In an interview in the german "Keyboards" mag (January 2003 issue) they said they use a lot of Sample CDs, and confirmed that they have used samples from the X-Static Goldmine CDs (amongst others).
You can download those CDs from archive.org. I've only checked Vol. 1, but found a few loops that go in the right direction. (And also the loop used in Air "La Femme D'Argent").

The drum sounds you're looking for are originally from old soul/funk songs from the '70s. That's mainly where the sound comes from, not from an MPC 3000. In other words: Sampling a drum break from '70s soul/funk into any software sampler gets you much closer than sampling a drum recording from the last 40 years into an MPC 3000.

 

You're absolutely right. Texture and punch has nothing to do with samplers and you can achieve the same in your DAW. Now if you have a 3k lying around you want to sell me pls don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you!

 

whocares123 is right. Source samples are way more important than the sampler model itself to get there.

 

Here are some classic drum breaks sampled in other Thievery Corporation songs.
These aren't the exact one you're looking for, but similar sound IMO. Especially the two versions of "Kissing My Love" have that dry sound on the snare.

Drums sampled for "Une Simple Histoire":

For "Warning Shots":

For "State of the Union":

For "Shaolin Satellite" (solo drums at 1:45):

(All credit goes to those who posted these on whosampled.com)

 

For anyone interested, Airwindows have a plugin called Pockey that is meant to emulate old sampler behaviour. You can give a try, and i quite often use it on my kick drum if i want the punch that comes with the bitcrushing on these old samples (ex: 10khz MPC 3000). It's all digital audio anyways. Better understand what the MPC 3K have to be 'magic' and reproduce it in your DAW.

 

I'm sure thats what it is. lol. Dude, I am not saying that their samples are not from a specific sampler. You did. Of course, if you read what I posted about their acoustic performance of one song; is that they have live percussionists and nice microphones (and mixing). You can hook a nice Neumann 87 mic to a sampler and record your drummer. But what you are saying is that you would be able to notice the difference in ten seconds if you heard the same samples recorded with a Warm Audio WA-87. And they are further away than one MPC to another. And you would have 0 clue which was which.

My monitoring is great, Genelecs and Adams. It's your story that doesn't sound right. I bet you could not tell which model sampler a few of the Goldbaby 808's are processed by, completely blind.

What you are saying is like going to a race track, and there being a batch of cars. They can all do a 10sec quarter mile. Which is fast for a regular street car, but not at all some built engine in a actual "race" car. And in 1 10 second pass, you can tell the difference between two different Ford Mustangs (or any other make/model compared against itself) even though you have never owned or driven one.

It's a fish story. you read the website and pretend to now have dog ears. You even mentioned you already know what gear they use. That's not just listening bias, it's bs.

There is a limit to this, as an example. You may not mistake an S950 or S1000 with an S6000 by listening to 10 seconds of each one. But you aren't going to tell the difference between the 950 and the 1000. If you got it right, you'd be guessing.

 

Last edited: Aug 22, 2023

Good tip RiddimMachine! Looks like Airwindows - Pockey2 is free
https://www.airwindows.com/pockey2/

BeatSkillz SampleX is another plugin to emulate the sound of old samplers
https://www.beatskillz.com/shop/samplex-v3/

Spoiler: Marketing babble

SampleX Version 3 brings you new features like – New LP/ HP Ladder resonant Filters, Stereo Width (imaging) Control (mono / M/S expander) & Our Dynamic Convolution System where we have sampled the real vintage samplers to get their exact sound at various levels.

Standard Variable Sample Rate, Bitrate, and an Aliasing Control (Shift) are also present. We have also added IR Machine on/off feature, POP UP value display for the I/O section, Filter Section along with 2 New Sampler Models.

Our team at Beatskillz went on a quest to study the actual circuitry and found each and every step right from the A/D converters, preamps, analog, and digital filters, and processes involved to recreate each stage and bring you a plugin that can not only emulate a sampler but many, and also lets you design your own sampler or vintage chip!

Currently 9 Dollarinos. Just saying...

 

Most of those Beatskillz plugins are not so hot. R2R release almost every one and I do not even bother downloading them anymore. I really don't need to hear another "magic" imaginary SP1200 plugin kind of thing from them. If I was a PC user in need of a nice "retro" software sampler, I would pick the Emu-X, which I think may be the last real product they actually made.

check your pms, i sent you a link for some breaks i probably shouldn't put in the thread.

 

whatever happened to forss, love that album so much.... oh they made soundcloud ok hahaha

 

all arguing aside, can i just say that i LOVE this thread. i played those tracks over and over in the olden times. pizzicato five vs thievery corp was two of my faves meeting. can i also say whosampled.com is amazing and will also ruin some of your fave tracks and artists. i'm still a massive massive fila brazillia fan and was always so blown away by the parts they wrote. turns out so many of them were sampled... i mean it's still totally an artform: finding the right bits and then working them in and augmenting, etc., but it's a lot less mystical knowledge now and more just huge huge ears.

 

Glad you love this thread my friend I often feel that groups such as TC or Fila are so underground that no one in my circle knows about them unless it's through me. Perhaps it's better that way, who knows. Also it seems the world (or at least round my part of it) is crazing over hardgroove & techno (got nothing against it). There's barely any kind of hiphop scene here, let alone triphop, and other music drawing from dub, reggae, bossa, funk etc. I guess I gotta move to a big city. Any suggestions of cities where these genres are still thriving?

 

Thanks for the reply whocares, appreciate the sharing. Yes I'm aware of these samples. You are right that "Kissing My Love" snare is quite similar to the beat in question! I think the takeaways from all this is that one should seek to optimize from the source. Select only the best samples, and use whichever fits the production best. Get comfortable with chopping them up, and get good at layering different oneshots so you can make your own "kits"/beats. And if you don't happen to have an MPC 3000 beside you, don't feel discouraged like it's going to cost you the whole track. If you've got control over 90%, better to get that shit together and not worry about the 10% (or however much % is attributed to MPC 3000 flavor) that you can't control.

Also would you be able to share or link that TC German magazine interview? Super cool, and can't really find anything about it online.

 

Last edited: Aug 22, 2023

Monitors aren't important if your soundcard (DA converter) is inferior. You will only hear the distortion of the DA and not the source material. LIsten to MPC3k vs new MPCs comparisons: do you hear and feel a difference? If not, well I dunno what to tell you.

 

Sure, I've attached it to this post. It's in German, but maybe you can translate it using Google Translate etc.

 

i'm the last person to ask about what's happening and where, sorry. i agree w you that the world moved on past triphop and downtempo for the most part. at least it's primarily a chillout style of music, so as long as you can put on headphones and lay on the sofa, you can always enjoy those old classics.

 

MOTU 828ES. Keep trying. I'm not the kind of person to listen to other peoples gear over the internet and in recordings and try to factually assert what I an hearing. Because I know I would be guessing. However, if you actually had both of these MPC models; we could proceed where discussions like this end up when people actually deal with facts. A null test. Why bother with Impulse Responses when you are available, and just "know the difference".... yeah sure.

 

What are you trying to null test? Lmao. Just go on youtube. There are hundreds of comparisons

 

I recommend you take a look at GoranGrooves Library, there's a reggae library, which to me is one of the best. really nice natural studio drums
and another one "less quality" but super-functional for layering is one kit wonder: dry and funk, goldbaby is a good one too. and don't forget the guys from D16 with Decimort 2 they have a few Mpc presets one of the best bit crusher. peace!

 

But, have you at least made the darn pattern yet?

In your head it’s always going to sound like “magic” until you get working on it. First then you will really know what is and what’s not. The talk about needing a mpc for it is just silly

 

Oh you can make great beats without an Mpc. No question. It just wont have that texture and punch. May be cool tho nonetheless