Both approaches have left me completely overwhelmed, there’s so many results…mainly, I’m getting swamped by two things:
Crap search results, shills for pmts, bad/untrusted websites
Sample packs that focus on one particular item, say, drum loops only, or hits only
Can someone point to some sample packs that are suitable for beginners? By this I mean, something along the lines of a pack that contains:
A few drum samples
A lead voice of some kind
A bass instrument of some kind
I fear that I will incite the wrath of the forum, “You are asking us to do your homework for you!” Agreed, and if you dish the wrath upon me, I can say nothing more than, “You’re right, I deserve it.” I guess what I’m asking for is a little nudge in the right direction, something to help get me started.
You can get what your looking for but your going to have to pay for them. Basically you can’t find the sounds you want for free on the internet, but it’s gonna take a bit of an effort to listen through and find the one you want… however there is no risk on losing out on money
or you can buy one and have everything there that you want already but have a risk of not finding the ones you really need…
if you do end up buying loopmasters.com is always a safe bet, and theres much love for Nu:Tone’s pack too
soundcards that obey the DRM copy protection?
Seriously, i have no idea. There is enough around to get and it isn’t always super quality stuff, but if you want stuff for free, you need to insert the effort for it…
There you will also find the famous ST-01 disk with the samples converted to wav format.
But also the samples with the .xi format (Fasttracker) can be used directly in renoise.
Vengeance, Equipped Music, Breakbeat Paradise, Zero-G, Loopmasters, Big Fish Audio… just a few sample creators I like. Check out Time+Space for more and you can probably place your order there as well. For free samples, just go through the endless amounts of Free Samples threads scattered throughout the web.
many of the commercial sample cds are absolute rubbish, so be careful about shelling £50 out for one. the trouble is that often you have drum loops and stuff which are already processed with lots of effects, whereas really you want clean samples to process yourself. one or two are okay though, if you’re after basic stuff like 909s, 808s etc. you can surely find that stuff for free though (or get vst synth which clones them). i found total house to be a reasonable collection from the many commercial ones i’ve heard, just for basic sounds and effects etc. i also thought the drum libraries which came with native instruments battery were quite nice, as good a collection as i’ve heard of drum sounds and stuff. i’m not sure i’d recommend buying anything though, really.
creating / recording your own quality samples together is a pretty good route. depending what sounds you’re after you can sample cd or vinyl (i’d steer clear of mp3 if you can) or if you’ve got a suitable condenser microphone (for example) you can record some of your own sounds. hit some bits of metal together or bang on a bathtub. a few of your own samples if properly recorded can go a very long way… your sound should also be slightly more unique if you use original source material to begin with.
Just a note on the ST-01 samples… because they are in raw audio format, you will need to do the following:
Before you load the samples, go to Edit > Preferences > Im/Export. Under Raw Audio Import, set Bits to 8 Bit Signed, Sample Rate to 8000, Skip Header Bytes to 0 and uncheck Big Endian.
After you load a particular sample, go to Instrument Settings, and set the Basenote to b-3, the Finetuning to -32, and Interpolate to None (though this last bit is a matter of taste). You will need to do this every time you load a sample.
ST-01 is a pure nostalgia factory for anyone who’s owned an Amiga. Check out my efforts here if you like, and also look for a musicdisc called “Tracked In Time”.
My general opinion on sample CDs is to avoid buying loops. It’s a bit like someone else doing all the work for you. I mean nowadays they come in “construction sets” (or so I hear) so you don’t even have to make the effort of deciding what sounds good with what. On the other hand, single drum, synth, etc samples are all good. Search Goldbaby for some nicely-recorded classic drum machines. And have you seen the Renoise Instrument folder? And the sample collection that you can download with the registered version? And the Beatbattle sample packs? Should be enough to get started with.
Although I see your point about loops, I do not think it’s as simple as that. Loops can be used for much more than just… looping. You can sample one-shots from them and you can extract grooves from them for example. I particularly find the latter useful, because sometimes you hear a loop that’s just dope programmed (either it’s very complex or it has that very accoustic offbeat sound), and then it’s nice to just extract the groove into piano roll/MIDI and use the groove with your own sounds - whether they are from samplepacks or sampled from vinyls. Just wanted to point that out
Anyways, Vengeance Essential House and Vengeance Essential Club are the samplepacks I use when I make trance and other electronic genres. When I make breakcore/drum & bass I sample drumbreak loops from vinyl, and when I make hip-hop I sample one-shots from vinyl.
Have found them slightly cheaper IMHO then going direct with LoopMasters and so on (ProducerLoops seems to be a “clearing house” for a HUGE number of sample companies.) They seem reas priced and good customer service. They also have a lot of good quality large free packs too. I have brought a heap of stuff from them.
Also - keep an eye out on your local auction site and sometimes you will come across whole collections of CD/DVD’s from mags like Future Music, Music Tech and Computer Music which have shed loads of samples on them as well as free VST’s. (Sometimes you get the mags as well - which in some cases have good articles in them.)
Finally - there are a number of older sample sets in the public domain. I have an excellent set of material from:
And although I can’t remember where I got them from right now - there is a large collection from top quality stuff AKAI that were free (I am sure they were “free” as opposed to “borrowed”!) But I can’t for the life of me remember where!
(Of course, posting links is always problematic - as sites close down or move.)
open source, spyware free, creative commons licensing and especially good for ambient noises (but also some decent loops and one shots of drums, guitars etc)
also http://www.sampleswap.org is not bad but be careful as a minority of these samples are definitely ripped from commercial releases and could get you in trouble.
http://www.sonomic.com is also good - 99 cents per loop/sample but some very good samples and they sell small sample packs from the likes of Zero-G and Big Fish at reasonable prices. esoundz.com also has a lot of commercial loops available and has some free ones for members on a periodic basis, although it suits Reason/Live/Cubase users better as they have a lot of .rex loops which those apps support.
The samplepack for registered users is a good way to start. I would like to have seen another 300-400 MB of loops available for registered users, given that Live Intro gives away nearly 8GB of sound content at 99 dollars, Logic gives 11GB of Apple Loops and even Steinberg give 5GB of loops/samples away with Cubase 5. 140 MB of loops for registered Renoise users could be improved a tad.
I like to sample my own stuff too, but not everyone has the facilities to do this and Renoise is a program which relies heavily on samples and VST/AU instruments to make it’s grooves.
