Drums-Is it about the quality of sounds or the way you record them?

[Brian!]

both

[Realziment]

Its all about the sticks.

[glissando]

yes

[mikethedrummer]

A great drummer will never sound bad.
A bad drummer will never sound good.

[Griffin Avid]

I'm trying to go down a very honest route of only sampling what I'm prepared to pay to clear.

Are you worrying about clearing samples for records or beats? Sounds like you're thinking about the business during the creative process. Bad idea as far as I'm concerned. Make your best music and worry about the business when business is on table. You can get an important enough song through by replaying the break or swapping the drums if clearance is truly an impossible snag.

That library stuff don't ever seem to be quite as good the ones I dig for. Use a different library. There are libraries that are nothing but vinyl samples and breaks. And there are original break comps that emulate the vinyl sound to a tee.

My question for everyone is do you think the most important thing is the quality of drums sounds you sample, or the way you sample or record them?
Both. Either aspect can over-shadow the other. A great break has both an ill pattern/timing and sound.

A great drummer will never sound bad.
A bad drummer will never sound good.

There are lots of breaks that have great sounds and cheesy patterns and vice versa. You snag the MIDI data and swap out the drums and Drumagog and programs that chop breaks etc. It's all about getting what you want from that raw material.

I say you learn to lay down your own breaks. Whether it's rearranging the hits from a break or using a break based kit from a module. You can go very far by studying the MIDI data and timing from breaks and seeing the 'imperfections' and straying from the rigid 16ths timing.

[Osten Powers]

Sample clearance for drum sounds???

[Lord Lav]

Cool cheers for your input peeps it's much appreciated

[tru]

it was his quality analog outboard gear he used. And a few genius techniques!

[DEZEA]

I'd say both. But, it's also about how you mix things. A great sounding drum sound can turn out bad if you mix it with the wrong song.

[fn86]

its all about the feel - dont chop shit up like straight oneshots, chop it up so you have like bBoom kick, snareTSSShihat, bBoomOpenhihat. if you chop it up to small you kill the feel in the break.

if you chop it up with some feel and then start to play around whith the chop, i guarantee you that it wont take more than a minute to get a wildin' feel with the hihats going their way and the kick snare doing their thang.

then push that baby into your eq of choice and enchance it, maybe some analog flavor of choice followed by a transient designer, and youre there!

listen to some premo, pete rock, alchemist.... FOLLOW BUT MAKE YOUR OWN THING OF IT

This is the way i do it, there is no manual to this shit baby, if you go hard and keep learning one day you will have total control over the whole musical process - thats where im heading

[utters]

Originally Posted by Osten Powers

Sample clearance for drum sounds???

my thoughts exactly... I know some FAMOUS breaks that have been used uncleared in many a big track...

hot that i'm condoning it of course... ahem...