Hello friends!
Virtual instruments are awesome, but we cannot do just with them alone. We are always in the need for the sounds of percussion instruments, transitions, sound effects, vocal inserts and much more. For this we will use SAMPLES. Ideally, they need to be written down and created by ourselves. It can be a fun project to take the recorder, go outside and record the various sounds you like. But you can't just write all of the sounds you need, and for this reason, we either have to buy them, or to look for required sound in free libraries, thankfully there have been enough of them in the Internet lately.
Today I would like to start with paid samples. They still offer the best quality of the sounds, and we already know that we must use the best source to get the best result.
Cloud technologies have given us a wonderful opportunity not to store a huge number of samples on our hard drives (my library at home takes a 500 GB of space), but to store them elsewhere. I have my opinion about this sources, and it’s pretty controversial. There are many pros and cons for and against clouds, but I simply have to tell about these resources. There are now two main resources that I would like to recommend. Splice and LoopCloud.
How do they work? You install a plugin from any of this resource and after purchasing a subscription, you have access to many millions of samples available within the cloud. Simply indicate what you are looking for, the tonality and many other parameters that are important to you at the moment, and the applications offer you a huge number of options that you simply drag to the timeline. The initial Splice subscription costs $8 per month. LoopCloud gives you limited free trial. For them to work, your machine must be connected to the network. I do not have the Internet on my work machine, because I wish to maximally reduce the load on my system (network resources can be very ambiguous and, at times, interfere with the audio subsystem). If you use these systems, please read the license agreements carefully. Since I do not work with them, I have not studied them in great details, but I read that not everything there is unambiguous and simple. Just take some safety measures.
There are also manufacturers who produce specialized sample libraries. They are divided both by style and by certain criteria and cover almost all areas of our music production.
I would recommend the products from Cymatics, Vengeance, Samples From Mars.
The first two manufacturers are focused on creating samples for dance and pop music, the last one produces wonderful libraries based on the sounds of analog equipment of the past. These are including synthesizers and drum machines. It is worth considering that Cymatics and Samples from Mars have free libraries available!
Well, since we are talking about free samples, let's move on to them. Everything is simple here. Go on Google, search “free sample”, follow the link. In fact, there are several other large resources, where with a huge number of samples that may suit you. Be careful, not all samples have an acceptable quality! Nevertheless, you will find a lot of useful information on them.
I have cited the main resources. But there are many other resources that you can find by yourself.
Everything that I have mentioned above will be enough for a full-fledged work. Well, I will repeat myself. Write samples yourself. For these purposes, it is not necessary to have a professional recorder. An ordinary mobile phone, and understanding of the process, are enough to record excellent samples suitable for work.
In conclusion, I will give a couple more links, fulfilling the promise about processing plugins. I will also indicate the specific necessary plugins in the process of our work on our first track. However, I will give you the links, where you will look for them and where you could find huge number of other useful plug-ins, some of which may become part of your workflow in the future.
Huge database of free plugins divided into categories.
A wonderful blog that specializes in news and analysis of free plugins, applications, samples.
Well then. We have described to a greater extent everything that we need for an effective work. This concludes the pre-production part.
In the next article we will go directly to creation of our first composition. Let us be patience and good luck to all!
Stay tuned ...
Andru “Namaste” Shaitar
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