Best sample cd for hip-hop

[Profyle]

Defjamm, I agree that using construction kits isn't the best way to make music. The only loops I ever use are percussion loops, particularly when it comes to a more ethnic sound as it's hard to replicate the natural groove of a part that has been played live. Even then, I'm only likely to use small sections of a long loop that I might cut and paste into my own customized loop.

I recommended the Black Beats CD as the demo sounds a lot more current than most of the stuff out there claiming to be Hip Hop. Not because it has construction kits. I would only end up using the single hits anyway.

I heard the demo of the new LukeCage CD 'Urban Search & Rescue' and that sounds ok too - from the looks of it it's quite a lot of 70's funk influenced live sounds, which kinda sound like they're sampled from old records but are available to use royalty free.

[Stupid American Pig]

You really can call your self a producer anyway if all you do is sample and arrange funk loops on drum breaks. Someone else *produced* the loops you are swiping, you are just an arranger of others productions.

It seems as though hip hop is moving away from sampling anyway(for better or worse), and its more of just an electronic genre where production is more critical.

[JaseisMusic]

I recommended the Black Beats CD as the demo sounds a lot more current than most of the stuff out there claiming to be Hip Hop. Not because it has construction kits. I would only end up using the single hits anyway.

.

Do you know if the sounds you hear in the loops are on the CD individually?

[Profyle]

I'm not 100% certain that there are single hits, but having used Ueberschall products in the past, I can say that their CD's normally give you the single hit samples used in the loops.

I completely agree with S A P. There are so many people out there calling themselves 'producers', who don't have a creative bone in their body. They have music on the PS2 and they're instantly a producer. I don't think so...

[soulkraka]

If you wanna make hip-hop and you wanna use sample CD's then I'd suggest picking up CD's from any genre BUT hip-hop if you want to be even slightly original sounding.

Go and pick up Spectrasonics "heart of africa" sample CD and on the way home stop by the local record store and dig around. Grab the oldest records you can find that have the coolest covers...the cheesier the better. Go through those records and sample some hits and notes, not loops. Smoke a fatty and open up your audio editor and sequencing apps. have fun and stop trying to sound like MTV.

[soulkraka]

You really can call your self a producer anyway if all you do is sample and arrange funk loops on drum breaks. Someone else *produced* the loops you are swiping, you are just an arranger of others productions.

I agree but it just so happens that the biggest producers of the last 10 years or so do just that.... DRE, Puffy, Premier(to a lesser extent), DJ shadow even.

[atomic_(no)afro]

I have to mention the Wall Of Vinyl series. For those Gangstarr type beats it's one of the best. It's also pretty good for other urban genres too like D&B, Breakz, & 2 Step.

ATA

[grillo]

It really depends on the sounds you're after. Most hiphop sample cds out there are just slick urban / rnb samples, like you can hear on mtv, stuff like beyonce or the neptunes (on almost every cd there's a construction kit called 'neptune' but they don't really come close to it) or timbaland (and their imitators)

While if you're looking for something a little bit rawer and classier i'd suggest raw flava by ueberschall and the vynilistics collection, which has lots of classic drum breaks remade and remastered at cd quality, it beats sampling off of crappy mp3s of the same song anyday.

But really, for hiphop, anything is a sample cd. I have to agree with the who said buy some old vinyl and sample away. Basically you just want to have kickass drum hits, pounding, quality, heavy drums. Then loop anything behind that and you got yourself an hiphop beat

[TeeLangSun]

i wouldn't buy all this construction-sample-cds, that's bullshit. do you wanna make your own music or use loops from somebody else the whole time, that's pretty weak. if you want some loops start diggin old stuff, old rare movies, old soundtracks, something new but not pre-made sample-loops on sample-cds. you can't call yourself producers usin that shit, producers are the people who have produced the sample-loops on this cds. for great drums try www.modernbeats.com,

I may be missing something here, but I don't see any difference between a sample cd and modernbeats.com. Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with either. But you can get the exact same thing on sample cds that you get at modernbeats.com. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with using sample CD's. Especially if you're using nothing but software for production. What are your choices, a corny sounding Sonic Synth guitar or wurlitzer which sounds like it was made with a VST synthesizer, or a real one played by a real musician.

There's no hard reason for anyone to just load up a loop and play it back unless they simply want to do that which is also fine. But I personally work with lots of loops and never simply play anything back. I go for the loops because of the quality of their sounds and the realism which still can't be had from using Virtual sound modules or synthesizers. Even the "electronic" style hip hop is difficult to produce with excellent quality of sound with just software synths and FX. So for quality hip hop, get samples and use them as much as possible in your music. If you have no interest in simply playing back a premade loop, use a beat chopping application to chop up the beats and rearrange them to be unrecognizeable to their former selves.

Basses are probably the easiest and can be reasonably produced with existing software. Trilogy is way way way over the top. In all my life, I won't have a need for that many basses and since bass is so incredibly easy to come by, Trilogy is an extreme waste of money. Stylus has excellent sounds in it, but it's interface is cumbersome enough to discourage one from using it. Maybe the Stylus RMX coming out soon will rememdy this. Plus Stylus doesn't work properly in Fruity Loops which a lot of hip hop producers use, nor in Orion Platinum.

[defjamm]

i wouldn't buy all this construction-sample-cds, that's bullshit. do you wanna make your own music or use loops from somebody else the whole time, that's pretty weak. if you want some loops start diggin old stuff, old rare movies, old soundtracks, something new but not pre-made sample-loops on sample-cds. you can't call yourself producers usin that shit, producers are the people who have produced the sample-loops on this cds. for great drums try www.modernbeats.com,

I may be missing something here, but I don't see any difference between a sample cd and modernbeats.com.

indeed you are missing something. i'm talkin about this lame-construction-kits-sample-cds like black beatz from da block, black butta, off the hook and so on. modernbeats has great drum-samples, but no LOOPS(yes they have that too but im talkin bout the single-hit-samples). i had a lot of different sample-cds(ueberschall, zero-g, big fish audio) and that's all bullshit with this pre-made loops with names like neptune, timbo, swizzle(or something like that for swizz beatz) and so on. the only usable things on these cds were the single-drums(but i say it again, i like modenbeats more)

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with using sample CD's. Especially if you're using nothing but software for production. What are your choices, a corny sounding Sonic Synth guitar or wurlitzer which sounds like it was made with a VST synthesizer, or a real one played by a real musician.

you don't get ma point, im not against sample-cds, im against constructionkits and sampleloops, that's bullshit man. real producers use workstations for example and these workstations can't compete with great sample-cds, may it be sonic reality or others(sonic reality was only one example, the boss there programmed some patches for motifs for example)

Even the "electronic" style hip hop is difficult to produce with excellent quality of sound with just software synths and FX.

the only thing missin here are your producin-skillz.

Trilogy is way way way over the top. In all my life, I won't have a need for that many basses and since bass is so incredibly easy to come by, Trilogy is an extreme waste of money.

now that's your opinion and kind of funny because you don't know how to make great beatz with vstis but trilogy is over the top? come on man.

[JaseisMusic]

okay I'm not going to quote you quoting teelang, but he never said he didn't know how to make good beats , just that it's difficult with softsynths and such. Get it right.
I agree you do need sample CDs and most of us buy them for the individual sounds not the loops so no need to bash them. And if you get several good VSTis and romplers, you will have basses covered and trilogy would be over the top, especially at their price point.

[Homebelly]

I came into this thread late,, and i haven't read it all so forgive me if what i am about to say has been covered,,
If what you want is to have a rough beat so you can work on an arrangement,, then sample CD's might be the way to go,,
If your into writing your own beats that you then want to add to then i would say hunt them down on vinyl and get your self a good audio editor
learn to stack sounds,, three or four snares deep and the same with kicks,, edit out hihats and layer these with other sounds,, use different eq settings on each layer,,
Listen to
Mad Lib,, DJ Shadow,, Danger Mouse,, Timberland ( the king of the bizzar beat,,) Same said about Dre,,
Great software for this is Recycle,, pHATmatic Pro,, Battery,, and Intakt,,
Finally,,
Check out this site,,, http://www.phatdrumloops.com/old_site/
And have big fun,,,

[defjamm]

okay I'm not going to quote you quoting teelang, but he never said he didn't know how to make good beats , just that it's difficult with softsynths and such. Get it right.

if you are not able to produce hot beatz with softsynths, you should stop doin beatz and try somethin other, that's what i'm sayn.

I agree you do need sample CDs and most of us buy them for the individual sounds not the loops so no need to bash them.

he bashed softsynths, now try that: get yourself some sample-cds and check the credits. many were produced with softsynths


there are different kind of beatz, sampleloops(necro), self-programmed(lil john) and so on. if you use sample-loops, start diggin, it is kind of laughable to use construction kits and call yourself producer .