Do u guys use -
 

Do u guys tend to use ready made drumloops (maybe layer a few together) or do u slice up the loops and use them or do u program u'r own drums and percussion from scratch ?

my percussion is usually not worked on much cause i tend to use ready loops...i wanna make great percussion in my tracks....

what are some methods of improving that area of production ?
should i learn some drum theory ?
also how can i make the percussion powerful so it stands out...?

thanks

Depends on the music you make. But you can make your own kick snare hihat crash and stuff and put a loop over it (with lowcut on it). This I think most guy's do with house/trance.

Percussion needs in most trance genres are pretty simple, and because my DAW (FL) is a decent drum machine in itself, I never used loops just as a matter of philosophy / practice (I try to miminize my use of samples for anything other than basic sounds).

FL came out with a nifty plugin called Drumaxx that is all-synthetic drum sounds (easily tweaked in real time) that can often supplant the accessibility loops would give me, and is sometimes a good go-to tool when I want to get some ideas outside of my normal genre. Great for things like industrial.

I program all of my drums from scratch. I have found it difficult to use ready-made drum loops because they do not fit well into my mix. I have found the series of articles entitled Drum Machine Programming here very helpful:

http://www.cfa.arizona.edu/weinberg/articles.htm

Also, this has been helpful:

http://www.lincsmusicservice.org/dow...ctor_lopez.pdf

Compression, Grasshopper! :D

In particular, check out parallel or New York Style compression. A good transient shaper helps, too.

I never use pre made Loops... 1. It's not my signature... very unpersonal
2. You can start using Pre made lyrics as well, then... Or pre made melody's...riffs or basslines...
3. You earn a lot more respect when you actually CREATE them yourself.

Yes you should start reading about how to make drums and cymbals... And further about making loops that sound like they do on a loop/sample cd. Because exact microtunning and processing the sound is the key to the sound that sells.
Still it depends on which music you want to make... Using samples of real recorded percussion like Bongo's, Conga's... and all other stuff could be difficult to synthesize like the real stuff.

I think most top producers do not know only which notes to play to make a good riff or a melody... those notes are nothing more then a frequency.

It's the creation of new sounds that is one of those main factors of selling the record.

Never underestimate the power of SOUND DESIGN.

^^very true!

what I have been doing recently is taking drums from a sample pack, chopping them inside Guru (a pretty cool drum sequencer / sample player) and mixing them through the 1-4 outs and throwing compression on the drum group bus

adds nice punch and strength to my drums. Moreso than just using standard vst drum machine sounds

I have taken to composing with individual sample hits (Eg kicks, snares, hats, random percussion) on separate audio channels in Cubase 5. Means I can compress, filter, eq etc on separate channels, then send to a group bus for filtering or fx etc if needed. It also means infinite control over the samples on each channel eg, adjusting clip volume, positioning and ability to edit/slice/reverse on the fly.

Downside is, having 30-40 audio channels for drums can drain your CPU a tad. :)

Nothing beats a real drummer. In the end, it's cheaper than sorting through thousands of loops and then adapting them to suit your needs or spending an inordinate amount of time trying to step-by-step program a drum track first and then "humanize" it. Time is money.