I wanna start to sample drums

BeatsByD

New member
Hey FP.

Im still new @ beatmaking and all that, still tryin to learn.

But i want to sample drums from old records, i wanted some advice on what to do with them. I know how to chop, lets say a kick. But for the most its sounds so thin and dirty, like there is a noise at the end of it.
How would i make that drum sound more "modern" or just make it sound clean.

I know i should use EQ to cut and boost some frequencys and compress it, anything else i should do ?

Just as an example, i have this kick right now.
http://www52.zippyshare.com/v/15225498/file.html
 
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If you dont run them trough any hardware samplers that can twist the sounds, it aint much you can do to make a shitty kick, a fearless one im afraid. But as you said, eq, adjust decay, fadeout and such, maybe play around with attacktime, release and adjust those things, and then to beef up the "clean" kick with artifacts, use a good distortion on it, maybe with some kind of filter. Stacking already cool drums, with those you have made yourself is a pretty nice thing to make your own kicks, but without TOO much work.
 
Another question. I just made some kicks, snares and hihats. The problem is i dont know how to save the kick or snare with the fx on it (compressor/reverb/eq). When i save it, the fx aint there.

Im using Fl Studio.

Btw, here is a simple drumpattern with the drums i sampled. Not bad for my first drums imo
Zippyshare.com - Simple Drumpattern.mp3

I used a little compression and eq.
 
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Do you sample from a Vinyl player?

I dont know about FL studio, but i guess you just have to render them just like a song, through the masterlevel and all yeah... The idea would be to draw in one note on each instrument you want to render.

Say you have a kick, snare and hat layed across the keyboard, and you want to save them.
What you can do is.. like i said... make a 1 bar loop or maybe just half a bar loop, and draw in so the kicks,snares,and hats all will be on the first hitpoint, (where the first kick always should hit) And then mute/unmute what you want, and render loop, save as: Kick 1-Vinyl e.g.

I dont know if there is any simpler way in FL.

What you always can do is download a samplingsoftware and rip the sound directly from FL and into a Wav file, then re-adjust it there. Might be faster, but you will figure this out what works for you.
 
use a low-pass filter before u EQ to remove some of the high frequencies, it'll sound a little less thin and get rid of the high end noise making it sound dirty. u can layer synthetic drum sounds, or professionally recorded drum samples from a sample pack or something with them to make them sound more modern— use EQ/filtering/compression to make them sit right together
 
Thanks for your answers.

Another question. How do i sample drums when there is a melody in the background. I found some sick drums but i dont know how to remove the melody without the drums losing it "soul" if you know what i mean

Like in this song @ the beginning, i know its been sampled before for Dead Presidents by Jay Z.

 
i think i know what u mean. i dont really sample drums myself but i think if u want to remove the other sounds and just have the drum it's gonna take some heavy and precise EQing.. even after that some of it will still remain.. too much EQing and the drum might sound dead and lose the "soul" ur talking about.. just gotta find the right balance.. once u play the drum sample with the other samples and instruments u got going, the extra sounds from the drum sample might just blend in and be barely noticeable.. sometimes those extra sounds might give the music a nice little embellishment.. but of course try your hardest to find a drum sample with just the drum sound alone.. hope this helps
 
Hey! Completely feel you pain when there are melodic elements obscuring the drum hits you want, I tend to avoid those as the only way to get them near clean always compromises the quality and character of the sound.

This tutorial by my friend Monte (an amazing House producer btw) may help, as it is surely one of the best techniques I have come across. I can't post links or videos as this is my first post but you can find it on youtube if you search: 'Kik Processing MONTE'. It is #01.

I've also recently done an extension to this where I use Mid/Side processing to further clean and manipulate the stereo info of a sample which you may also find helpful on particular material. You can find this tutorial under the same search above, this one is #02.

Hope they help buddy!

Peace and love,

Patrick
 
Allow me to quote myself from an older post when it comes to using breaks:

I use breaks all the time and chop them up so I have (I do this lately), for example, 2 kicks, 2 snares, more hats and so on to have some variety in your drum sounds. The fun and good thing about using and layering breaks is that you can create your own unique drum sound(s).

When it comes to layering, it all starts with a GOOD sounding break or sample. Maybe some tips for layering: Let's say you like the bass of one kick, you can boost that frequency a bit with the EQ and layer it with another kick where you think that kick (between the low and mid range) itself sounds pretty nice and EQ that frequency and so on and maybe cut some of the low of that kick.
The same goes for snares. If you like the punch of a snare you can EQ that punchy frequency and layer it with a snappy snare and EQ that frequency. Also, there's no limit on how many drums you layer as long as the outcome is good.

When you've done that you can compress all the individual drum sounds (that's what I do) or record the drums layered and apply it on that, EQ a bit. Whatever. It's all in your imagination and creativity.

Oh yeah, also another tip you can try on a kick to give it some more bump: A Highpass filter with the resonance up and the cutoff like this: |l-------|. Hope I helped!
 
Allow me to quote myself from an older post when it comes to using breaks:



Oh yeah, also another tip you can try on a kick to give it some more bump: A Highpass filter with the resonance up and the cutoff like this: |l-------|. Hope I helped!

Thanks man. great post. but didnt you mean a Lowpass filter instead of highpass ?
 
It can be done both ways, with the lowpass you get a really low (duh. :P) bump but with a highpass the kick still sort of remains I guess.. I don't really know how to explain it. Just try it and you will hear the difference.
 
I use my standard Compression + EQ that i always use on my drums but than add an extra Free Filter (FL Studio) on each mixerchannel. Free Filter is a Low-Pass, Band-Pass & Hi-Pass Filter all in 1.
make a preset for your kick/snare/hi-hat/percussion with it and you should route them through those mixerchannels and re-record the chops 1 by 1.
So Re-Sample it with the FX on it in Edison on "Record On Play". Than cut off the silence at the end of the recording. (i think you can do "Trim Noise" in Edison) And do "Declick Out" on the sample in Edison. (Not "Declick In" of course cause that will take away the punch out of the drums)
 
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