Making drums out of anything

So i got allot of my own field recordings and want to make drum sounds out of al of it.
So making a kick/snare/hihatish kind of sound out of a buzz, singing kids, cars... Any field record.
Any ideas how i can make it with the mpc 1000 or a little help from a pc.

If you dont understand what kind of drums i mean search for shlohmo on youtube. (great artist)

bloc

bloc wrote:So i got allot of my own field recordings and want to make drum sounds out of al of it.
So making a kick/snare/hihatish kind of sound out of a buzz, singing kids, cars... Any field record.
Any ideas how i can make it with the mpc 1000 or a little help from a pc.

If you dont understand what kind of drums i mean search for shlohmo on youtube. (great artist)

bloc

I do this a lot, but more with Dubstep basslines. Not using the MPC, I use Kontakt and/or a handful of waves plugins (I have the sound designers package). I would imagine it would get pretty difficult on the MPC due to the lack of effects and control.

People do it with Machinedrum all the time though. I've had success with using samples for drums with the Octatrack to (Machinedrums brother).

I think you'd probably better learning how to create drums from a synth, and reading some texts on that as it will give you a lot of information about envelopes, filters etc.

You can then apply this to using samples (as opposed to oscillators) to create your drum sounds. It's very possible and you can create some interesting and unique sounds.

Better yet feed your sounds into a synth! Watch how impressive things start to get.

Have to disagree with James slightly, I think the 1000 will be absolutely fine. There's no need to over-complicate things, especially if you've recorded a sound specifically. It has envelopes and filers afterall, and with a bit of layering it's all good.

I think the most important part of all of this is going to be the quality of the field recording in the first place. Otherwise just treat them as regular samples and have a rough idea of the frequencies you'd expect for each drum hit.

i.e you don't want your new hat sound having any 36hz goodness because you recorded it from a V6 haha.

I agree scoob. I've never really tried it with the MPC aside from creating atmosphere pads from samples.

Be good to see some of these types of videos out there. Exploring sides to the MP that's rarely ventured. I might have a go see what I can knock up.

i agree with scoob you dont need much else besides your mpc.

the key here is that drums are usually short sounds - so use those envelopes a lot.

also id suggest going very extreme on the pitch / filter settings - if you try something out at both extremes you get an idea of the range you can take it to.

also just understand general 'drum sound' concepts - bassdrums are usually a bit like a very quick sine sweep downward, hi hats and snares have a lot of noise in them, cymbals are like hi hat noise but with a longer release.

those are just basics but will help guide you in the right selection of sounds - which dont ever forget - selection is just as important as processing.

mpc is enough, however, it takes more work to get all kinds of sounds to snap, if that is what you want.. a transient designer should be useful here if you want to make something that normally dont have much snap more useful for that kind of percussion...

if you want big versatile libraries of foley sounds like this then you can check out audio ripped from games, many pc games have it available without having to use tools for extraction, already sorted in folders sometimes.. this way you can wth not much effort gain access to thousands of oneshot sounds that are great for layering or just use as they are.. i just checked my game audio folder and there's around 32.000 files in it, lol.. anything from scissor sounds to someone dropping/throwing an object onto all kinds of surfaces and everyday sounds + the more imaginary ones coming out of sounddesign

Yall can try tappin ur turntable while its recordin into the mp for a kick sound. Just tap on a flat part close to the needle

Got a wind jammer for my zoom h2 today for outdoor recording so the fun can really begin now. Read al the post here thx for the help guys i wil be busy tomorow after school....

Would be nice if this could stay a topic where we al could share iddeas for this kind of drum sounds.

bloc

Great idea Bloc, I'm down for that. I've got an Edirol R-09HR. Incredibly detailed recordings, I've taken it with me to gigs before now

Also comes with the worlds smallest remote! haha

I am now in my train to my home and there is a buzzing noise that i recorded when the train stands still. Its like a saw wave and will be great for baselines i think.

bloc

bloc wrote:Got a wind jammer for my zoom h2 today for outdoor recording so the fun can really begin now. Read al the post here thx for the help guys i wil be busy tomorow after school....

Would be nice if this could stay a topic where we al could share iddeas for this kind of drum sounds.

bloc

+1 on the Zoom H2. I use that and I love it! Sound quality on them is amazing.

^
never tried this but i've made some drum sounds with Stomper (drum sound synthesizer)
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/stomper/index2.html