Drum Bundle

Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble

The Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble is our industry leading scoring percussion masterpiece. This massive drum & cymbal collection is truly unmatched in the sampling world. Now weighing in at nearly 25 GB with over 25,000 samples, A.P.E. delivers astounding depth, detail, fidelity, and user freedom. It features more than 40 different drums and close to 200 articulations. You’ll find thunderous ensemble sections and solo instruments of all shapes and sizes, including bass drums, a whole array of toms, dhols, riqs, frame drums, bongos, cajons, doumbeks, clicks, clacks, a massive snare ensemble and 6 solo snare drum types. You'll also find fully expressive pedal-articulated hi-hats, stick and mallet rides, crashes, splashes, hybrid and FX cymbals, a 38" gong, heavy Tibetan ting shag finger cymbals, all deeply multisampled along with tons of rolls, crescendos and effects.

Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble is the culmination of all of our years of experience, distilled into the most comprehensive and earth-shaking hall percussion package available anywhere on the market. We set out to build a monster that punched harder, rumbled deeper, cut through the mix cleaner and got the job done like no other could. We wanted a massive sound and responsive playability, without compromising user flexibility and choice. This beast gets it done.

Breaker

Breaker is all about the breakbeat, DIY-style. This hi-fi/lo-fi old/new school bastard was born to be broken, bruised, smashed, pumped, slammed, smeared, blown-out and beat to hell. We set out to find the essence of classic versus iconoclastic. We set out to build a big, fat and extremely diverse drum palette that evoked an equal blend of warm, smooth 70's funk and cold, hard 80s electro and pop. Our aim was to make a drum library that is truly electro-organic: authentic and yet electronic in sound but organically playable, providing the best of both worlds.

The sound is ripe to be chopped, diced, sliced, flipped, trashed, drilled, derezzed, degraded and granulated. It's geared toward hip hop, electro, soul, funk, pop, breakcore, drum n' bass, garage, dub, techno, glitch, 2-step, trip hop, illbient, dub-step, house, and whatever the hell have you. We designed the sound to take digital, tape and tube distortion and FX of all kinds and soak it all right up. The sound is fat, dirty and raw right out of the boombox, but a twist of a knob or two and you've got a searing, brutally crisp sharp jungle kit ready to go.

Clack

The theme and purpose of Clack! is pretty simple. We wanted to capture as much sharp, bright, warm, tonal wooden impact percussion as your heart desires. We captured several bamboo poles, bamboo logs, a whole pile of claves, woodblocks, clappers, box drum, and other assorted wooden implements that epitomize the word "thwack." These elements are specifically ideal auxiliary elements for orchestral composition and epic film/tv/game soundtrack scoring. They also are vital elements in Latin music and hip hop, as well as very useful percussion building-blocks and raw source material for experimental music and IDM.

We recorded all of these sets up-close in our studio with just a hint of room reflection to provide just the right balance of presence and liveliness. All presets include a Release knob to allow you to dial in just the right amount of room you need. All instruments were captured with 10 round-robins per velocity layer, with an average of 6 velocity layers per note. The modwheel controls the tightness of room decay in all patches that don't use the modwheel for other purposes, such as cross-fading or swapping between layers. Any patch that has "mw" appended to the nki filename also uses the modwheel for a special function.

Cymbology

Cymbology is a massive percussion effects library built around bowed cymbals and gongs. We captured 20 unique cymbals, in all shapes, sizes, alloys and varieties, from crashes and splashes to gongs, bells, trashes and even a stack of spent WWII Howitzer artillery shells. We explore the classic bowed cymbal effect in exquisite detail, with dozens of variations for each cymbal, from short stabs to long tortured wails and everything in between. These often sought-after dramatic scoring and sound design fundamentals are perfect for setting dark moods, striking bold transitions, building stingers, weaving soundscapes and manipulating in any number of ways to evoke sonic images both dark and light.

Not content to leave it there, we experiment with dry ice on the cymbal surfaces. The results are just as wildly varied as the bowed articulations, but these squeals, hisses, screeches, drones, screams, rumbles and wails are an entirely different flavor. We recorded both sets of sustaining and short cymbal effects in two wide microphone positions, up close for full detail, presence and clarity without room coloration and out in a large hall, for a rich, lush and naturally spacious reverb ideal for epic and orchestral scoring. Next, we created a collection of extraordinary melodic tuned percussion instruments from the most tonally pure and musical raw material within the library. Each tuned percussion preset has a unique and complex sound, with flowing overtones, broad warmth, clear highs and massive low end, with flavors ranging from darkly harmonic to pure and crystalline. Lastly, you'll find a spectacular array of pads, drones, synths, swirling dreamscapes and complex evolving textures individually sound-designed from the raw source recordings.

Dhol Drum

Our Dhol Drum library contains over 5,100 samples and more than 100 articulations, played with sticks, mallets, brushes, hands, fingers, palms and more, all recorded in extraordinary detail in a close, dry studio setting. We deep sampled two professional Punjabi Dhol Drums for this library, each with distinct characteristics and tuning. These drums have animal hide bass heads (called “dagga”) and maylar treble heads (called “thili”). They dagga sides are tuned with a single heavy nylon rope, wound around the drum through steel rings. The thili heads are tuned with a series of steel lugs and rods, typical of most modern percussion.

We like to refer to the thili as “snare” and dagga as “bass”, since they sound and function in much the same way snare and bass drums are used in western music. The thili sound ranges from that of roto-toms or smaller timables to nasty, abrasive, grainy and thrashing snare-like sounds, depending on the drum size, turning, mallet type, strike position and playing style. The dagga heads range from a bayan-like water drip to a taiko-like boom-crack. We used a wide variety of sticks, mallets, brushes and hand articulations, as well as unique tunings, to explore the widest possible range of sounds that these instrument were capable of. We recorded 10 round-robin variations and up to 14 velocity layers per articulation. For the hand articulations, we've also included a set of nearly 40 tabla-like bass bends from slow to fast with 10 round robin each. These bends are a unique contrast to the bends in our Tablas library, producing a much deeper low end.

High School Drum Corps

High School Drum Corps is a multi-sample drum library focused on capturing the powerful, tight sound of student marching band drum line. There’s a certain unique punch to those hard mid-tones with that truncated dry snap of marching snares and bass drums. It’s quite distinct from the solid, pleasing punch and smooth resonance of typical rock, jazz and symphonic percussion. These drums are meant to be heard loud and clear from a great distance, delivered with the staccato snap of a military formation.

We recorded the drum line in both a large indoor band hall and an open-air outdoor football field environments to provide you more freedom and really put you right in the action. This library has all the flavor and energy of a classic high school marching band drum line, with plenty of pop, crack, whump and boom to bring a little more life into your tracks. There are 2 Marching snares, and 5 tuned marching bass drums (20″ – 36″) for the field recordings, along with quads in the indoor and outdoor ensemble strikes and rim clacks. The indoor recordings feature the same snares and a large 48” concert bass drum which has been in continuous use by the band for over 30 years. The head of the concert bass drum is made of cow hide and it’s played with a large, soft cloth and felt mallet, providing a deeply massive sub-sonic boom. For the full drum line there are flam and rim strike articulations with all instruments playing in unison.

Grit Kit

Grit Kit is a unique sound designed drum kit library that begins with a simple, efficient acoustic 6-piece drum kit. It's your all-around basic stereo jazz set, with kick, 14" snare, 10" snare, floor tom, mid and high toms, hi-hats, ride-crash, large and small splashes. This fully playable and functional drum kit offers a warm sound, with 12 round-robin variations per layer and fully responsive dynamic layering. Built into an easy to use preset with tons of built-in FX options, this by itself can serve as a great “plug and play” drum kit instrument for just about any style of music.

But that’s just where we get started. From that raw essence, we’ve used all manner of strange and mysterious sound design tricks, hacks and evil science to build a killer collection of 15 complete special FX drum kits, exploring decayed, demolished, destroyed and generally degenerated percussion sounds. We take you from lo-fi retro-lounge combos, to brutally overblown and shredded death kits, to crisply stuttering glitch kits and beyond.

Little Epic Percussion

ittle Epic Percussion is a great collection of small orchestral and ethnic hand percussion instruments was designed to compliment our existing collection of "epic" hall scoring drums and percussion, yet it also stands alone as a unique toolbox of punchy, powerful and often needed instruments, like the tambourine and Turkish finger cymbals. We not only went out of our way to capture these instruments as deeply as we could muster, but tried as much as possible to discover new ways of thinking about and playing them. You may notice some unorthodox articulations included with some of the instruments, as well as a few strange combinations and mutations that take the sound in whole new creative directions.

Little Epic Percussion includes instruments such as tambourine, finger cymbals, concert triangle, ship's bell, wooden frogs, monkey drum, native american rabbit drum, and a slew of mixed ensemble percussion featuring claves, kalimba, rattles, shakers, vibraslap, bells, etc. All of these were recorded in our signature epic hall to bring out the full tone of all the instruments.

Riq Drum

The Riq Drum family of traditional Middle Eastern and Mediterranean hand percussion instruments is generally defined as an open shell frame drum with large cymbals or jingles – aka Riq Drums. It is similar in appearance and origin to a tambourine, but this broad family of specialized drums is treated as a very serious and deeply nuanced instrument class in both traditional and modern Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Eastern European music. Rather than simply being an accompaniment or backing instrument, the Rik family of drums can often take a lead or solo role. The jingles, rattles or rings are often played as a discreet component of the drum, along with a broad range of unique head and rim finger and hand articulations.

For our Riq Drum multi-sample library, we captured a pair of full-sized drums, one 15-inch “daf” drum from Greece with metal rings and bearings and one 13” riq drum from Egypt with wide tin “cymbals”. We also captured a toy frame drum that we’ve modified into a miniature riq, by adding a series of rattles. We’ve also included a very large collection of ambient droning and “synth” percussion instruments, created entirely through heavily manipulating the source recordings for this library. The riq has a tight, pronounced tom-like sound, with a very metallic clatter and clack. The daf has a sheep's gut skin, with metal rings and balls to create a deeper and softer tone with a buzzing rattle. The baby riq is a little 4” plastic framedrum instrument that we've modified with small rattles.

Shake

The Shake library deep sampled collection is dedicated to shakers, rattles and bell tree percussion. The fuzzy, buzzy, sandy-sounding “chuff”, “shuck” and “jingle” of hand-held shakers and bells is an essential part of orchestral, latin, electronic, hip hop and even rock music. We found, collected and hand-made 14 different instruments for this library, covering the whole spectrum of shaker instruments. We included deep sampled strikes and shakes for custom rhythm creation. We also included a bonus collection of ambient drones and percussive elements created by heavily manipulating the shake source material.

This library is meant to deeply explore an under-represented niche of percussion and finally allow composers and electronic musicians instant access to truly life-like sound and playability. It's the perfect addition to any serious composer's core instrument arsenal. We also made sure to include a variety of metal percussion, which is the perfect high-pitch compliment to epic percussion scoring.

Street Bukit

The Street Bukit is a classic DIY (“Do-It-Yourself”) drumkit like those used by urban street performers. In cities around the world, you’ll often find street drummers playing all manner of large and small plastic buckets, pots, pans and other scrap and found objects arranged into a rough sort of drum kit. They play with marching or rock drum sticks, jazz brushes, mallets and hands, with specialized technique for producing kick drum sounds - they left the edge of a large bucket with the side of their feet and them stomp or drop it back down in different ways to produce unique lo-fi “bass drum” sounds. As raw a concept as this might seem, skilled street bucket drummers can be profoundly virtuosic, with complex, highly nuanced rhythms, grooves and cadences ranging from drum corps to break-beat to drum n’ bass to industrial and tribal.

The Street Bukit features bucket and pot & pan kits recorded in three ubiquitous urban environments: city street corner, open garage and a small apartment bedroom. We’ve also included our comprehensive FX Rack panel, with multi-effects, compression, EQ, amp/speaker simulation and convolution reverb, featuring dozens of our most popular custom recorded rooms, halls, cathedrals and otherworldly fx impulses easily available right through the interface. You'll also find a huge selection of real-world environmental ambiences that we recorded in a range of different urban environments to really put you in the middle of it all. And finally, there's a broad selection of custom atmospheres, drones, melodic pads and soundscapes all hand-crafted and manipulated from the raw bucket drum source recordings to give you plenty of textures and accompaniment options.

Tablas

Our Tablas library contains both looped phrases as well as deeply multi-sampled tablas. The tabla is a popular Indian percussion instrument used in the classical, popular and devotional music of the Indian subcontinent and in Hindustani classical music. The instrument consists of a pair of hand drums of contrasting sizes and timbres. To call tabla a mere percussion instrument would be a vast understatement of its musical depth, as one of the most revered of all classical Indian musical instruments. We worked with tabla master and jazz percussionist Sameer Gupta to capture a range of tabla rhythm, melody and soul. Sameer has been a student and practitioner in the art of percussion for nearly 25 years, traveling the world to study and perform in some of the world's most prestigious institutions and venues.

This library was recorded close and dry, covering classical tabla articulations and alternative variants for maximum flexibility. You'll also find a broad set of special effect and tuned melodic programs and mutations, as well as a mighty set of brand new morphable ambient drone instruments, crafted and sculpted from the heavily manipulated raw source recordings. The multi-sampled portion of the library contains a staggering 2,333 individual samples. The live loop portion of the library contains over 1300 unique phrases, exploring traditional and contemporary poly-rhythms and grooves. We recorded close and dry, in wide-stereo and covered a wide range of tempos. The instruments are tuned to Middle C, with key-switch pitch control to allow shifting by up to +/- 7 semitones.