Anyone record their own stuff? Need drum-loop help!

[AllTorque]

I've been dabbling with some home recording over the last few years using Cubase and layering my guitars/piano/vocals etc. The thing I struggle most with though for a convincing sound is the drums. I got hold of some heavy rock drum loops and also some funky stuff, but really am just looking for some convincing 'softer' drums for a more pink floyd/eagles/70's sound. Has anyone got any ideas? Are V-drums worth buying for this, or even a decent drum machine? I'd prefer not to have to learn how to play drums though as this doesn't really interest me.

Any help appreciated!

[GnuBee]

Www.toontrack.com take a look at their stuff; excellent sounds, versatile control options and a large library of loops.

I've used the Superior Drummer 2 stuff from my V-Drums but have spent time browsing through the loops etc and it's good stuff. The samples used come from well known kits, micas and studio combinations and cover many genres.

[obscene]

BFD - http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=1

They have a BFD 2 out as well. So as long as you're good with midi (they have some preset loops) these will sound great.

[0191mark]

If you don't want to play the drum patterns yourself, you'll be better with a drum library rather than an instrument. Have you tried Time & Space? http://www.timespace.com/productlist/4/18/Rock/Pop...

[ShadownINja]

I was about to recommend Time and Space.

[Miguel Alvarez]

You could use a drum machine but then you're stuck with age old problem of st in st out. I'm pro hardware so would opt for a sampling drum machine myself but unless you have the means to get good drum sounds in the first place then it would be a waste of money.

When I bought my Akai I was given a wav cd that had a load of drum sounds on there that were pretty good.

You do need to bare in mind that if you're using individual drum hits that you need to consider the swing of the drums, the velocity of each hit the reverb etc etc.

[AllTorque]

Thanks for the help guys - will check out all the suggestions although the idea of spending hours building up a drum pattern from one-shots fills me with dread. Especially with the need for getting the swing and velocity right. I think pre-recorded loops are much more my thing.

Cheers again :-)

[Miguel Alvarez]

Ok being as you're an honest bloke and will be declaring all samples used paying royalties and such. I'd suggest sampling drum loops from songs you like.

Bryan Ferry - You Go To My Head
Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Head Hunters - God Made Me Funky
The Honey Drippers - Impeach The President

[Miguel Alvarez]

Although if you find an original of The Honey Drippers I'm buying it off you.

[0191mark]

AllTorque said:

I think pre-recorded loops are much more my thing.

If you're looking for authentic drums, there is a huge black market (ie, free) of drum tracks sampled from past records. You can download hundreds for free, in great quality, as they've been sampled by beat/music production 'headz' and uploaded to places like sendpace and other file respositories. What you'd need to do is learn how to load them into a software sampler and get the associated midi file to trigger them. It's pretty simple TBH.

Take a look at this thread for some links (46 pages long, a lot of stuff available in it!):

http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.php?s=7b30e4b...

[Miguel Alvarez]

0191mark said:

AllTorque said:

I think pre-recorded loops are much more my thing.

If you're looking for authentic drums, there is a huge black market (ie, free) of drum tracks sampled from past records. You can download hundreds for free, in great quality, as they've been sampled by beat/music production 'headz' and uploaded to places like sendpace and other file respositories. What you'd need to do is learn how to load them into a software sampler and get the associated midi file to trigger them. It's pretty simple TBH.

Take a look at this thread for some links (46 pages long, a lot of stuff available in it!):

http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.php?s=7b30e4b...

Free isn't quite the word for them. But they're free in the sense that if you download them off the net you've not paid for them. Buying drum sample CD's or even vinyl doesn't mean that what you have is an authorised piece of work. A great deal of these products have never paid royalties to the sampled artists.

But that is something for you to worry about at a later date when you come to releasing your music to the public.

The only other thing I'd add is that some of these compiled drum libraries are not as well recorded as people say they are. Some of these libraries are recorded at a low bit rate when hard drive/cd spaces were a problem for stopring music and what you're getting is a recording at a bit rate of sometimes as low as 128. The other factor to bare in mind is that some of these records are extremly hard to get hold of so you maybe getting recordings of a radio set or a VHS recording or whatever. Being a bit of a record collector I've got the same song on 7", 12" LP, Compilation and you can hear the difference between all of them depending on lots of factors suich as the grooves per side, who's done the mastering etc etc.

Again not much of a problem if all you want is a workable demo with some authentic sounding drums but stuff to consider for when you get serious.