Dhol Drum

The traditional Indian dhol is a closed shell barrel-shaped drum with a curvature to the body. It is classically played as an accompanying instrument in traditional Punjabi Bhangra, and the religious music of Sufism. For our solo dhol Indian percussion library, we captured a pair of full-sized drums, one larger and one smaller. Our Dhol Drum library contains 5,147 samples and more than 110 distinct articulations, played with sticks, mallets, brushes, hands, fingers, palms and more. Each was recorded in extraordinary detail up close in our studio. We deep sampled two professional Punjabi Dhol Drums for this library, each with distinct characteristics and tuning. These drums have goat skin bass heads and synthetic maylar treble heads. The bass head is tuned with a single heavy nylon rope, wound around the drum through steel rings. The treble head is tuned with a series of steel lugs and rods, typical of most modern percussion.

While the dhol is most often performed with an intensely frenetic style at louder dynamics, we wanted to explore every nuance of these fine instruments. We recorded an extremely wide dynamic range with two different sizes of dhol, from the softest finger articulations to the most brutal stick shattering booms. We beat the hell out of our drums to push these instruments as far as they could go, with up to 14 velocity layers and 10 round robin per note.

The treble head can produce sounds ranging from small timables to aggressive snare-like sounds, depending on the drum size, turning, mallet type, strike position and playing style. The bass head produces sounds ranging from super deep bass booms to supple bayan-like bending water drop effects with profoundly rich low-end. We also recorded wooden clacks over different areas of the drum bodies, resulting in a very well-rounded and playable all-purpose acoustic hand percussion collection.