Phattest kick drum around?

January 24, 2011 6:12 PM

I am looking for some truly phat, welly belly kick drum samples.

An ideal kick drum would be the one by Deadmau5 and Wolfgang Gartner at the beginning of the song "Animal Rights".

I'm pretty good at creating little loops on top and what not, but I just have not found a good sample set of hard smacking, no discernible tone (ie, it won't be out of key with the song), no tennis ball sounding (blop, bling type of sound), no loose rumble, super phat whoomph kicks.

***Bonus points if anyone can point me in the direction of some hihat and snare loops that have not been overdone within house.***

I will be super grateful for any help, and will try and help you with anything I can in order to show respect the other way and not just have my hand out.

Please do not suggest I sample the kick from the song itself. There are two reasons this won't fly.

1. If it's not a legal sample, I don't want my productions using it.
2. I'd like a collection of about 10 kicks as strong and phat as this one, and not just the one.

posted by fantasticninety to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

I encourage you to purchase a Jomox MBase 01, a dedicated bass drum machine:

Jomox MBase 01
posted by germdisco at 8:56 PM on January 24, 2011

i'd suggest getting a high level drum machine like battery 3 or geist, which are made for layering drum sounds. most (i'd guestimate nearly 90%) of all kicks you hear in dance and rap music are an 808 kick or a 909 kick, layered with one or more samples on top. get a top notch bank of 808 and 909 samples (i'd recommend goldbaby's tape 808 and tape 909 sample sets) then layer them with other sounds to taste - both geist and battery will come with a huge bank of kicks you can layer on top of your basic sounds (or you can start with one of their bank samples that sounds close to what you want, then add layers on top of *it*) most of my drum sounds have a basic sample with 2 or 3 sounds layered on top to give it character, make it fit well in the mix, etc. and with geist (and battery as well, i would think), you could tune the 909 tone to make it fit your song's key, without changing the pitch/character of the other layered samples.

building your own drum sounds is a basic skill you'll need to learn in order to make ph4t b34tz - sample libraries on their own just don't really cut it imho.
posted by messiahwannabe at 10:35 PM on January 24, 2011 [3 favorites]

> building your own drum sounds is a basic skill you'll need to learn in order to make ph4t b34tz - sample libraries on their own just don't really cut it imho.

I'd agree with that, a dedicated drum machine is what you need to make sure you can really get the kick you want. But it doesn't take much to program good drum sounds. I'd recommend having a play with: Drumatic 3 - it's a free analogue modelling VST based around those classic 808/909 type sounds, with loads of tweakable parameters.

I reckon that Drumatic can give you that Deadmau5 type kick on its own, but if not you can use that as the foundation to give the kick its body, then layer that with a weaker but more tonally more interesting sample to give it its character.
posted by iivix at 3:41 AM on January 25, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for these great suggestions. I do already own Battery 3 but I've found that the kicks that come with it are too rumbly for my liking.

I will definitely consider the Jomox device as well as buying the samples for the 808 and 909.

If there's anything I can do for you guys for helping out here, just PM me.

Thanks again.
posted by fantasticninety at 3:20 PM on January 25, 2011