Programming a realistic 4/4 tamborine part

Yes, this is very newb but I've yet to achieve this in the virtual world.
 
I'd like to create realistic tambourine parts.  Meaning, not the same sample sounding like a machine-gun.  But more of a simple 4/4 pattern that sounds like someone is waving the tambourine back and forth.
 
Anyone have any tips, samples they use for this, etc??

I actually have a box of kids musical toys...so i grab a mic and a toy tamborine and have at it.  Thank God for auto snap,

I think Nine Volt Audio has a set of shaker and tambourine loops.
They're going out of business so you can probably pick it up for cheap.

Playing from an Octapad with sticks can help, but loops will still sound better, most likely. Pretty sure there are some reasonably good options for around 30 bucks that should cover your needs and then some.

I just program mine in, and adjust velocity and timing data.
 
Bob Bone

As Gustavo pointed out, Nine Volt Audio has a great set of samples called Shimmer and Shake or something. Fantastic percussion samples including tambourines.

I got it for a great price nice they are going out of business. Probably even less cost now.

Really great for what you are asking to do.

 When I was working on this tune, I scanned all of my libraries to find a shaken tambourine, to no avail.
The tambourine here is from DimPro. I softened the attack(ADSR) to kill off the initial thwack.
From there, I used my controller to manipulate velocity.
May not be quite what you are looking for, but might give you some ideas.
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10285834

I did a synthetic tambourine part for an acoustic "bonus version" of a song ("My Lucky Day," written by Mark Longworth). Normally I would use an acoustic tambourine, but didn't have one handy. The part used a single sample from the Fantom VS, but it sounds very realistic because of the velocity editing. If you want to hear what velocity editing can do, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tvt6DluvoA and you'll hear it kick in at around 45 seconds.

The occasional off beat hit? In my experience Tambourine players sometimes lose focus on the tambourine during the song and push and pull on the timing in a way that is more than swing. dropping a beat in a measure or adding one. Not all the time, but sometimes.
 
And I'm not trying to say that it's just bad musicians who play tambourine. It's often singers who have a lot of other things to think about.
 
The other thing I find is with acoustic groups that tend to pull out tambourines, the tambourine goes into lots of microphones on the stage sometimes causing interesting phasing fx. So for this reason, copying the track and nudging it a few milliseconds, then using a ctrl+drag sign line at a very low volume and panning left and right might be interesting.

...wicked
A crappy tamb played well will sound better than great samples not programmed right. Just grab one and do it yourself. The tambourine is harder to play than people think, but it is a very rhythmic one, you'll find a cool pattern way faster by just shaking one.

I swear this was exactly what I was going to type to you. fooman. Wicked is spot on...honest, you'll mess with samples longer than you will if you recorded the tamb with even a kids tamb and a Radio Shack mic. I definitely recommend recording a real one and just experimenting with your mic placement so that you get the whole sound of the tamb without mic'ing too close. I just did one the other day using two mics that sounded great and the tamb the guy had was nothing to brag about. The ones I have at the studio were 100% better but he wanted the one he brought. It wound up sounding great. So if you can borrow one, definitely try doing it yourself. Like Wicked, I'll take a bad sounding tamb over the sampled ones. :) Good luck.
 
-Danny

Load the rex loops into rxp.
 

Rex loops also work in Kontakt.