Where are the GOOD drum samples at?

Hey all,

Hope this hasn't been asked to death, but most of my drum samples are from:

1) downloads on Soulseek
2) a "Timbaland drums" package my friend gave me
3) crate-dug records.

1 is a pain in the ass, 2 sound shitty/MP3 sourced, and 3 is cumbersome to amass a decent collection of. Where did ya'll get your favorite drum samples? Do you have enough of them that if you hear a certain type of snare in your head, you can go through your collection and build that snare?

Thank you!

Alec

vinyl
synthesis (look for tuts on google)
i've made a few kits watching tuts

.. and layering, thats how i get most of mine.

Mate, if you want something to come to you that easily, then it will almost certainly sound like sh*t.

Enough people put the time in to find unique drums, and I only suggest you do the same. Go out and dig some more.

I know that the Timbo "drum kits" are absolute crap, I've been given "Dre" kits before and they're really uninspiring. Just work on it a bit and you might be surprised with what you can do with them.

Like Rinseout says, layer up. People Under The Stairs often layer up slight variations on the same snare and kick to achieve a harder hitting sound. Check out their "Earth Travellers" track. That uses heavily layered drums off just one record.

I'm not wanting anything to "come easily," it's more an avoidance of the typical audio "shit in, shit out" theory - if you start with shitty sounds, you're going to beat yourself over the head trying to make them sound decent.

so far i'm having the best luck from layering sampled drums from vinyl records - these are the only ones that really sound real AND distinct, without a ton of momentum-slowing tweaking on my part.

http://stores.ebay.com/Hip-Hop-Workshop
easy good samples for the lazy

letsjumpnow wrote:so far i'm having the best luck from layering sampled drums from vinyl records - these are the only ones that really sound real AND distinct, without a ton of momentum-slowing tweaking on my part.

Most good drum sounds do not come from kits. You will find a lot of good sounds on vinyl. It is hard to find isolated one-shots, you're just gonna need to spend some time looking and then tweaking (you will have to do this).
You can experiment with making your own sounds too. I made my favorite hat/shaker sound by making a "shh" sound w/ my mouth and recording it straight into the MPC (via SM58). If you have a microphone, you can find a lot of things out in the real world that make good instrument samples.
Also, here's a link to a free drum synth that another dude posted on the forum a while back:
http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/drumsynth.shtml
It's a pretty cool program. You can make your own stuff from scratch!
It might help to think of sample collecting and beatmaking as two separate processes. Spend some time and you will be rewarded with drum kits that you are familiar with (cause you put em together). Then you can dial em up and make a beat w/o having to worry about your momentum/creativity being hindered.