Producer Tips: Picking the Perfect Drum Samples pt.2

In part 1 of Picking the Perfect Drum Samples I talked about some of the techniques used when it it came to picking the right drums for your production.

Over the years I’ve seen the market grow with these producer kits that give you thousands of drums Eq’d and ready to go. In no way am I saying I’m against these kits, but a lot of them are pure trash! I say that because most of them are just the same old recycled drums that’s been used in countless production kits.

Back when I was using a AKAI MPC my drum folder on my hard drive was 35.93 GB which is roughly the equivalent of 165,409 drum hits. Now out of those hundred thousand plus sounds, how many do you think were actually ground breaking?! With the exception of the drums I hand picked myself and a few that I got from friends the rest are just the same recycled kick, snare and hi hat.

In the beginning of the chop your own drum era I was blessed to be in the D.I.T.C power circle. We were all on the hunt for drums. The perfect drums! Drums that were different from the standard break beat drums everyone was used to hearing. I can still remember the first time I flipped the “Grease” drums (two minutes and four seconds into the song) and cats were buggin’ like “YO…WTF!!!” I was so proud of myself, but the first time I heard another producer use them and people started saying “YO…those are E’s drum” I got a case of the Big Heads lol. That was an era of when biting was prohibited and frowned upon, now it’s more commonplace to do so. Perfect example…I remember being in the studio and hearing Kanye say “I want the Punks Jump Up To Get Beat Down drums”. Everybody knows that those are the Lou Donaldson drums,but he took the actual drums from the Brand Nubian record. Yay is notorious for jackin’ other people’s drums and it’s acceptable now, but I can remember a time when you’d have serious problems if you were to do some of the things these new producers go around doing. Now I know I might sound like a hater to some of y’all, but it’s just certain things you didn’t do back in my era and stealing drums was one of them.

Now back to these prefabricated kits… I have mixed feelings when it comes to the whole “Producer Drum Kits” phenomenon. I think people get super caught up in the hype. They think just because an A list producers name is attached to the product that it’s good and that’s not necessary the case. I know a ton of no name producers with banging drums and then I know a ton of name brand producers with shitty drums, but those drums sell because people are more impressed with the name behind the drums rather then the quality of the drums.
Creatively, these are sad times we’re living in and part of me thinks its big business behind a lot of these companies that are recycling these kits and just attaching a new name to the same old drums fooling people into thinking they’re getting something new and different. We need to get back to diggin’ and crafting our own rather than relying on these prefabs.

I’m the boss, I don’t make copies, I make originals.

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