What Do You Guys Use for Hand Claps?

I'm not talking about 1980s weird drum machine claps, but actual real-sounding hand claps.
 
I searched through the sounds I have for Session Drummer 3 and couldn't find anything except strange ones.  I have a number of EZDrummer kits, but claps are not listed on the keyboard drum map.  The basic Kontakt kits don't seem to have any except for the electronic 808 style..
 
There are some in Fab Four that are not bad, but not the best.
 
Ideas?  Thanks.

Thanks, Matt, but setting up the mic and room and recording claps throughout a song every time is not very practical or flexible.  I would like a sample for the same reason people here want samples of snares and kicks.
 
Anyone have an idea?

Studio/Abbey Road Drummer libraries and VI.One.

konradh
Thanks, Matt, but setting up the mic and room and recording claps throughout a song every time is not very practical or flexible.  I would like a sample for the same reason people here want samples of snares and kicks.
 
Anyone have an idea?

Seriously...record a bunch of hand claps, and create your own samples. I found that sampled handclaps never really gave me what I want, so I just ended up recording samples I liked. The other advantage of recording your own samples is you can get exactly what you want. For example, try recording five tracks of claps, mixed them together, then crop the mixed track to create four clap samples. Assign them to percussion pads, and then you can get some variety compared to just having a clap sample. If you want to get heavy-duty, record several more and assign them to a sampler with velocity-switching so you can choose different claps by how hard you hit the key. It will take you maybe an hour to do your clap samples, and then you'll have them for whenever you want them.
 
Also, this is probably getting a little too esoteric, but clap loops are excellent candidates to become REX files if you have ReCycle.

I record a few, say six, tidy up the timing if necessary (not too much obviously) either by using Melodyne or chopping up the recording and manually moving the claps.  Bounce to clip so you now have a clip of six.  Replicate clip as desired.  Clone the track as many times as you like and shift those in time both ways a tiny bit until you're happy with the overall sound.

Have you tried the One Shots in the Audio Library under Cakewalk Content in the Media Browser? There are 25 different claps there. Some are weird, but many are real-sounding and would sound good stacked with another clap one shot. ("Clap 22" sounds more like finger snaps.)

konradh
Thanks, Matt, but setting up the mic and room and recording claps throughout a song every time is not very practical or flexible.  I would like a sample for the same reason people here want samples of snares and kicks.
 
Anyone have an idea?

I was making a joke, but was also serious at the same time haha! I've never looked in to samples and always recorded my own claps. Layer upon layer. I'm so far happy with the results. But it depends on what style of clap sound you want - recording might not always cut it, especially if you're looking for a produced/stadium/crowd type clap. I wouldn't mind getting a nice sample of that.
 
I wrote a little about how I do mine in another thread once - http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/2816292

Hand  claps only sound convincing when you record two or three people several times and combine them into a comp. Record about 8 measures and copy them on down the line.  
 
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

I like a lot of the ideas bounced in this thread & may even have a go at a few of them myself, especially the suggestion of recording your own clap & maybe a few others & layering them all together!
 
However, until now I didn't really like what I had so I found a couple of samples I liked the sound of in my trusty old Roland JV-2080, played with the pitch & envelopes & then sampled those into Session Drummer 3 where I panned & layered them slightly out of sync & slightly different pitch to each other to give more "grit".  They sound fat & funky now so I've got what I was looking for.
 
Basically, the samples in my JV were gritty noise samples, but I can't remember whether they were originally a percussion sound or a sound effect.  I can check tomorrow when I'm back in my studio if that helps but I found noise samples to be particularly good at this sort of thing!
 
BTW, I also filtered out the low-end to help them sit in my mix better as there was quite a lot of low end noise and crunch ( I expect you probably know that anyway).
 
Hope that helps...

Depending on what I want, I would sample a clap or two on my K2000 or Ex5R then create a patch with the filter cutoff modulating the filter cutoff (and in the case of the k2000, I would also modulate the hifreq stimulator, distortion, or shaper modules). I also set the pitch keytracking so that I streatch out a pitch octave to two or three keyboard octaves to given me more variation. Most of this can be replicated on soft synths.

In X2 there are over 100 loops and 25 one shots of claps. I imagine most if not all the loops came from the Beatscape library included in X1.

lawp

Jlien X

pianodano
Hand claps only sound convincing when you record two or three people several times and ...

This is exactly what Native Instruments did for their Studio/Abbey Road Drummer libraries and they did it in a VERY expensive studio using a VERY expensive microphone. But I wonder why the resulted claps in most of the kits included sound rather weak... 

if you're listening to them in isolation, could that be some pre-processing so they sit in the mix better? (me i just recorded my hands)

That's possible. Or maybe their hands are very small...

the claps and stacks sample pack from wave alchemy is, as with all their offerings, truly stellar, and quite affordable. worth a look.

Anderton

konradh
Thanks, Matt, but setting up the mic and room and recording claps throughout a song every time is not very practical or flexible.  I would like a sample for the same reason people here want samples of snares and kicks.
 
Anyone have an idea?

Seriously...record a bunch of hand claps, and create your own samples. I found that sampled handclaps never really gave me what I want, so I just ended up recording samples I liked. The other advantage of recording your own samples is you can get exactly what you want. For example, try recording five tracks of claps, mixed them together, then crop the mixed track to create four clap samples. Assign them to percussion pads, and then you can get some variety compared to just having a clap sample. If you want to get heavy-duty, record several more and assign them to a sampler with velocity-switching so you can choose different claps by how hard you hit the key. It will take you maybe an hour to do your clap samples, and then you'll have them for whenever you want them.
 

Yup, the best clap results come from doing it yourself.  It really doesn't take that long and the results are better (IMO) than using sampled ones.  Personally, I like them to be panned apart and a little on the sloppy side.  Here's an example of 5 or 6 claps panned around and compressed/EQ'ed together:
 
https://soundcloud.com/cryophonik/fever-feat-aliciya-angel-radio

Craig's answer is dead on.

How's this for old school. One of my few and only experiences with tape years ago was on a song that included hand clap sections. 3 of us stood around a microphone and clapped on que while the tape rolled. It took a bit of practicing and a few runs at it until we all got sinc'd up in unison.