using a spectrum analyser to locate the resonant peaks, toning them down with some judiciously placed notch cuts. To avoid overdoing EQ it is often easier – and more natural sounding – to layer samples to reinstate the ‘missing’ frequencies. So where a classic kick drum doesn’t have enough mid and upper-mid energy, try layering it with a more modern topper kick sample and cutting the lows of the modern hit so that it supplies the sparkle that the traditionally duller classic hit doesn’t. Reverb bass-ics The age-old mixing maxim says: never use reverb on a bass. Forget that. Reverb – used in small measures – can be used to give basslines a distinct vintage dub feel. The secret is choosing a setting with a very short tail – ambience or room type settings work best. It’s important to cut much of the low-end from the reverbed signal to prevent the bass from getting muddy and bloating the mix. Another nice trick is to apply sidechain compression to the bass reverb. Assign the sidechain to the kick so that as the kick drum hits the bass reverb pulls back for a tighter, punchier low-end. If it’s still a little washy, try separating the sub frequencies (below 80-100Hz) from the rest of the bassline signal and only apply reverb to the upper frequency band to maintain the fidelity of the extreme low end. House Nation Raw beats A shortcut to give drums that old school raw-yetwarm vibe is to use shelving EQ to cut some of the high-end. This replicates the effect of bouncing to tape like house producers in the 90s. The trick here is choosing the right frequency to begin the shelf – start at 10-12khz and extend slowly upwards if the mix feels overly muddy. (Equally, if you have access to a good tape emulation plugin, use this instead – its effects will be similar and will model other tape processes to give a more realistically tape sound.) Vintage punch To give drum samples more vintage punch, use a bitcrusher on a 16 or even 12-bit setting to emulate the bit rate of classic samplers like the Akai MPC60. Add the bit-crusher before low-pass EQ as bit-crushing creates high-frequency audio artefacts that can ruin the lo-fi vibe. If a bit-crusher sounds too harsh, audition saturation or overdrive plugins on gentle settings. Both make a signal warmer and bulk sounds up in the mix. Jack all night House music is typified by its four-to-the-floor drum patterns but completely straight beats rarely cut it on the dancefloor. The secret to great grooves comes from adding subtle swing and shuffle to beats for that classic jackin’ groove. Look up groove templates from machines like the pioneering Linn LM-1 or E-mu Drumulator and apply them to your MIDI programmed beats. Many of the classics are bundled with DAWs. Alternatively, experiment with triplet notes – especially on hi-hat lines – as a few choice triplets can work wonders when looking to add some classic jack to your tracks. /5 Folder setup /8 Accessing the files Credits Collection created by Sami Liuski & Israel Medina House Nation Drum Loops 125bpm Tops Loops 125bpm Percussion Loops 125bpm Bass Loops 125bpm Synth Loops 125bpm Music Loops 125bpm Vocal Loops 125bpm Sample Magic online Free sounds, special offers, newsletter, downloads and our online store at: samplemagic.com Sample Magic network > twitter.com/samplemagic > facebook.com/samplemagic > youtube.com/user/samplemagic Artwork by IWANT Design Limited FX kicks claps cymbals hats snares percussion vocals One-Shots House Nation created by Executive production: Barry McManus Audio formatting by: Lukas Lyrestam Demos by: The producers Other Sample Magic releases you might like: – Analogue House – Jack House – 90s House Chords – Vintage House – House Vocal Tracks – Acoustic Drum Layers – Sylenth House Patches – MIDI Elements: Analogue Drums /9