We do our best to avoid “cute kitty with music gear” photos at Synthtopia. You can only get so excited about another shot of somebody’s cat peaking out of their Buchla modular synth or sleeping on their Korg OASYS.

Jaded as we may be, though, this is the cutest kitty DJ in the world.

Ohhhh, kitteh so cute!

We’ll try to redeem this post by linking to the source of this photo, the blog of Ryan Gruss – a drummer who says that “the world has been overrun by shitty producers with their 808 samples and re-mixed Ableton Live schlock.”

Gruss is drummer on a mission to put more groove in your mix, and he’s doing it by blogging a free professionally recorded drum loop every day. He includes MP3 previews, but also multitracked Logic sessions and mixed down WAV, AIFF and REX2 files.

They’re Creative Commons licensed, so you can slap it up, flip it and rub it down as long as you give Gruss credit.

Special Secret Groove Sauce: Gruss’s RSS feed has MP3 enclosures – which means it’s a podcast and you can subscribe to it with iTunes and get the free loops delivered to your ears automatically.

In iTunes, navigate to Advanced – Subscribe to Podcast and paste in his feed URL: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/ryangrusscom

Hardstyle Destruction Samples is a free collection of 285 audio samples for hardstyle & hardcore music production.

Download (Hotfile link of .rar archive)

via LorDBassePL:

Enjoy this Massive Crunchy Pack

Behold! The Bugbrand Modular!

Paul has zipped up a handful of about 80 little loops, hits and whistles of the bleepy, R2 variety in his initial explorations into this new synth of his to share with everyone.

Cut em up, cut em loose, show em to your mom. It doesn’t matter what you do with them, but if it sounds fun send it in for everyone to hear!

The samples are shared with a Creative Commons license.

Of what?

Old skool computer game sounds.

The sample collection contains 374 retro style computer games one shots and hits. Jumps, bangs, wizzes, etc. Accoring to HHR, the samples are great when tuned, stretched, chopped and used as part of your drum tracks.

Download it here.

Description:

BMC pack 001 contains fifty drum kits. There are forty impulse set and ten of the kits using drum rack device groups.

The BMC Pack 1 samples are all 24-bit, 44khz in wav format of classic drum machines, perfect for use in every style from classic rock to modern electronic dance music genres.

Using the Live device rack macro controllers you can create an unlimited number of variations from the basic presets. There are seperate controls for the kick drums pitch, decay and volume allowing you to transform the overall kits pitch and sample release while retaining individual control of the kick drums tuning.

Effected racks contain standard reverb and delay as well as more exotic control effects to experiment with.

This pack requires Ableton Live 7 for the drum racks and the one set of twenty impulse device racks and effects.

Download here.

A selection of 100 original Electro Loops, Electro Samples, Minimal Loops, Minimal Samples and Tech House Loops none of these loops appear on any of our products.

via rekkerd

Ryan Gruss

Here’s an example:

Today’s loop is dedicated to Richard Starkey aka Ringo Star. Ringo was the drummer in an underground pop band from the 60’s called The Beatles. I highly recommend going to your local vinyl shop and digging for some of their albums.

Why am I dedicating this to Ringo? Because Ringo came up with the ingenious idea of placing towels on top of his drums when recording in the studio. This technique resulted in the signature “Ringo sound” which was prevalent in their later albums; flat, punchy and ultra compressed. It is also my guess that Ringo used these towels to dry himself when playing drums on the beach. Talk about resourceful.

I took Ringo’s towel technique and ran with it on this one. Using close mic’ing on all of the drums, I cranked up the compressor and panned the toms hard left and right. Finally, I pulled out the bit-crusher and smashed things up a bit. The final result: This sounds absolutely nothing like Ringo but more like something Pharrell would produce after spilling Moët all over the console. Yet again, another reason to have towels in the studio.

Here’s the “Towels” loop:

I like Ryan’s approach. By giving you the story behind his drum loops, he creates an image in your mind that might inspire a new musical tangent. 

Let me know what you think! And, if you know of other great drum loop sites, leave a comment. 

via Oliver Chesler, image stephcarter

ChordWaves I contains a variety of synth chords programmed on modular synthesizers – which are ideal as song-starters for all forms of electronica. They also make excellent atmospheric textures when run through appropriate effects.

You can preview Chordwaves 1 below:

The Wusikstation version contains:

• Over 450mb (32-bit) of raw samples.
• 16 multi-samples comprised of nearly 150 waveforms.
• 100+ Wusikstation v3 presets by a variety of sound designers.

The Reason Refill contains:

• The same samples as above, compressed into a 150mb Refill.
• 24 Custom Combinator Patches utilizing all eight realtime knobs and buttons.
• 16 NN-XT Patches.

Listen to what ChordWaves I offers by downloading the MP3 demos on the right panel.

You can download these samples for free! In order to do so, please enter a valid email into the box below*. You will be sent a confirmation email instantly. By following the link in the confirmation email you will then be sent one more email – this email contains all of the download links for Viral Free! If you don’t appear to receive any of these emails – please check your ‘bulk’ or ‘junk’ email folders.

Loopmasters

• Xmas Giveaway – Pack 1 Loops Of Christmas Past
• Xmas Giveaway – Pack 2 Loops Of Christmas Present
• Xmas Giveaway – Pack 3 Loops Of Christmas Future

Note: These packs are available for download to registered users only. The packs will only be available until Jan. 2nd 2009.

They are free downloads from his site. 

Here are demo videos for each collection:

Atari 2600 Kit for LSDJ

Click here to view the embedded video.

Debussy LSDJ Action

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sega Mega Drive Kit for LSDJ

Click here to view the embedded video.

Donk Kit for the WAV Channel in LSDJ

Click here to view the embedded video.

Beatmatch.info has released four new free audio loop packs:

• Mnml data vol.4
• Dubstep vol.3
• Future Hip-Hop vol.2
• new Beatmatch.info project BEAT+.

Beatmatch is also offering video introductions to the libraries, like this example for Mnml Data Vol 4:

MNML Data – Drum loop / Samples from beatmatch info on Vimeo.

Note: Beatmatch licenses its loop collection for non-commercial use.

Calling all iPhone Beatmakers! Tekniks has now created a collection of free Kits for this incredible iphone app.

Intuas BeatMaker is a music creation studio for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Inspired by hardware beatboxes, loop samplers and software sequencers, it combines them to turn the iPod / iPhone into a software instrument.

We will be creating kits based around each of our sample cd releases as well as exclusive kits from our private sample collection

Registerd users will also be able to upload their own kits to share with other users.

Genres include Drum n Bass, Jungle, Downtempo, Hip Hop, Crunk, Electro, House, and Trance. Each Sound Kit contains a minimum of ten loops organized by genre and tempo. They are 16 bit stereo files in the .bmkz file format.

PLP loops and sound samples are royalty free pro-quality sound files optimized for use with popular software applications such as: Sony ACID, Cakewalk Sonar, Intua BeatMaker, Ableton Live, Propellerheads Reason, Cubase, Logic Audio, Protools LE, Propellerheads Reason, Fruity Loops Studio, Bitshift’s Phatmatik Pro, Magix, Apple Garageband, Apple Soundtrack, Adobe Flash, video game design, and movie soundtracks.

• GTL Vol. 3, a compilation of 20 high quality funky loops in WAV and AIFF format. Download
• mnml data Vol.3, a compilation of 30 high quality tech house and minimal loops in WAV and AIFF format produced by Naucca. Download
• Dubstep vol. 2 consist of 30 drum loops in Wav & Aiff format produced by Verthex Scratch. Download

Glitch Gumbo Vol 1 is available in PC and Mac loop formats at the introductory price of 4.99 EUR.

You can download a collection of free sample loops to preview Glitch Gumbo. The package is available in Apple Loops and Acid formats.

Details: 

The emphasis of this download pack is on experimental breaks and beats, while retaining a good dose of funk and groove. The loops build on ideas from IDM, techno and hip-hop to create an original collection of warped percussive sounds. The consistent use of timestretching, granular synthesis and programmed beat deconstruction techniques makes for a futuristic sounding download pack.