Acoustic drums sounds vs. Sampled Drum sounds

I dont get the idea of spending hours looking for a snare here and a kick there....I mean, I guess if thats the way you were taught then so be it, but then again thats why I stopped making hip hop music, because everyone is so staunch about this technique or this is how you do whatever or this is cheating..I said, f'k it, i'm gonna do whatever it is I want to do with my music and not try to take on the limitations of someone else....Ths why I rarely ever work with other artists, because I dont want to become too directly infuenced my their methods....Here's an example, when I started out making beats, I used to think that you had to have a mountain of vinyl, that you had to chop up your samples,that youb had to spend an hour eqing and filtering a dang drum sound, that you had to have this record or that record to call yourself a digger, and whatever else, this went on for years and while I was able to produce some pretty good stuff, I realized that all this time i was spending getting into the head of a "real" beatmaker, Iwas actually wasting time that i could have used towards making music with what i had....like why am I sitting in a record store for 5 hours listening to records when I could just grab something random, go home and create?...I just got to that point where whenever I had a gridlock, it wasnt because I ran out of ideas, but because i wasnt pushing myself to break the rules...who to say that I hafta use these kind of srums?, who's to say that i hafta use this kind of sample?.....I dont feel that you should place someone else's limitations on your creativity..just because someone says this isnt the "right" way to do things shouldnt stop you from exploring that option....I feel thats why alot (but certainly not all)of underground hip hop is so bland nowadays, cause everyone wants to follow the rules in order to gain credibility.....its silly in my opinion, but if it works for you then so be it

Nobody's saying it's wrong to use acoustic drums instead of vinyl sampled drums, but the "traditional" way is sampled off vinyl, and it has the sound most people prefer. I use both but prefer sampled off vinyl, but even when I use acoustic kicks I like sampled snares, they have a certain feel to them that gives my beats a certain edge that I like.

dubmunkey wrote:both, from multi layered synth based drums to proper matched kits...all have a place in my tunes...

greg

cosign

I think the problem is people's conception of sample cd's....they dont work straight away you have to eq, compress, effect etc to make the kits work, or sound good or fit the song your doing...

i doubt many people use straight samples from a cd........plus by saying its 'cheating' is like saying music composition is a competition, which it aint....

greg

Swissmaster Cheese wrote:I dont get the idea of spending hours looking for a snare here and a kick there....I mean, I guess if thats the way you were taught then so be it

I myself like to spend hours and hours looking for snares and kicks.. or actually just looking for any kinds of sounds that I could use, to me that's part of the fun. Everytime I come home with a stack of new (old) wax, it's like I'm 6 again and it's christmas!

I only do it for myself because I enjoy it. I get a huge kick (pun intended) from finding that kick drum that shakes your belly and rattles the walls.. I was not taught in any specific way, this is just something that I enjoy doing.

It's how you want to do it.. Some put cheese on the top, some put the meat on the top.. It doesn't matter how you do it as long as it tastes good!

yeah i like to dig..but theres a time and a place...a mate of mine spent a year assembling his sample library with no composition...but when he was done he had a huge collection of original sounds already to be used...

i guess id like to be in that position just dont have a year to spare....

greg

it dependes on whatever I'm feeling at the moment...

For the last week or so I have been sampling, sampling, arranging and sampling more.. I've been mostly building my drum library, but on the side I've got a lot of nice sounds, some good loops and a couple of odd breaks.

Anyway the next time I get that certain feeling I can get straight to work because I have a whole lot new ish to flip, all tweaked and saved to zip.

I've done mostly vinyl, but I do agree with Cheese about the hours digging, I've been in the same boat, it's like I need some snare that I don't have and I need to go find it instead of just working with what's there. That said, I've been miking up my drum kit with some pretty nice mics and preamps, and making beats starting with live drums and then layering a clap or other stuff on top of that. This is getting me a way better sound then just sampling vinyl.

How do y'all organize your drum library?
Seperate folder for kicks, snares, hats, etc?
Or a folder for a kit that you made? With the kick, snare, hat, ride, all in one folder because they sound good together?

I do both, I have one disc of one hits sorted by type, one disc of kits...
That's all my drums for now, just 2 zip discs! Really just one because they both have the same sounds, just sorted differently..
Not quite a library, but enough that I can move on to the fun part of chopping samples, and I have several kits to choose from that might go best wit the sample

Aster wrote:How do y'all organize your drum library?
Seperate folder for kicks, snares, hats, etc?
Or a folder for a kit that you made? With the kick, snare, hat, ride, all in one folder because they sound good together?

I do both, I have one disc of one hits sorted by type, one disc of kits...
That's all my drums for now, just 2 zip discs! Really just one because they both have the same sounds, just sorted differently..
Not quite a library, but enough that I can move on to the fun part of chopping samples, and I have several kits to choose from that might go best wit the sample

i arrange mine by kits....if i have them in separate folders ill never look at them! but thats me, Once i build a kit i like, usually ill keep it that way....then ill make 1 or 2 beats with it........So nothing is redundant ill make another kit, sometimes ill go to others and steal sounds, but its easier for me because i know what sounds are in what kits so i can make fast deciscions.

on the other note, I find that i love to start storing up good samples, and just have sample sessions, but i can never wait! i have to have kits for quick disposal otherwise i might loose an idea........It would be so awesome to build a library, with no composition. Maybe ill try that.

But how does he sample his stuff? i mean, will he leave extra space on the samples? or what.....sometimes ill sample something, start to use it and have to resample it to get something i may have missed at the end, ya know?

I wasn't really tryin' to knock anybody's style... I'm relatively new to production, but I guess you could call me old fashioned... Like Cheech said, I enjoy spending hours lookin for that rare vinyl sample off of some German Accordion record from the 50s... I definitely understand people feeling like it limits them, but I don't see it that way... If I don't got the right snare for a track, then that's alright... I'll hit a store lookin for some breaks for 4 hours... And if I ain't got it then, then I'll just arrange the track in a raw form and add in the snare I want later...

You do whatever works for you, but if you ask me that's what's wrong wit a lot of hip-hop today... Especially mainstream... Everybody wants to just get their sh*t out there and blow up... The same applies to crate diggin... It seems like people today just wanna have the perfect samples for whatever track they're doin right then and there... Nobody wants to put effort into it... I'd rather sit on a tight beat until it's perfect and I've done something really different wit the samples...

Think about people like Premier or Pete Rock... They wouldn't have gotten far if they didn't spend the hours they spent developing their own sound with the drums and sample they got... Being a producer is all about havin' patience and havin' a good ear... Pete Rock said it himself though... The Digger Culture is gone...

well i guess i just think its weird that anyone would limit themselves like that....im happy using sounds from any source...im not proud....

greg

Well, it's like this..
If a friend of mine has burned me a cd with some wavs, then I'll go through the cd and if/when there are any usable sounds I'll save them and tweak them to my liking. I have no problem with that. I also sample from a cd, cassette tape, vcr, minidisc or whatever. So I don't "limit" myself to wax just for the purpose of limiting myself to wax, or just to be a vinyl purist.. But it's just that I like to go diggin, and I have a place next to my house that sells used records for 20 cents, so I never run out of wax. I have a lot of wax now that I've not yet even checked out, just laying on the floor, but I'm still going to go and get some more.

It's a hobby, one that's as important in my beatmaking as the mpc itself. I couldn't imagine my mpc without my wax..

That's just my way of working, I'm sure we all have a style of working that best suits us.

And greg, I get your point.. It's like those kids who only listen to west coast hiphop, because "east coast sucks"!
Jeez... What the fu*k does it matter where they're from if it sounds good?

oh i definitly understand i enjoy digging and getting weird ass samples, its more aimed that those who only dig and think getting sounds from anywhere else is some how unauthentic, unoriginal or 'cheating'....

and i spose as i have so many samples (loads i havent yet heard) that i spend ages digging through my own collections...its definily good fun....

greg

dubmunkey wrote:oh i definitly understand i enjoy digging and getting weird **** samples, its more aimed that those who only dig and think getting sounds from anywhere else is some how unauthentic, unoriginal or 'cheating'....

and i spose as i have so many samples (loads i havent yet heard) that i spend ages digging through my own collections...its definily good fun....

greg

dude, sometimes i wish i got my sounds from else where....i was on the breaks.com forum the other day just checking it out....some dudes was talkin about sampling from an old arcade game. Thats cool! I will buy just abaout any vinyl to see whats on there, but i never really sample anything else? maybe its just a habit?