Creating your own sounds Pt1

All your drums are belong to us.

Ok so you’re about to drop a cool $300 on some new sample set that has about 300 new drums in it, seems like a deal right? Hmmmm not so fast.
For that same $300 you could get yourself a great portable digital recorder and actually make an infinite number of your own custom sounds. Allowing you to break out of the norm and finally have some sounds that no one else has. The added value to this is that once you learn to create your own sounds you can better understand what it is about commercial libraries that set the ho hum from the amazing. This will allow you to better spend your money in the future on sound sets that are actually valuable to you. So you’re wondering if you have enough proper knowledge to create your own sound set. Well that’s half the fun. This should be a learning experience, an opportunity for your knowledge of sound to really expand and translate into your music. Mistakes are not always a bad thing unless you don’t learn from them and there is only one way to gain Experience.
Creating Drums of your own should mean creating a signature sound of your own. Some drums are not meant to be used over and over. Sometimes it’s just good to have a signature sound all your own for just that specified moment. Don’t get to hung up on perfect, worry more about YOUR sound.

These are the Breaks.

The tools needed to create your own sample sets are not as elaborate as some companies would have you believe. Let’s start with the basics here. You’re going to need something to record sounds with. In this day and age that is a very open ended area. I am going to give you some options to show just how affordable this can be.
In the prosumer level we have portable digital recorders such as the zoom H4n, Roland r-09, Sony pcm D50, zoom H1 and H2 etc… with devices like the Sony and the zoom giving you access to high quality stereo condenser mics and even xlr inputs this is a pretty much one stop solution to getting the sound onto disk in an affordable way.
But hey what about going cheaper! Yeah I’m saying what if I hardly have any cash… those recorders I mentioned range from $400 down to $99…. But of course you’re can always just use the mics you already have and bring the sound source into your studio. Or maybe like me you have an old digital multitrack collecting dust in your studio. I have an old Roland vs-1680 that is great for micing up some sounds on location. I’ll expand on that ore on that later.
Then you’re going to need some editing software. This does not need to be a top of the line DAW it can be as simple as something like an mpc, or rack sampler. Or even free software editing solutions. I myself this day and age tend to use a combination of Logic pro and Native instruments Maschine. But as I said high end software isn’t really necessary. The keys here are 1) truncating, 2) EQ 3) dynamics editing 4)FX 5) resampling
The main idea here, being quite simple. We are going to not be using $1000’s on vintage drums or amazing guitars etc. no instead we are going to turn common materials into Huge sounds that will make your tracks truly yours.

2 thoughts on “Creating your own sounds Pt1

  1. would these be a good alternative to ripping vinyl as well? if any of them have RCA in’s/or appropriate inputs? a friend and i were hoping to sample the Bontempi Junior, an old school electric accordian key board thing, real basic, and try make it into a kontakt instrument as a project to learn how to do it.

    would the zoom H4n be a bit of a one stop shop for ripping vinyl, recording sounds, and guitars and instruments without having lug the laptop and an external sound card?

    want to drop it all into live maschine playing.

    • Yes it would work great in all those applications provided the turntable is going through a preamp or has a line level output.

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