Hey there,
I am a person interested in making hiphop beats and at first mainly wanted konplete for battery and Kontakt. Yet it has a lot of plugins with hudge libraries and I only have a 500 gb mac laptop. With this said what do you recommend I install aside from the two I already mentioned. I have installed the mixing plugins but am thinking of uninstalling them because I want to use wave plugins instead, as well as the native plugins in ableton.

 

Ableton native effects and waves are more than enough for effects. As for sounds, there are a lot of really decent hip hop sample libraries available, search hip hop on audioz to get an idea of what's out there. As for your synths, that's entirely up to you and your preference. I'd recommend starting out by having a look at sylenth1 and ni massive with some hip hop preset packs loaded in them. That will give you a pretty decent start.

 

For hip hop, as far as synth goes massive is prob the one you'll use the most out the bundle. Least that's the case for me. As far as the instrument libaries, the pianos of course, the brass stuff and bass are all useful. In all honesty though, you may not want to hear this, but I would save to buy a large external to install ALL of Komplete on. The whole bundle kind of works together. Very handy to have.

 

Last edited: Sep 13, 2016

You should use Poise instead of Battery Then seek out some drumbreaks in your local thriftstore.
Generally, you should find your own sounds rather than using whatever you stumble upon first. Stay away from native instruments own libraries, and try to build up your own sound-palette with lesser known kontakt libraries. I am personally very fond of rythmic robot and premiersoundfactory.

 

Everything in komplete can be used for rap beats. Buy an external HD and install the Kontakt Libs there.

 

I'd say it really depends on what type of Hip Hop you like to do.
Do you want to make this new stuff (Trap, Dirty South) or do something like Ryan Lewis did by fusing genres and going a bit old school?
It the former is what you're aiming for, go grab something like Nexus or Sylenth1, maybe even Tone2 stuff.

 

I think Drums Overkill from our sister site will take you most of the way.No loops only oneshots.Big library of sounds for all your needs.Check it out

 

Thanks everyone for your feed back, I got drums over kill and will check it out soon. I also ended up just getting and external drive to store the libraries. I also have massive already but will check out sylenth1 as well. Appreciate it guys! Sorry for the delay getting back to you.

 

Load your new Overkill library together with DrumLab, set them both to receive on the same MIDI channel to trigger them simultaneously and tweak away in DrumLab for your custom drums. You can even load Battery or Polyplex as a third layer.

Sylenth is an awesome instrument, for sure.
You will be doing yourself a disservice if you don't at least browse the Komplete synths.
Kontour, Rounds, Monark, FM8 for leads.
Prism, Spark, Form, Absynth for FX and pads.
Retro Machines MKII for your more classic synth-funk.

With the nature of NI's plugins though, these device are totally interchangeable and there are really no boundaries except maybe imagination or simply the need for a more traditional sound.

Also check out Traktor's 12. Yeah, it's in a Guitar Rack but try running ALL your audio through it. Synths, pads, most especially your drums.

 

Sorry forgot to mention that I'm going for old school sounding stuff but even some more modern stuff every now and again doesn't hurt for when I want to make beats from scratch. Stuff with cool pads and kinda funky. I guess my ideal style aside from the old school style would be a sort of electro funk style but done in a hiphop kind of way. Also I do want to experiment some times with the really electronic hiphop side of things if you know what I mean. Stuff that sounds like this..
https://soundcloud.com/noirsound
or like Lil B's I'm God beat by clams casino.

 

Thanks for the info man! Appreciate it!

 

@ThirdEyeJim if you already have Komplete, install things like Alicia's Keys, Session Strings, Session Horns and Kontakt 40GB factory library.
These are some of the libraries with that pop/modern vibe.
Don't worry if you don't have Komplete though. it's not like you missed a special thing. perhaps you can find another sampler/rompler with a huge sample library. I don't use many NI stuff myself and I'm doing fine without it.

One more thing you can do is to hunt vintage and obscure sample CDs. you know every era had some popular and well known sample packs and almost half of the songs were using them. but there are/were some companies who didn't make it that big and probably changed business or went out. Go find these type of products even if it takes days of searching.

Even old freeware synths and soundfonts may become useful for that unique sound.

 

I just want to add one thing that I haven't seen other's touch on:

The effect plugins! Install the effect plugins! They take up almost no space and they're sure to be as good or better than what your DAW has built-in. NI has some pretty clever analog modeled stuff and I think Komplete includes some nice creative delays and some distortions.

 

Thanks man, will do. Appreciate the advice! I already have a few old obsecure cd's but I will look for some more.

 

Indeed but do you think I need them if I have waves as well?

 

Possibly not, but it can't hurt. Most plugins are between 5 and 50 MB. It's probably at least worth finding out if you like them better than the waves stuff. Lots of people swear by NI, and I know before I uninstalled all my warez stuff I was a fan of the RC24/40 reverbs and some of the analog modeled stuff... solid state emulations, tube series, etc.

 

You'd be hard-pressed to apply an effect like Molekular without a whole lot of chaining in Waves.