Personal Drum Libraries -- who's got one??
Sun_Fortune
1,374 Posts
I've always wanted to have this massive library with all of my drum sounds. Every time I try to do it, I get lazy. Besides, I like the spontaneity of just going into my records and finding what I find. But going through your records for a day and a half to find the right kick sound can be very annoying, even if you find other things in the process. Anyway, who's got a good drum library and how is it organized and on what program?? I've got a couple of MPC programs with different cymbals but it takes forever that way.
Comments
http://soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=511197&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Good luck...
I know how painful it is getting drum sounds quickly for the sampler
Oh, thanks for the link, but Im not looking for other people's libraries. Im trying to figure out an effective way to set up my own library thats easy to grab shit from.
Yeah man, no matter how you look at it, it is gonna be a pain in the azz.
I was trying to do that a few years back, but since I mostly rock chopped kits (generally the mix-and-match doesn't work so well for me) and rarly re-use sounds (aside from the obvious faves like a good 808) I find it much easier to just dig through shit until I find the right break for a song, or alternately hook up drum tracks first, and save them for later... having a couple banks/programs of really well-rocked drums comes in handy when you have a good loop already hooked up and are looking for some boom.
Anyways.... my .02 = fuck it. Knowing your records is way more valuable than having your shit in little folders.
Thanks, I agree with you 100 percent and thats pretty much the way I work, although Ive been mixing and matching more these days. But I always get jealous of those dudes who say they can make like ten beats an hour and who have all their drums in those little folders. I'd love to work faster but I guess the grass is always greener...
Databasing your records has many uses; insurance, storage archive, reference, trade lists, taxes, appraisals, beatmaking, etc. If you're like me, and you have thousands of records that you intend to use (not just listen to), then you'll forget shit sometimes. I prefer not to spend my time looking for shit that I found already. It is more efficient for me to find it once, catalog it, then call it up from the database when I need it, even if that is 4 years from now. Spending my time getting things done is more rewarding than trying to figure which record I have with "that one ill moment" on it. No sense reinventing the wheel each time you go to your crates.
Building a database that is relational to your soundfiles is not impossible either. It's as simple as knowing how to program links.
If I want a break I just open a query that I've saved and voila! For example:
[color:red]
SELECT sSongTitle, iBPM FROM tblRecords WHERE bBREAK = 1 ORDER by sSongTitle
493 Rows Returned [/b][/color]
-- Selection from the results of letter "S" (known shit only, no freebies) --
[color:#666666]
"Scorpio" - 117
"Scorpio" - 115
"Scorpio" - 95
"Scratchy" - 160
"Searching for the Right Door" - 120
"Second Wave" - 143
"Shack Up" - 113
"Sing Me a Song Today" - 95
"Sing, Sing, Sing" - 115
"Sister Sanctified" - 93
"Sittin on the Dock of the Bay" - 114
"Six Million Dollar Man" - 143
"Skullduggery" - 102
"Sleep with One Eye Open" - 107
"Slow Down" - 144
"Slow Drum Rhythm" - 118
"Smokin' Cheeba Cheeba" - 103
"So Jesus Was at the Last Supper?" - 69
"Soft Shell" - 88
"Somebody Saw You (right channel)" - 133
"Son of Scorpio" - 110
"Song Against Itself" - 131
"Soul Food" - 132
"Soul Pride" - 123
"Soul Takl" - 125
"Soulful Strut" - 91
"Space in Time" - 92
"Spinning Wheel" - 105
"Spinning Wheel" - 108
"Spoonful" - 90
"Spoonful" - 115
"Sport" - 115
"Spot on the Wall" - 96
"Stairs and Flowers" - 88
"Stargazer" - 116
"Still Good" - 122
"Straight No Chaser" - 83
"Strokin'" - 101
"Stroll On" - 178
"Suck" - 95
"Sugar Lee" - 102
"Su*d A***" - 91
"Summertime" - 105
"Sundancers" - 112
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" - 101
"Sunday Suite" - 85
"Supersnatch" - 86
"Superstar" - 118
"Superstition" - 98
"Sweet Misery" - 95
"Sweet Pea" - 120
"Sweetback Losing His Cherry" - 140
"Synthetic Substitution" - 94
[/color]
in case you dont know.
Brilliant. Thank you.
I never thought an information only library could be a way to go. Must get hard to classify tho.
Search "metalic sounding ride."
That shit is just too much work for a dood like me.
Search "drums that will beat the shit out of ex all adversaries hearts at once..."
Results returned : 0.
Fuck me.
That's interesting, because I've never been in need of a sound-only library. I've found that it's easier to forget the sound/timbre of a particular break if it's abstracted from the context. Meaning, when I see the break as an entry in the database: A Minor Forest - "So Jesus Was at the Last Supper?" - 69 BPM, I tend to recall the sound of the album and all that recollection calls to mind. If I see it as a list, like SnareSound_0483, than I have to build the context out of the abstract.
Scrolling through 300 snare sounds may help you find something you think would work within the context of the song you're writing, but being familiar with your records in the first place allows you to make those decisions without listening.
I started keeping a list of stuff I wanted to sample about 10 years ago. I'd just scribble the name of the song on this piece of paper in my studio. Sometimes I'd get an idea when I was at work, or on the train, so I'd write a little note on a stickie and then stick that to the main list when I got home. It got to the point where the piece of paper was full of scribbles so I turned it into a Word table. I included ARTIST, SONG, DESCRIPTION, and BPM in the table. This afforded me the ability to sort by any of the columns. Say, if I was working on a song and I wanted a break of a particular BPM, or if I wanted to find that a sample I remembered on a Leroy Jenkins record.
After a few years the Word document grew to 40+ pages and became glitchy. It would crash Word when I'd try to sort it. So I transferred it to a database. Now I catalog every record I intend to use. I can search by break, sample, acapella, BPM, band name, song name, or my own notes. If I want to know where on my Susan Sontag record she says "fucked with little or no emotion"; if I have any acapellas that are 104 BPM; which of my 45s have breaks; what instrumentals I can use for a blend; what BPM is my Skinny Puppy 12"; which of those 90 Carol Kaye basslines is the one I like, etc.
It is a bit tedious entering all the information. But I would surely waste far more time if I relied on my own drug-addled mind to keep track of all this shit. Think of it this way. If you have 4,000 records, and those 4,000 records have 2 "moments of interest" each (on average), that is 8,000 things you're expecting yourself to remember.
It doesn't matter now cause I bought a Triton so fuck all these records.
seriously peeps
the amount of time you'd put into organising your drum hits.. why not get a snare and some hats and record the hits when you do the track???
Homeboy's even got the BPMs for each break.
I wholeheartedly agree. And I failed to mention all the personal drum libraries I've created. They are completely unique and all mine. Hours of individual hits as well as drum patterns, on multiple drum sets. Recorded to 2" analog, then run through a sexy sounding A-D convertor by way of a tube saturator made from one of the original channel strips taken out of the first Abbey Road mixing board. All with multiple microphone configurations: Figure of 8, M/S, bleumline, ortf, X-Y, close mic'd only, ambient mic'd only, mono, Pressure Zone Microphones (PZM) on the walls, etc.
"yeah. duh. don't you guys know anything?"
But seriously, those drums must sound hot.
Plaese to post a soundfile.
The beauty of sampling drums is that you have access to drum sounds that are pretty impossible to create outside of specific studio settings. If you find 1,000 breaks, guaranteed they're all gonna sound pretty significantly different. It'd be really effin' hard to record 1,000 different sounding drum sounds on your own... especailly drums that sound as unique as "It's a New Day" or "Synthetic Substitution" or what have you.
-e
you dont think drums you record yourself are by definition MORE unique than a break that's already been chopped / sliced / looped ?
The best drum sounds I have ever recorded, come from one really good mic/pre mic in a non-studio environment.... and although I can certainly apprecite recording to 2" with a bomb set of mics and mixing through some apogee and chandler EMI strips... It really isin't my drum sound. I like big ass rooms. I think with drums it is the place where a pretty standard setup (API or Neve pre, pair of SD turbe condensr and a fet-47 style kik mic) usually works best in any room (studio or non-studio).
Bouche: I'd like to hear those kits regardless. A considerable amount of the drum stuff on my last record was stuff that I recorded myself, with emulating specific drum sounds off records that Im sure you are familiar with.
I am sure a considerable amount of the most incredible records, the ones with just retarded drum action and very original sounds, were probably done with 200 dollar mics and very standard pres. I think a big part of recording drums, most deceptively, is just having a really well tuned kit (not tuned to a specific pitch, but tuned so that the shells resonate enough to get shit feeling fucking LOUD). When the levy breaks is a perfect example here... make the drummer do the work and you can get a fucking incredible sound with a minimum amound of good gear. That song was recorded with 2 Beyerdynamic 160s through 1176's. Very cheap mics. Very good compressors to bring out and capture the sound of the room.... Very awesome sound.
Anyways, I could nerd out on the drum shit all day. One thing I can say from experience is this...
Trying to get a really varied drum sound with one kit in one room is really much harder than you would think. I sold my kit and regret it deeply.
Two semi recent drum things that I recorded.
One room with my kit, chopped up and semi programmed...
http://www.sixtoo.net/secretlover/SixViciousSalleTorturee.mp3
Same Kit, different room, played and tape-edited.
http://www.sixtoo.net/secretlover/Sixtoo&NorsolaSideB.mp3
http://www.sixtoo.net/secretlover/Sixtoo&NorsolaSideC.mp3
I don't know what the drums have to do with the quality of those tracks, but I dig it. I don't dig it the same way I do tracks that I know use sample drums though. There's an airy-ness to these tunes that totally make me know I'm listening to something "different." I'm thinking maybe it's the drums.
The best combo that I've heard sonically, recorded and live, is the usage of drum breaks and live drums. The Platinum Pied Pipers album utilizes this method to great effect.
Big up mtl quel-quartier?
check the tremolo thread for recording techniques pertaining to drums
Aw man, nah, I wasn't trying to say that these are my ideal drum recordings (check anything recorded at Electrical Audio / Soma, Chicago doods for that).... just giving some examples of some shit that I had been recording myself, which is, a very different drum sound than the shit that I would normally sample....
pcmr: dans mile-end, a le coin st.urbain a st.v.... bonne journee!
I've tried to get in the habit of saving every drumset I chop up as a PGM. I also have individual one's for cymbals, percussion, claps etc.
And of course, always set up your drums the same way everytime so you can switch sets out at will.
Very rarely do I use the same complete set twice but I do recylce and alter kicks and snares and it's alot easier doing it in a PGM than trying to hunt down the individual sound.
You're exactly right. I ride for the Oakland bump, so I need that bowel-moving thickness. But I don't suppose every record needs the same.
It should be said that using the sounds in context makes the most sense. Listening to a bass drum by itself and trying to decide if it sounds good or not is a pointless exercise, as that is rarely its function. Many of my favorite drum recordings, if examined piecemeal, would not pass the first listen if the individual drums were evaluated out of context.
If I didn't make sample-based music, I would find the practice of continually fucking with breaks completely tedious. To me, the joy of making this style of music is in manipulating previously recorded sounds.
Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his or her expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
--Conte di Lautr??amont
I'll see if I have any of my libraries handy when I get home. Most everything is boxes right now, as I am moving.
man i wish i could get psyched about those cats... but with the addition of Jim Orourke I think they've been responsible for alot of the worst trends in production in the last ten years.
Oh yeah, I put a phone call from my manses on top
just in case...
http://s59.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0AGZUDJU48YX019RVIQHIFSGDP
Im saying.
One mic.