What are your favourite drum sample libraries/sources and drum production techniques
2006-10-05 by Roman Pirie
I have many sample CDs. But only a few are my core library. My experience is that many libraries have the same sounds as others. Every keyboard/module has the 808/909 kits etc. I like to collect drums but not buy the same ones again and again. My core original libraries I use are: Akai MPC sound library (mostly drums that are quality akai library drums and some drum machine stuff in there two, but heaps of good acoustic and synthy drums) 116 electric drum machines (collection of drum machine hits, way too many of those old organ analogue drums but good for the other drum machines, except the kits are definately not the complete libraries of each drum machine) Dance Mega Drums Vol 1 (same as 116 drum machines except it has some drum machines not on the other) Real breakbeat libraries from a few different sources (I am a long time rap music production fan and breakbeats are the real hip hop sound to me, cut them up, layer them etc, I reCycle all breaks these days and change the patterns, essential and used to be the pride and joy of hip hop producers to have a fresh break, still quite tricky to track heaps of them down but they are out there) Alesis DM Pro, DM 5 and D4 libraries (got this disc from eBay and it is good quality, organised and edited) Akai 2000 percussion sounds. New York City drum works and percussion works The only other drum sources I can think of would be to get the Mo Phatt drums, Motif, Triton, Roland flagship module. What I wanted to convey was my experience of drum sample libraries and try to communicate what I think creates an extensive drum library without too many repeat sounds. This was so I can get more accurate opinions on what other goods original content drum libraries are out there. I know you are probably thinking I should shut up and use the ones I've got. It's a habit for me to hear new drum sounds. Plus every record of live or programmed drums inspires me to emulate that drum sound. One day I'll be recording and producing real drums and trying to make them sound like Gregory Isaacs 'Night nurse' album. I sock around the snare coil I heard to get the dead reggae snare. EQing is important. I wish there were drum libraries of vinyl drums sampled from records. I bought those eBay vinyl drum libraries and they are a scam IMO, many repeats and faded so quickly there is no vinyl ambience making them too clean. Oh well I can always sample my own old records, always fun. What acoustic drum libraries are quality. I like the dead short sharp reggae drum sound of the 70's. But most acoustic drum samples are very open airy 80's rock style sounds. Maybe I could use the amplitude envelopes to decay them so they are deader but that's not the same as having a nice dead drum sample. I really prefer breakbeat and vinyl drums most of the time because of the grit and character. I want to get a tube processor to see if that iimproves clean drum samples to sound more like a record. It would be good to have drum libraries that have dry punchy reggae, disco, funk, rock, soul drums like from the late 60's early 70's. I do have 'retrofunk' or whatever that sample cdrom is called. Haven't gone through all of it yet. Yeah I want 60s and 70s drum production. Roman.