Finding good drum loops
I never realized how difficult it was to find decent drum loops until I started using GarageBand, Logic and Cubase and went from a guitar player to someone that wanted to start making songs.
I searched the Internet and what I came up with, for the most part, were MIDI loops. I don’t want keyboard drums—if I wanted that I would plug in a keyboard and make my own damn loops.
I wanted something that sounded like a drummer was sitting right beside me, pounding the bass drum and cracking that snare so that it thumped in your chest. That was not easy to find, but I found two places to buy them.
The first place I went was Beta Monkey Music. They are all about drums. I got their Double Bass disk and was blown away by the quality of what I was hearing. It really sounded like a live drummer—and you know why? It is a live drummer on each loop.
I talked to the owner (also the drummer) and he goes into a studio and records the loops with a professional crew. A professional drummer himself, he knows what to do when he’s recording.
The second place I go is Bandmateloops.com. I’m not just saying that because Scott writes here or because he is a friend—if they sucked, I’d be the first one to tell him they sucked!
Bandmateloops has a variety of drum sounds, many that I’ll probably never use. I can’t see myself strapping on my Zakk Wylde Bullseye Epi Les Paul, plugging into my JCM 800 Marshall Head and playing to Hip Hop drum loops.
Bandmateloops does, however, have a ton of hard rocking drum loops for people like me. I’ve find several sets that I really like and have used for some blues tracks and hard rocking riffs.
Finding decent loops is difficult, but there are a couple of places to get what you’re looking for—it just took me a long time to find them.
