Creating the perfect sound library can be a bit overwhelming, IF you are not sure on what you're looking for. While building a great sound library that you can use to make beats or instrumentals can be a bit daunting, following the rest of this article below can help ease some of those stresses.

First of all, when creating the perfect sound library, let me clarify that this does not have to reflect in the form of VST Instrument plugins. While VST's are great on their own, they have the potential of using more CPU than you'd want, causing a slow down on your production. Also, while WAV files can be helpful, having several WAV files can be annoying when you're looking for one instrument to replicate on your hip hop beats. So what else can we do to help build on a more reliable library?

Another file that can be used over WAV's or plugins, are Soundfonts. Simply put, Soundfonts are built from a variety of different WAV files, and then compiled into an instrument for ease of usability. Soundfonts are also compatible with most music production software such as FL Studio, Reason, Cubase, Orion Pro, and others. Picture wanting to add a trumpet to your beat, but in order to replicate it, you need at least 6 WAV files to be loaded in order to make it sound as realistic as possible. However, a person who created a trumpet soundfont would take those same 6 trumpet wav files, and tweak and map them to different keys and into a soundfont file, so that when you load the soundfont file and use your midi controller keyboard, you'll have a series of low to mid to high notes compiled onto one file. Soundfonts can come in handy on using less CPU of your computer, for creating better organization or "less clutter" of your sound library files, and overall maintain high quality for your hip hop beats.

While I'm not saying that your perfect sound library has to be in soundfonts, they can defintely be added to your list. What you want to create your perfect sound library will be to have a variety of instruments for each category, at least a few sounds of each category. I'd definitely suggest to have a larger assortment of bass instrument sounds, guitar sounds, piano sounds, string sounds, and if you do a lot of commercial type beats or instrumentals, some synth sounds will definitely help. You'll definitely want to have some brass instruments, guitar instruments, or world instruments, but generally, they vary with the types of tracks you'll create and may not need as large a variety as the prior instruments mentioned.

Of course, with some musical instrument sounds added, you'll then want to build up a variety of different drum sounds, or, find a few kits that will cover the drums you generally need. The drums can be used depending on the trend or the hip hop beat you're creating, but even if the tracks you're creating are subtle, a good drum kit or two can definitely help.

Finally, you'll want to get your hands on some sound effects, such as gunshots, explosions, and a few other types of sounds to add to your instrumentals, as they can sometimes amplify a beat or instrumental with added ambience. You can probably find a decent variety of sound effects online with a little bit of searching.

While seemingly overwhelming to start, the process can be quite simple. The only tedious part may be listening to demos of the sounds if they're available, to get the best punch of sounds that wil help your beats. Hope this article has proven to be a bit helpful. Happy sound collecting!