What samples/software do you guys use for "beats"?

[brianhood]

I have a band asking for a part of a song to have a "beat" over a sort of ambient part. the only thing i could find that sounded close was this.

http://www.myspace.com/ohsleeper
listen to the beginning of Reveries of Flight. I know it's mainly just alot of delay and reverb and maybe distortion on the snare, but i know some sort of samples had to have been used(possibly from a sample pack)

Another example are several songs from Bring me the Horizon's "Suicide Season". Those have more beat samples like hi hats, snares and other kicks.

I've looked into Stylus RMX, but i'm not sure if that's exactly what i need. i dont need 8gigs of "groove libraries" to accomplish what i need. Just some pro sounding samples that suite my needs

Also, some of Joey's work has beats and whatnot. I'm curious as to what libraries people use for this.

and sadly i've already tried the stock samples on fruity loops out of sheer desperation

 

[Sweetnothing]

I do all things ( I used to make ebm/industrial/glitch at some point) on ultrabeat or battery at the time.
Render a basic beat as a stereo file and chop the hell out of it, build it again on the arrange page, and be creative, like sending some snares to another track with distortion+flanger, some reversed, etc.

The trick is the processing, and vengance libraries help

 

[Zack Uidl]

Personally, when I am doing something like that I use the recorded drums (whether acoustic drums or samples like Slate's) and automate delay, reverb, and other FX. I like the sound of that more that I like the sound of overly synth sounding drums.

Also, I have, on top of what I mentioned, run the drums through an FX bus with an amp sim that has a slight distortion on it.

 

[Torniojaws]

HALion + a shitload of samples from drum machines later processed to bejesus, and a couple of loops from ReFX Nexus.

 

[crazykarl]

Ableton Live has some usable ambient presets, you would just have to throw on tons of deep verb to accomplish that sound

 

[BrettT]

I use Reason for all my drum programming.

 

[DaveBlack]

Until the studio encompassed all of my time, I was making rap and techno music on the side for money and I was doing pretty good for a while there. Dont believe the negativity...I've been an avid FL user since the early days of the program and as long as you know your way around it and collect your own vsti's and samples, its a great program. I still do all of my synth and occasionally drum programming/MIDI with it. I never actually mix in it though. I used to but then I found reaper.

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

Battery 3 FTW!

 

[Zack Uidl]

Reason is good for sure. Definitely cool to get some added effects by blending reason and recorded drums

 

[chdrummer]

+1 for reason!

 

[digitaldeath]

Personally, when I am doing something like that I use the recorded drums (whether acoustic drums or samples like Slate's) and automate delay, reverb, and other FX. I like the sound of that more that I like the sound of overly synth sounding drums.

Also, I have, on top of what I mentioned, run the drums through an FX bus with an amp sim that has a slight distortion on it.

I've run drums to Guitar Rig on numerous occasions for this purpose. Automate the effects etc.
I know you have PODFarm Brian, so I'd give something in there a shot along with the RTAS plugs you're using in PT - using the recorded drums of course. When that doesn't get desired results, I'll often rewire Reason and play around in there for a while, but that can easily eat into your time.

Niall.

 

[Charles J]

Battery 3 FTW. Easiest to use for me. Pick up samples from around the net, theres tons around for free. One huge site, which the name escapes me right now, has tons of rap/techno samples.

Battery is cool because I just load my samples cell by cell, assign a midi note to each cell and bam, programming just like I would w/Superior or Slate.

Other than that, distortion, delays and other weird plugs are your friend here. Most of the time when you hear this kind of stuff in modern metal its basically just 'lo-fi'd' to hell and back.

A cool plug to do this w/is Sonitex STX-1260:

"SONITEX offers a complete suite of processing dedicated to adding texture to digital audio. This allows you to bring the “gritty vibe” from vinyl records and vintage hardware samplers into your modern DAW environment. "

Fucking AMAZING plug.

 

[HandsOfDespair]

Stylus sounds fucking great and is really easy to use.

 

[brianhood]

Stylus sounds fucking great and is really easy to use.

but can you actually use the individual sampels to make custom stuff, or do you have to work with their pre set "grooves" or whatever?

 

[gabriel g.]

With logic 8 you can do that!!!

 

[riffmachine]

+ another for Reason. Cool program for beats and for creating ambient music.

 

[HandsOfDespair]

but can you actually use the individual sampels to make custom stuff, or do you have to work with their pre set "grooves" or whatever?

You can edit a groove but you can't start one from scratch, if I remember correctly.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Reason 4.

I do not use it for regular drums though, I think the stock acoustic kits sound like shit (even the NN-xt ones)

 

[BrettT]

Reason 4.

I do not use it for regular drums though, I think the stock acoustic kits sound like shit (even the NN-xt ones)

The Reason Drum Kits 2 refill is quite excellent. It was done by some of the same people from Toontracks if I remember correctly. Jocke Skog (The Dude) has a few presets on it.

 

[Youpimatin]

Izotope idrum and D-blue glitch, the perfect duet !