Yes I’ve looked in the sticky sample/vsti thread. I’m looking for drum n bass/break samples similar to what Venetian Snares uses. Nothing like these hyper produced modern drum n bass CD’s that you see now. After trawling through the sample thread I still can’t find what I’m looking for. Stuff similar to the amen break, not overly produced d n b stuff, I guess stuff like the Hospitality EP by VS would be the best description, even 54 Cymru Beats by Aphex as well, and the boxenergy4 remix…
I would say that if you’re not selling your music, sampling from ‘illegal’ sources is okay if you credit. Google Phatso and go to phatso’s free and funky drum loops which has damn near every old funk break known to man.
When you grab a couple of loops, just chop them up and ‘overproduce’ them yourself to your liking.
Johann: with any breakbeat… chances are it’s illegal even if you bought it from somewhere. I’m pretty sure that sample CDs you buy online don’t legally clear the samples before selling them to you at cost. The pack linked to in the renoise channel was created by someone named “101 Breaks” and linked to on many DnB forums … and if you can contact him, I’m sure he will tell you the same.
----- Unless you clear use from the original author, it’s illegal. -----
This, however, does not stop most of the music industry. James Brown never got a cent of royalties for the use of Funky Drummer… and it’s the (second to amen?) most sampled break in history. Will that stop people from using it? Nope. Will that stop shops from selling it as their own? Nope. Does the fact that you got it off of a “Legal” sample CD you bought make it legal to use? Hell no.
Just so you know, the samples in the 101 breaks collection are all named with the original artist’s name and the track it was originally featured in. This should help you pursue rights for legal use.
From an Amiga demo I saw on youtube today: “We didn’t have time to ask the owner of the picture for permission, we will try next time. But if we don’t get permission we would have used it anyway”
Still, I still think it’s much nicer if you “more or less” own everything or at least can name the sources, especially if you really care a lot about the stuff you genuinely came up with (melody, lyrics etc.). I try to separate the two as good as I can. Of course you cannot really know where this or that snare sample came from, I think with such basic bits it really doesn’t matter… plus if you mangle something less basic so much that you don’t get caught, I think you put enough of your creativity into it to “earn” your use of it.
But if I really like a drumloop, I try to rebuild it. I never even come close, but I usually come up with something that is way more funky than it would have been if I just had built a beat without anything to go by.
Dont worry so much. nothing happens if you sample some drum hits. People do it all the time. If you will worry about every bit of sound to be 100% legal then you will never get a tune done
But to answer the original question: Yap, you have to sample a break from some old funk record (or download original (unprocessed) break sample from Internet) and process it yourself. Just start messing with it, apply some distortion, EQ, filters, compression, layer it with some other sample etc etc etc (countless options) and shape a sound you want. This is how they (your favorite producers) do it… There is no magic, really And by the time you are done the sample is processed beyond recognition and no copyright law will get to you
Basically for what i’ve read there’s only a few (read: none) artists that create the beats from scratch (read: without abusing from amen)!?
Strange, i’m figuring out that it’s better to go uncreative than to crack your head figuring out how to create things for yourself.
But it’s fine. The percussion lesson is learned now…
…what about those mad distorted basslines that never seem to “drown” the rest of the song, are they ripped among artists as well?
Well, i’m sorry the sarcasm but i’m quite tired of trying to produce using the usual methods. I usually end up being told how to do things the same way over and over again.
I do make my own beats, or atleast chop drumloops up very much and rearrange them. from there it’s only a small step to adding/exchanging single drumsounds, and voila, you made your own loop.
point is that it’s very hard to get the groovey feeling of a real played loop when doing it in renoise with single samples.
and the line between eval timburlund and this is simply :
take the break of james browns “funky drummer”, chop it up, throw it around so it fits your own composition and say “right” if someone asks if this is the “funky drummer” (and at this point make a note that you need to work more on that so people don’t realize it this instantly)
-and-
sample the amazing 2-bar guitar-lick intro of that song, add some fx, run around claiming “I DID IT !” and act like a total idiot when someone points out that this is a james brown song.
about the bass : I have stopped using sampled bass-sounds ages ago, they tend to sound horrible when pitched up and down. take a vsti (there are great freeware ones out there, as you know) and really start to know it.
harakiri : it’s not a mistake to learn “the works” first, that’s whats called “practicing”. from there you can go and do really unique stuff. question is if you have to release every “practice” you made. But honestly, I still sit down and try to recreate certain effects/ideas I hear in other peoples music, just to know how they do it and take it to my own direction from there on. Heck, some time ago I just sat down and tried to do some “trance”-music just for the sake of it (I never even saved those songs, so don’t bother asking trancefish ) but the fact is that now I suddenly have ideas on how to incorporate a trancegate in my music, it’s a fun little effect if used right and I learned some stuff about those morphing glossy pads which might be handy in the future.
If you learn an instrument you will start by playing easy and known basslines, you can’t just freak out from start doing your own original stuff. But you don’t do this on a stage infront of people who paid for it. (Unless you are in a cover-band.) Get my drift ?
I understand what you mean, still, i’m into this for two years and i must admit that i’ve learned a lot of techniques, but, the truth is that there are producers who manage to get “killer sounds” (read: thumbing bassdrums, sick leads, loud and crisp basslines) while others just limit to wait and scavenger some of their work by sampling or copying the same methods. (when they can of course)
I’ve always wanted to know how to create things from scratch but i’m getting the more confused everytime someone comes with a suggestion…
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I know that all the people want to be helpfull and they strive for the same reasons but sometimes is trully frustrating that it seems so easy for some and so hard for others…
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the idea that people never create their own beats without breaks is kinda silly… many of my beats are 100% pure BYTE-Smasher… I use Drumatic a shitload, and I have a large single hit drum sample collection
hehe, amazing that people still have and remember those. seems I did somthing good back then by collecting them all (it was really just a collection of those loops I found when surfing the net, two here, three there …) there is this internet-backup project which does snapshots of webpages (I forgot name and URL), and the files are still there btw … you have to browse all snapshots to get them, but they are there.
and, btw, I got in trouble a few times because I caused over 90% of all traffic of the artschool where I was a student at that time and where the files were hosted.
and in a more theoretical way about being an artist : there are philosophical discussions about this going on, and a few people say that you should actually share whatever you learn and should not lock away your knowledge because this way you have to keep on inventing all the time. I am actually very much d’accord with this and really try to help everyone and share my knowledge with people I seem “worthy”, because I know this helps other people create art that I can enjoy too.
You should try to look up the renoise IRC-Channel because there is a link to 500 Drumloops 
