How-to guide
How to extract drum breaks for sampling
Drum breaks are the foundation of hip-hop, jungle, breakbeat and electronic music. But sampling a break from a full mix means taking the bass, horns and vocals along with it. DrumSplit extracts just the drums — and goes further by separating each kit piece.
Classic breaks like the Amen, Think, Funky Drummer and Apache were never released as isolated drum tracks. DrumSplit lets you extract the drum break from the original recording AND split it into individual kit pieces for creative re-sequencing.
Step-by-step
- Find the source recording. Source the original song containing the break. Vinyl rips, CD rips and FLAC downloads all work. Higher quality source means cleaner break.
- Upload to DrumSplit.io. Drop the full song in. DrumSplit will separate the drums from the rest of the music.
- Use Natural mode. Classic drum breaks are almost always acoustic drums. Natural mode is optimised for this.
- Wait 2-3 minutes. You get all 6 stems. The individual kit pieces let you isolate the specific hits you want to sample.
- Slice and sample. Load the kick, snare and hi-hat stems into your MPC, Maschine, or DAW sampler. Slice individual hits and build your own kit from the break.
Tips for better results
- Process the break through Direct mode as a second pass for even cleaner kit-piece separation.
- Layer the isolated kick from a funk break with a modern 808 for a hybrid sound.
- For jungle and drum-and-bass production, time-stretch individual hits from the Amen break's separated stems.
Try DrumSplit
Upload a song and get 5 individual drum stems plus a drumless music track. From $0.99 per split. No subscription. Credits never expire.
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