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.

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 

Wow, thanks for all of the suggestions!  My method (4 tracks of claps) sounded like 1 track 4 times as thin.  Who woulda thunk it?  Thanks for taking the time to give me all of these suggestions.  You all are great!!

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!

Warren, your 4-track problem was likely caused by comb filtering from phase cancellations. This often occurs when you record the exact same source multiple times. You might be able to mitigate it by nudging each of the 4 tracks by different amounts of time. 

You won't usually get that problem, or at least it won't be as bad, if you can find 3 other people to stand around the mic and record all 4 pairs of hands at once. But if you don't have 3 friends, or don't have 3 friends with any sense of timing, the next-best thing is to vary the position and distance of the mic for each overdub.

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.

;-)

@

Just like the movies don't use real sounds of guns being fired because they don't sound "real", you may have to use sampled sounds as well. 

I do think you could get it from a mic in a room..... but like has been said, you will need to get a number of different people to clap. Just like one voice is different from the next, so too, hand claps are different from one person to the next.   

You can also mix the sampled claps in the various synth libraries you have with real ones. 

Layering is, I think, probably going to be the thing that works. No cloning allowed. 

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.