getting them warm vinyl drum beats

[grillo]

Use a lowpass filter. Now it took me a lot of time to warm up to this, because it removes a lot of snap and generally murks up drums, so when i listened to it soloed i would never like it, but a little bit on different teacks, compound effect, when listened to in the mix really seems ot work well.

I'd add to your listening list flying lotus, s maharba and toro y moi. Really thick, vintagey sounding beats.

[finni604]

SP-1200 sampler and vinyl samples. Period.

[steampoweredsequencer]

Saturation to about 6dB.
12-bit everything.
Detune samples by arbitrary semitones.
Side chain compress other parts in extreme moderation. Just enough to hear a slight pump but not justice style.
The rest is flavour and taste....and EQ.

[shuchoco]

For me Sound Toys Decapitator has been head and shoulders above other saturation plugins i've tried, a little goes a long way with that thing. I also like URS Saturation, but it's just not as good sounding to me.

agreed, decapitator is fantastic. their new Radiator plugin is also SUPER rad in a similar way. Sound Toys rules.

speaker phone is good for this kind of thing too.

[shuchoco]

For me Sound Toys Decapitator has been head and shoulders above other saturation plugins i've tried, a little goes a long way with that thing. I also like URS Saturation, but it's just not as good sounding to me.

agreed, decapitator is fantastic. their new Radiator plugin is also SUPER rad in a similar way. Sound Toys rules.

speaker phone is good for this kind of thing too.

[Bad Math]

Fun!
I'll tell you what I do.
I sample everything. I add a few gigs of audio to my pool every single week.

Anything. Absolutely anything. Find some random radio station online and start recording it before you go to bed, visit a Goodwill and buy some dollar-bin dvd's to rip..

Use whatever break you like, then start layering it with synthesized sounds and these random snippets of sound. Spend a few hours and you'll end up with something spectacular. It's so much fun that it's ridiculous.

I go through phases when it comes to processing. Sometimes, I let myself be super-creative and make a few dozen loops, only to process the fuck out of them, pan them out all over the field, bounce it down and then chop that up into a simple sequence.

For me Sound Toys Decapitator has been head and shoulders above other saturation plugins i've tried, a little goes a long way with that thing. I also like URS Saturation, but it's just not as good sounding to me.

Really? Don't get me wrong, I've been using Decapitator for a few years now, but do you really find it to be that amazing? I know a lot of people swear by it, but I just don't hear it. Sure, I use it whenever I'm not working on my own stuff, but it just doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to my personal taste. I'd much rather opt for a multi-band distortion unit and use it carefully.

[syzygywell]

Just as an aside on BoC. the s1000 was one of their primary pieces of equipment. I know that doesn't speak to the samples they grabbed... actually one of the brothers plays drums so I wouldn't be surprised if they recorded the hits themselves in some instances.. but processed it through the Akai and then whatever tape sex voodoo magik they practice.

[emdot_ambient]

You can do everything correctly to have the sound you want and then destroy it all if you master the track using modern "louder is better" mastering mentality. And above all, it's the drums (or rather the dynamics of the drums) that get screwed up today.

Pictures talk louder than. This is the evolution of Papa Don't Preach:


So, I don't care how warm you make the drums, if your track ends up looking like the bottom image in the example above, you done it wrong!

[Babaluma]

hey we don't all subscribe to the crushing ethos! but i do have some mad ninja skillz ways of making it work if the client asks me.

am sick of paying money for remasters of albums i already own, hoping they will sound better, with modern converters etc., only to find they have been crushed. i often write emails to record companies about it...

would be interesting to see how little/crushed BOC tracks are, they sound pretty dynamic.

[syzygywell]

There are definitely some bands whose members came of age in the 70's and 80's that are not over compressing their material. Boc, I monster, Telefon Tel Aviv come to mind but only because they've spoken to it. I think there are others.

[shreddoggie]

Purists may scoff while pragmatists may applaud...

whatever your position, there are all sorts of guys on ebay selling HUGE collections of single hits and little rolls and fills all of which are sampled from vinyl. These collections are something like $10 each or so - unless some pride gets in the way it would seem to be a worthwhile gamble + there are often soundcloud previews. They usually list them to get found by MPC searches.

[cscairney]

what most sample fans dont realize that there is nothing as fat sounding as real sound waves that travel through air into a microphone. if you dont believe that play a beat through your speakers and record it with a microphone, then compare A/B. it adds room ambience and compression and distortion etc. i read in an interview about how the prodigy create their extremely fat beats and its all by layering different percussive sounds that they recorded through a microphone in various ways.

This,

I don't know the prodigy material well... but it is a ton of fun to just record yourself thumping around on cardboard boxes in the shower or a pot full of marbles under a blanket and layering them up... then bounce them to cassette and leave it on your window sill for an afternoon in the sun, etc.

[Panason]

Sun-ripened beats

[deepblackjoe@gmail.com]

tape compression. the price is right

[naturligfunktion]

So many fantastic tips in this thread!

My contribution:

- Sample from vinyl. Tend to sound a bit "warmer" in my opinion.
- Saturate the drum break. Legowelt has made an excellent effect chain that can be downloaded from his website. Make the drums sound really nice!
- A little bit of low pass filter perhaps.
- Some nice, subtle compression.
- If you record from a drum machine: run it through an amplifier, filter, some delay or something else.
- In general, if it sounds to clean, run the sound through something. It usually add a bit of character to the sound.

Regarding artists that have nice sounding drums:
LCD Soundsystem tend to have really nice sound I think.
Legowelt always have a nice sound
D'angelo's latest album sounds pretty dope
Can. Boy o boy, that's some nice sounding drums

[Eurocat]

Bump

[Easterner]

Reiterating recording to tape. Saturate a bit. Take off the highs. And playing audio through an amp and re-recording that.

It's fun to speed up the tape and then record this to a digital sampler like the SP1200 or Akai S950 (or PO33!) and pitch back down, as a variant on the old school vinyl sampling technique.

For the samples, keeping a bit of "air" at the end which provides some nice "noise". Similarly, a bit of noise (or field recording) in the rest of the track, which the sampled drums duck with sidechain compression, also provides nice negative space that is reminiscent of warm vinyl drum beats.

Otherwise, I do love using the SP303 or SP404 as an effect (vinyl sim, compression, etc) to run things through from Ableton, which definitely has a now iconic sound too.

[tigerhill]

Not to be a purist, but for gawdz sake don't sample from utoob or shitty mp3s
if you want a vinyl kind of vibe. You can always ruff it up later if that's what you're going for, but you can't un-crappify it.

if burial can sample from youtube it can't be all that bad.

[Soy Sos]

Agreed, but this thread is about "getting them warm vinyl beats" The simplest path seems to be to sample from vinyl.

[Datum]

Yup. I know it's been said earlier in the thread but run them vinyl samples through a low-pass filter. That's what always gives me the "warm" vibes. Easy to see the effect in this clip:

[tigerhill]

Agreed, but this thread is about "getting them warm vinyl beats" The simplest path seems to be to sample from vinyl.

Totally agree and do sample vinyl often. Just saying it isn't the end all be all for this. A bad sample from a record is worth less IMO than a good sample from youtube. Especially since a lot of the youtube samples are recorded by someone else from vinyl.

I also think you can achieve some of that warmth in the box. I recently got a pretty cool plugin called "cassette" by waves factory that emulates tape well - so far explorations have led me to think it is pretty worthwhile considering the low cost.

https://www.wavesfactory.com/cassette/

[dubonaire]

Not to be a purist, but for gawdz sake don't sample from utoob or shitty mp3s
if you want a vinyl kind of vibe. You can always ruff it up later if that's what you're going for, but you can't un-crappify it.

if burial can sample from youtube it can't be all that bad.

Thanks for sharing that.

[cscairney]

nice to see old threads popping up.
Here are some thoughts on it since last I suggested cassette...

Go to thrift store
buy R&B/funk/disco/rock/percussion/test records
buy a record player
Listen to records
Sample Parts you think would make nice loops

Also try
Sample them playing as fast as your record player will go then slow them down in DAW
Sample while gently nudging the plate (adds warble)
Sample yourself moving the record around like a DJ

or google: free breaks

For what you want or anyone else out there reading this I wouldn't waste time futzing with cassette until you've run the gamut of sampling vinyl. Cassette, especially the dictaphone type can churn out some nice results in the way of chewing up recordings, but in my opinion tape is second in the breaking out of the box department.

[okiikahuna]

I think its real sad that Greg Coleman, doesn't get any $ or even credit from all these people thievin' his Amen drum break. According to Wikipedia he died homeless and destitute in 2006. So I guess its too late to make amends now. However anybody who samples his playing should at least give him credit for the drumming. Anybody disagree?

[Datum]

Not to be a purist, but for gawdz sake don't sample from utoob or shitty mp3s
if you want a vinyl kind of vibe. You can always ruff it up later if that's what you're going for, but you can't un-crappify it.

if burial can sample from youtube it can't be all that bad.

The Metal Gear Solid samples really put a smile on my face. I never noticed those, love that game.