Free Rock Drum Loops – Multitrack

 

We’ve put together an awesome sample pack of Free Rock Drum Loops for you to download. This sample pack includes multitrack stems so that you can control the levels of each drum used in the recordings. Add your own EQ, processing and effects to each independent drum track for total control of the drum mix.

Need to make that kick drum louder and brighter? No problem, just add some EQ to your kick drum track, nudge up the volume and see how it sounds. Want to pan the hi-tom all the way to the left? No problem, each of the three tom toms used in these recordings sits on its own dedicated audio track so that you can adjust the panning and level controls. You can even add effects like reverb or delay to selected parts of the drum kit.

How do I Download these Free Rock Drum Loops?

To download this free rock drum loops sample pack you need to do two things;

1 – Register for a free account which will subscribe to our mailing list. (We’ll only ever email you about loops and samples, tutorials etc).
2 – Click on any of the social share buttons below to unlock the free download.

Once you’ve done that, you should see the download link appear. If you follow steps 1 and 2 but don’t see the download link, make sure that your browser has javascript and cookies enabled and then refresh the page.

If you really like this drum sound check out our popular XXL Rock Drum Loops sample pack.

How to Mix these Free Multitrack Rock Drum Loops

You can mix them any way that you like but if you follow this simple layout in your DAW you’ll get awesome results right away. Here are some simple steps to an easy to understand drum mix.

1. Set your song tempo to 124 Bpm in your DAW.
2. Insert 10 blank audio tracks and label them like this with the following pan settings;

• Kick – Pan in Centre
• Snare – Pan in Centre
• Cowbell / Hat – Pan Hard Right
• Ride – Pan Hard Left
• Hi Tom – Pan Hard Right
• Mid Tom – Pan in Centre
• Low Tom – Pan Hard Left
• Room Left – Pan Hard Left
• Room Right – Pan Hard Right
• Stairs – Pan Slightly to the Left

Now load the individual drum tracks from each loop so that the loop name matches the audio tracks you just created. Look at the last words in the audio file for a clue. For example:

cowbell_rock_124_bridge_kick goes on the kick drum track
cowbell_rock_124_bridge_snare goes on the snare drum track

You get the idea.

About the Volume Levels

Set your audio tracks to 0db before importing the individual drum tracks.

We’ve mixed and exported these drum tracks so that the volume levels are already set to their optimum for a clean and even drum mix. That means that the ‘Room’ and ‘Stairs’ tracks are very quiet compared to the close mic’d drum tracks, so don’t assume there is something wrong with the audio files. We do this because you only need a small amount of the room ambience to get a huge sounding drum mix, as you’ll hear in the preview at the top of this page.

If however, you feel like you need to change the volumes of any drum tracks, feel free to experiment and have some fun with your drum mix.

Mixing Tips

Creating a Sub Mix

In your DAW, try creating a sub mix of your drum tracks by routing all 10 tracks through  a stereo pair of audio channels. You can now apply EQ and compression to the entire drum mix and control the level using just two channels/faders on your mixer. This is great when you start mixing your drums with guitars, bass and other instrumentation, because it means you can control the overall volume and processing of your drums with just two locked faders.

Gating the Tom Tracks

With this free rock drum loop pack, you get three tom tom tracks. There’s Hi, Mid and Low. Whenever possible, we prefer to keep our tom tracks open and ungated. This means that the toms will resonate whenever the drummer hits the kick drum. It creates a more natural sound but doesn’t work for all situations.

If you decide that you prefer NOT to have the tom tracks resonating when the toms are not being played, you have two choices on how to achieve this;

A – Delete or mute the tom tracks during the parts where the toms are not being played.

Or

B – Apply a noise gate to the tom tracks so that the track is automatically muted when the audio signal drops below a specified volume.

About The Room Ambience Tracks

We recorded three tracks for room ambience. The ‘Room Left and Right’ tracks are actually a matched stereo pair of overhead mics, so these should always be hard panned to get the best results.

We also placed a high quality vocal mic in the stair well of the recording studio which gave us 24 ft of room height for a massive drum sound. We compressed the hell out of this channel to make it utterly colossal.

As we mentioned earlier, these tracks will be much quieter than the close mic’d tracks. Try muting these three tracks to hear what a big difference they make to the overall drum mix, even at low volumes. If you prefer a really tight, muted drum sound you might consider not using these three ambience tracks at all.

There are no rules, just have fun.

Give Us Feedback

This free rock drum loops pack is something of an experiment for us. We’d love to hear any constructive criticism or suggestions you might have either via the comments section below or via email. Hate filled trolls shouldn’t even bother posting.