I use custom drums.... eg. they don't come from sample packs, but rather drum synths and the like. I love the old 808, 909 sound... if that's played out than a guitar and singing is played out as fuck, rapping too.
But I also like feeding them into granular sample manglers and other effects, layering them with recorded drums, foley sounds, synths, then feeding that back into more samplers and bitcrushers... basically anything
that gives me a sound like I didn't just open a pack of pre-made samples... which are mostly variations of the same sounds I can generate myself.
They're custom because I usually start with some basic untreated 909 or 808 style drums as I'm starting the track, but then reshape them radically, and add a lot more layers of drums as I progress. By the
end the drums are tailored to the track and the track is tailored to the drums. Learning to 'design' my own drums from the ground up like that has been the best skill I've learned as producer.. because sitting there, trying out 100's of drum samples to find a match (which is never perfect) is boring, especially considering the drum tracks I make.. I'd need a lot of damn drum samples. And then the next day I'd need 50 more. It's just not doable, I'd spend more than half my time going through dreary drum packs, collecting individual drums.. pff... I get frustrated and bored just thinking about it.
Most of all it never sounded as good as I wanted... bottom up and inside out is always a better way to work than top down. And a lot more fun. I rarely have to stop my tracks playing for anything now... or change my plans because I can't find the fucking sample.
