hq percussion samples

[samirnedzamar]

hello all,

i just have a general question about percussion one- shots; ive recently been listening to a lot of productions by marco lys, dj chus, umek, leger, etc., and when trying to create similar rhythm tracks, I always come up short. the issue isn't so much the programming itself, as I am familiar w/ polyrhythms, velocity mods., ghost hits, etc, but the percussion sounds themselves. I recently purchased WA's tribal tech, and although the loops were great, single hits were non existant. the sounds in waveform recording's drum hits collection plain sucked, or at least the percussive one's, and the same can be said for my other samples. anyways, I guess I am just curios about professional sounding percussion sample libraries, escpecially those w/ one shots.

thank you

ex's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5pl_4lXNuk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjeMVgX3go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpoK-YrFYfk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCtkIkdNqb4

[omnipresence]

I'm not able to listen to those examples now, and I don't use any professional sample libraries, but why don't you open the loops in a wave editor and crop the sounds that you want. This isn't a proper solution to your question but saves having to buy more sounds. I suppose it depends how complex / layered the loops are but it could also force you to be more creative with the sounds you have at your disposal. Just an idea!

[AK]

To me those tracks sound like your typical loops underneath. In that they don't change and just repeat - which is fine if you're after that kind of thing but I personally try to steer clear of the straight up loop type feel and tend not to use them so I can't offer any suggestions as far as loop libraries go.

I have used one-shot samples and created my own loops and have exhausted every technique I can think of for getting mileage out of a single hit/s, sometimes this would require the use of a single sample being loaded up to as many as 10 times, each version being slightly modified to add the necessary variation/envelope shape/start point and filtering to sit it precisely in the segment of the groove. That obviously ends up being potentially time-consuming but it can work if you want to just use one-shots. For tuned percussion, one foolproof method is to have them tuned to root and fifth of the scale - this is the typical 'question/answer' a lot of percussive elements adhere to. Not set in stone but usually never fails to get things to sit. Obviously root/fifth of the scale offer no tonal strength to either major or minor and gets perceived as neutral sounding which I find works every time for certain types of percussion ( congas / bongos esp. )

Any reason why you don't want to synthesize your own? For me it's the very best way to properly tune your percussion, have it do anything you want and for it to actually 'fit' into whatever it is that you're doing. For that I could recommend a number of things. For synthetic percussion, I'm using a Machinedrum but there a lot of software things around that would fit the bill too. I recently started using Chromaphone for physically modelled type percussion - which I find great for organic type stuff, you can get tuned harmonics with that but also incude inharmonics for typical percussive timbres.

Actually, I'm not 100% sure what your question is, are you just asking about decent sample libraries or percussion in general?

[Rein]

@AK: instead of loading a bunch of slightly modified samples you could also edit the automation in the sampler you use.

[AK]

@AK: instead of loading a bunch of slightly modified samples you could also edit the automation in the sampler you use.

Yeah, that's true. I use Reason for samples - usually Re-wired to Ableton Live and use the NNXT as I know it more than any others. The mod section and stuff you can assign to velocity are ok but for exact precision, I find it a bit hit and miss. I much prefer having a selection of the same sample and modify each one independantly. As a simple example, say a shaker sound, I might use the sample for the offbeats as it is, with a slightly softer attack time and if I have the sound sequenced on the downbeats, I might just move in a bit on the attack to get it to sit with the kick to avoid smeared transients on the kick and any kind of flam. Other things too, like lower velocity hits I prefer to make duller, you can do this with setting filter cut off to velocity but again, I find I'm more comfortable getting it exactly how I want by simply duplicating the sample and modifying it until I have it bang on. It's only time consuming if you don't know what you're doing or don't understand the sampler properly. I pretty much whizz through it and have various patches saved like this for hats/shakers/snares and all sorts of stuff.

[samirnedzamar]

thanks so much the advice... AK good tip about tuning to the root + the fifth, I have to try that.

To me those tracks sound like your typical loops underneath.

that's true, they most likely are, but I'm still interested in creating them from single hits. can you recommend any good "real" percussion libraries, or any that you use?

i've had my eye on this one:

http://www.loopmasters.com/product/deta ... Percussion

a lot of loops, but +1000 single hits...

[AK]

No Idea on that mate, I rarely use them. I pretty much do all percussion with the Machinedrum, Chromaphone and drum synth. Any other 'stock samples' I have are from cover disks from magazines like Future Music and Music Tech. If there's anything decent on them, I will usually copy them from disk but I other than that, I haven't got anything really and never look at those sites.

[tone-def]

it's hard to give advice because we don't know where your going wrong. a lot of these sound like they mix into a compressor with some fairly brutal settings, or more compression than i use anyway.