Hey thanks so much for being a member! 🙂
In short, it’s essentially an easy business to get into once people understand beatmaking, and discover they can sell sound kits, and that’s pretty much your answer to why there’s so many drum kits available for sale.
Now, you have to be very careful.. just because the product has nice artwork, and maybe a catchy audio demo presenting the sounds, doesn’t mean it’s a drum kit that will truly benefit you and help you excel as a music producer.
To answer your question about does one cowbell sound different than another.. in “technical terms” yeah.. if you’re recording a cowbell into a microphone, you’ll never be able to hit that cowbell the exact same way, so there would “technically” be some nuances in terms of timbre (harmonics on top of the fundamental pitch of a sound).
And that may lead to.. “what is a good drum kit”? .. here’s a helpful article/video I wrote about How to Buy Drum Samples.
There’s no industry standard when buying and selling drum kits, and so that’s where a lot of confusion comes in, as well as what makes it really hard to know where to spend your money.
But.. if you’re using low-quality drum samples, then stumble upon high-quality drum samples, you will instantly discover what “high-quality drum kits” mean!
A high-quality drum kit must have VARIETY and QUALITY. This means you as the producer have tons of versatility in your sounds (bongos, shakers, tambourines, different styles of kick drums)..
As a music producer, my highest recommendation is to avoid construction kits and pre-made loops/midi-melodies, as it won’t allow you to truly create your own music from scratch!
If a drum kit lists something like this:
- 8 Kick Drums
- 5 Snares
- 11 Claps
- 10 Hi-Hats
I would highly caution such purchase.
GOOD Sound Kit Designers are tremendously skilled.. and they will provide you with usually 100-200+ sounds per sound kit!
The pricing will vary depending on vendor, but if the sound kit is $29.99 and you only get 30 sounds, that’s priced pretty high if you ask me..
One final thing I will mention is Presets for Synths vs. Drum Kits. It’s important to have drum kits that are tailored to your genre, otherwise it can be tricky to create a certain genre.. Presets for Synths however are a lot more versatile, and can typically be used no matter what genre.. it’s all in how the notes are played 🙂.
