This is my take on breaks.. it works for me and im really happy with the results… bi don’t know if it’s the right way or wrong way.. but it’s a way all the same..I drummed for nearly 8 years… so when it comes to the breaks side of things I tend to write my own.. in the sense that what I will do is… find the sounds I like.. **a while back I actually hired a studio and got 5 or 6 kits down and sampled them all, boring as shit but worth it**.. write say an 8 bar loop of drums.. I like to use battery to do it…. (now for this ill point out the tempo doesn’t matter at all at this point because you slice the beat later anyway….) … I make sure my 1’s and 3’s are ‘right on the lines’ but what is inbetween.. I wouldn’t personally recommend putting ‘on the lines’ cos this eliminates any groove in the beat… try to think how a drummer would play… no matter how good a drummer is, velocities and timing are never ‘perfect’.. this is the main thing.. say on hats for example… the count would be like 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & .. naturally when you play this pattern your hand naturally accents the 1, 2, 3, 4…the & hits aren’t quite as hard…. Apply this theory also to kick drums that happen in quick succession… because of the way drums are played the first (or second) hit is harder than the other depending on what dynamic you are trying to create… .. someone mentioned ghost snares… sometimes I use different samples for ghosts.. otherwise I bring the velocity down a touch or a combination of both.. In terms of placement, once again depending on the feel you want figure out where they are ‘supposed to hit’ (on the lines) then move them slightly back or slightly forward depending on what feel your looking for…. .. once I have the 8 bar loop written.. I apply fx compression… whatever makes it sound sick… then export the loop as an audio file…. Then I use kontakt (or a lot of you prob use recycle) to mark hitpoints and export the indivdual hits…. I just map the hits I like in midi then bounce down an audio track of all the hits… load up the track with all the hits into wavelab (or similar).. normalize it all… then go through and tidy up each hit one by one.. save the hits for use.. I load up my new ‘kit’ into battery or kontakt and then map the new hits.. still keeping with the same rules of timing and placement as above… then beef up with your big kicks and snares.. top off with a separate hats/ride track… and the beats sound sweet as.. to me anyway … .. yeah so that’s how I make my breaks…. Interested to see what ppl have to say because im practically self taught in all of this shit so far…