I want people to hear the music in my head

Hi everybody. I have a huge dilemma. The problem is I have all these beats in my head but, I cannot describe the sounds. You know what I mean? I know theres a difference between a dry snare and a damp snare but, I havent heard enough of them to tell the difference. This is slowing me down immencely. I sample a lot of drum sounds but I cant describe them so when I'm looking for a specific (oh let's say kick) I have to look through my entire library of kicks!!! If I could label these sounds correctly, I would not have to waste all this time searching for the sound I'm looking for.

Basically I was wondering if anybody knows where I could find a website or cd that's basically a tutorial for sounds. Please help it would be most appreciated.

a tutorial for sounds?? do you mean like so u can tweak and eq a sample?? im not realy sure what u mean..

It's all good to think of beats in your head, but when it comes to actually putting it down. I never try to re-create beats like that, unless you know where to look for the sounds. What I do is make up a drum kit, and use what I have (as far as a kick and snare).. these two sounds are crucial to me when it comes to music.. bad drums can make the difference of making a good or bad beat.. but also, bad drums can be perfect depending on how you use them.. if your trying to make a real clean R&B track (for example) the dirt from a casio-sk1 snare may not help you too much, especially if your trying to make the track sound as realistic as possible, but tune it right, and it may make a decent accent sound (shaker, stick etc)depending on how you use it.. see what I'm saying. Just because a sound is labeled 'snare,' doesn't mean that's all you can use it for.
Also, make some kits of sounds that you REALLY like.. not the regular (kick drums, snares, etc) but kits of sounds that you think of when you make beats in your head. For the longest time, I luuuuved the sound of an 808 with the attack adjusted, so instead of me going to the same cd, and tweaking it, I just sampled it and saved it so it was less work for me. Make some kits of your favorites, and this way, you may be able to re-create the beats in your mind a little faster.

roxstar is on point, sample your kits according to your song, that way you don't have to dig for songs, if you need to use it for another song just go to that song and load the sound you want and use it for your next kit or song .
did you say you had a zip drive, you can store lots of drum kits in your zip drive if you create folders

Thanks for the advice but, I still want to know how to describe drum sounds. I want to be able to go to a studio and explain what kind of drum sound I want. Wet, dry, damp, warm.....you know what I mean???I want to describe the sounds. I want to expand my vocabulary regarding the sounds so I can have a conversation with other producer and know what I'm talking about. Does anybody know of a website link or a cd that teaches you what sounds warm??whats sounds damp??what sounds dry??Sorry if I didnt expalin it properly the first time.

maybe thats one of the big problems of doing this kinda thing (music) - there is not a standard vocabulary that you can use. I listened to a lot of music and developed a "critical listening" zone. then by trying to understand how the sounds were made/processed you can get closer to a good description. Your right - education is the key. your ears need food. Do you have a studio locally that you could spend some time in? Cos I don't think there are many "sound tutorial" discs around. I did come across one once, which put different mics and preamps to the test so that you could compare the subtle differences.

Maybe you could try reviews on magazine cds to start ear/vocab training.
Read production mags, and get into the vocab that you read (soundonsound is real good for this)

Off the top of my head here are a few items:

Transients
Attack
Release
Sustain
Decay
Sub
Gated
Rattle
Heavily compressed
Pumping (compression)

Maybe we could get a few more contributions....

If you have beats in your head that you want people to hear...
I would suggest learning to beatbox. The sound comes straight from your head!

Good point about the beatboxing....If you have a compooter you can dump a loop of your beatboxing into Recycle and do all kinds of stuff, including replacing them with "real" drum sounds.

Or you could drill a hole in your head and just let the beats leak out....

i think if u wanna expand ur vocabulary hit up an audio school... as far as i go im fine just sayin i got some gangsta drums, rnb drums, dirty, commercial, etc.. i just keep em in their own folder in my zip disk.. i suggest not gettin to techniqual with it and just make powerful music..

yo practice practice practice. thats how u get the sounds u want. This music ish is how u intrepret it. So no one is gonna tell what sounds u are gonna be hot with. U just need to work on your sounddesign and sample editing. tutors got some nice drums at www.mpc-samples.com these will help u get started. Just get a turn table or cd player. Read the newbie bible in the Freq asked quest section of this forum, and learn how to loop chop and build a basic drum pattern with a kick, snare, and hat. learn bout basslines, filtering, velocity, and attack and decay. These are all concepts that dont just apply to the mpc, its about music production. Just take time and realize that its gonna take months or years to get aight. Not even good. so baby steps homie.

i would say if you got the equipment try different methods like adding exf's, no efx, little efx, lot of efx this would be the only way to hear the difference in your sounds, try diferent sound efx tremolo, gates , reverbs,
there is a glossary on this site check the main page, i was the same way but the more you get in to making music the more you learn ,

binger pretty much summed this up. You got to spend time. No two ways about it. And you just get more familiar. I don't know if you end up being able to create just anything you hear in your head, but when you know how to get around YOUR setup, you know what you can create from what you are hearing in your head or at least you know how you can go about getting that vibe.

On the other hand a lot of it might just be being able to recognize the magic when it happens. Playing around and then ah ha, that sounds good. I just recently watched an interview (from the DVD special features) and picked up this quote which I had typed up:

"What I'm always interested in a film is... are there errors and mistakes? If you can go to every film, at least every film I've made and you say, 'Ok, in each film there's six really great things in it.' Every... none of those had been planned. Every one of those things that you'd take out as the high point of any film of mine, came as something that was not scripted, not planned and certainly not directed by me. Because I think that's where you hit that truth button." -- Robert Altman

Word is bond.

So to summarize. Just keep working at it and keep your ears open.