Finding Drum Samples - Hip Hop Production Article, Music Creation Information

Finding Great Drum Samples
By RapDrums.com
The biggest problem that producers have today is finding great samples. This is not to be confused with finding samples in general. There are hundreds of thousands of drum sounds floating around on the web and being circulated through studios, but there are very few drum samples that are actually worth purchasing. We’ll teach you how to spot rip-offs and reserve your money for samples that are worthwhile.

One thing that you should always look for when shopping for samples is a demo. This can be an instrumental that uses the sounds in it or some sort of free download containing the sounds themselves. Be careful! If the supplier you are looking at does not give you any sort of demo, it’s probably for a reason. You best keep shopping.

Next, make sure that the site in question specializes in one genre of drum samples. There is nothing worse then buying an expensive drum kit hoping for hip hop flavor, only to find out it’s loaded with techno sounds. Some sites will advertise their sounds as hip hop or R&B because they are the most popular genre, but the fact of the matter is that the site has no experience whatsoever in current hip hop (“current” is emphasized because you must also be on the look out for outdated and old school samples).

Now that you’ve narrowed down your searches to hip hop specific sample sources, let’s take a look at value. A lot of sites will promise you anywhere from 200 to even 10,000 samples at what seems like a cheap price. Do not fall for this! This could be one of two tricks that most (yes, most) sample sites use. The first is simple; the samples are ripped directly from other sample sources, modified and made worse (sometimes unrecognizable) and compiled into a massive .zip file with thousands of skewed, stolen, and unusable sounds This one is usually easy to spot.

The second is craftier and more common among some of the leading sample supplying websites. Let’s say the company “Blankbeats.com,” for example, advertises 300 samples per kit. Well, it’s true that you will get 300 files per kit, but you will not get 300 samples. The way BlankBeats pulls this off is by having a base set of around 25 samples. The “producers” at BlankBeats then tweak the knobs on every FX device they have a tiny bit, thus causing the sound to change.

They do this 10-15 times for each sample, put them all in the same kit, and then charge upwards of fifty dollars! That turns out to be two dollars per sample or more! You could have easily applied that tiny distortion effect with your own software or hardware, and that effect may not even fit in your instrumental! Make sure that you don’t fall for this trick because BlankBeats (along with many others) is ripping you off, unless of course you want to pay for 15 files of the same sample.

Close this window

- Hip Hop Production Tools - Download Hip Hop Samples -
- FREE Hip Hop Samples - Music Software -
- Music Studio Equipment - Music Industry Contracts -