Hand Clap

Try it in the shower.




Find a room that has some echo and use some distance with the mic placement.

Layer a few of them for each pulse.

Use reverb, maybe even with some slap back.


Stuff like that.


best regards,
mike

I use the clapomatic :-) 

http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=83&tab=229

It is also better to get multiple people doing hand claps too. One person just wont cut it so much. You don't have to do it in reverberant spaces either. I have recorded them dry, it is better in some ways. Then you have more control over the reverb you do use. It is the sound of multiple persons doing it that you are after. That gives you the fatness of the claps, not the space so much.

There are some very good hand clap samples and VST's out there, you don't need to record them at all. 

A good trick is to use an odd number of claps too. For example record a small group and pick 5 of the best samples. If you place them on beats two and four and use the 5 claps sequentially you wont hear the same claps in those positions for many bars. Do not use the same claps on beats two and four. It will start to sound obvious quite quickly.

multiple claps, each recorded in different areas and multiple people clapping at once. Layer and edit to taste.

This one surprised me too when I first tried it. The way I like to do it (much has already been covered):

 - Dry room for flexibility in post
 - Multiple mics for more sound difference (a condenser with a dynamic might be good - different takes)
 - Recording samples at different distance from the mic (I found this was minimal in effect in a dry room)
 - Make sure your timing ISN'T perfect! This is a big one. You need to record (or shift in post production) some takes a little early, some a little late. If you're a good muso and your claps are all perfect, it sounds thin and too snappy (unless you want that)
 - Lots of takes
 - Different samples for each clap (as Jeff pointed out) is very important to not sound stale and robotic
 - Pan individual claps differently
 - Group bunches of claps into close, mid and far where the close ones will have minimal stereo spread, a short reverb pre-delay and low mixing, but the far ones will have a longer and less bright verb with more pre-delay and higher verb mixing. You might also want to put the majority of your samples into this section. Eg put 4 claps in front, 10 in mids, and 20 claps in the rear.
 - Clap differently. Palm of hand, on the fingers, flat hand, cupped hand etc
 - Layer with sampled claps
 - Lots of compression may help thicken it out a lot, but I tend to find if the rest isn't right, all this really does is bring up the noise floor without adding too much to the weight of the clap.


Anywho, a combination of those things tends to work well for me.

Since everyone here has covered indepth the "How To" I will take the other approach which will be much simpler.

Many, Many Library's today come with a multitude of different hand clap ssmples. Search out the net for free downloadable samples, look at your Libraries for Rapture, DimPro, Session Drummer and other synth Libraries from sonar. 
 
What about any drum libraries you may have? have you checked them?

If you have any NI Products, check out them.

Loop Masters and Producer Loops have soo many Hip Hop / indie / etc libraries that include claps..

for that matter Computer Music Magazine's included DVD will usually always have hand claps in their monthly collection..

and this is just the start.....I am sure if you look hard enough you will be able to scratch some up with no problem...

And like they have suggested get several and layer, alternate, detune a bit, offset one here or there in the layer etc......

You get the idea.

Clifford 

bitflipper

Make sure your timing ISN'T perfect!

A friend of mine went to a lot of trouble to record handclaps in a song, multiple people standing around an omni microphone in a semi-reverberant room. It turned out sounding pretty OK.


When the record was mixed, the mix engineer took it upon himself to quantize the handclaps.

My friend was incensed when a German magazine subsequently reviewed the record and complained about the artificial handclaps, calling the use of faked, sampled handclaps cheesy and cheap.

Man, that would make you angry!

Bit, as long as the engineer doesn't correct the handclaps, a lack of sense of timing might be just the thing to please German mag writers.

;-)

@

I saw a video once (maybe on the Beatles Anthology) where McCartney was talking about handclaps and said the best way was to use bare skin.  The next shot was of him in a chair, pants rolled up to his knees and bare chested in front of a mic slapping both thighs and his chest with both hands.  Sounded like 2 or 3 people.  So now when I want handclaps I use shorts and my thighs.  Sounds better then a sample IMHO.