I'm looking for some good drum sounds, preferably synthesis rather than sample based. I'm not that good at making these things myself so I thought I'd take a look at what others have already come up with. I don't necessarily need a suite or even much of an interface, just something that makes noise that I can play with. Any suggestions?

What kind of sounds are you looking for? For realistic sounds, sampling is probably the best bet.
For "analogue emulations" - have you checked the Sound on Sound "synth secrets" series?
Should give you some ideas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160403115835/http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

I used this info to make great sounds on VSIG which is a proprietary language similar to PD that runs on Eventide effects units.

@nuromantix Yeah, I spent quite a while reading through those. They were interesting but still haven't given me quite what I want. I'm less interested in making something that sounds realistic and more intested in making something that sounds absorbing, with a couple of parameters that really shape the sound (one problem with sampled sounds is that you really only have control over subtractive synthesis once they're there). Again I'd say that Matt's Elastic Drums would be an ideal model, but I've never been able to find a patch that sounds this good!

@LiamG I have used other sounds in the past.... violin "hits", cello picks, etc, and other sounds from the "natural world"..... slowing them right down to create "drum" sounds. If the notes are too pure it ends up sounding like a bell........ but shaping the envelope, gating, compressing, some fuzz or even heavier distortion etc. can get some pretty interesting results.......
David.

I did these today:
909-ish kick & snares
AM hihats
FM hihats
tom

PD analogue drums.zip

Here's a cymbal, 808-ish.
cymbal.pd

Rimshot is really hard.

rimshot or sidestick?

I guess I mean sidestick but I'm referring to the type of sound labelled "rimshot" on an 808 or 909.

Here is a pretty lame rimshot and a decent clap.

rimshot.pd clap.pd

@nuromantix Thanks for all this work--I'm enjoying the patches!

that clap is great. Much simpler than the one i made, and sounds better.

That rimshot is a speaker killer!!!

You're multiplying the feedback loop by 14 every pass. really dangerous!

Old thread, but eternally relevant subject. I do all my sounds from scratch unless I'm desperate for some acoustic sounding stuff. I'm attaching a patch that yields multitudes of percussive sounds from hihats over bells and clank-clonkies to plain weird shit. For your cowbells and and dings and dongs and prrrsccHHHHOOOUNGs this patch delivers. It's fitted with a randomizer for all osc controls and a preset store / recall function.

fmperc.zip

For now, envelope and filter is not stored in presets, but you can control those (just like everything else) with messages

I get this error:
0-a: no such object
0-r: no such object
0-hpf: no such object
0-pld: no such object

Haven't tried to figure out why yet. I did download the whole zip obviously.

EDIT:
Works anyway after I press the "reset envelope & filter" message. Cool sounds!

@nuromantix Sounds like I forgot to put a loadbang somewhere. I don't get those error messages tho.

Here's another old one I spend a couple of hours dressing up for ease of use:

addperc.zip

This one is based on additive synthesis (6 oscs), with a couple of algorithms allowing you to control the sequence of (un)harmonics and their respective gain with a simple math equation. It excells at metallic bell sounds, but can produce a lot of other weird noises depending how you tweak it. Enjoy!

@bocanegra this isn't working for me because of a broken object named [ar~]. Is this a custom abstraction that you forgot to attach?

Ah, yes, sorry- it's in the fmperc.zip but ill just attach it here:

ar~.pd

Can't get this one to do anything.....

@nuromantix there's an abstraction missing in the zip file (the ar~ a simple envelope with exponential curves), I attached it in the following post, but here's the full zip with [ar~] included:

addperc.zip

Thanx nuromantix, your patches sounding xtremely good!

@bocanegra, addperc works nicely (and sounds great) in Pd-l2ork but not in vanilla. In the latter I get the following errors:

0-sqt: no such object
0-range: no such object
0-vcof: no such object
0-vcor: no such object
0-vcoa: no such object
0-mixg: no such object
0-mixr: no such object
0-mixa: no such object
0-shape: no such object
0-bpf: no such object
0-bpq: no such object
0-hpf: no such object
0-lpf: no such object
0-ega: no such object
0-egr: no such object