Brian's Drums: Vol. 1

WHAT’S IN THE PACK?

DRUMS:
- A vintage set of 1957 3-ply Gretsch “Round Badge” drums including a 22”x14” bass drum, a 13” rack tom, and a 16” floor tom.
- A modern 6.5” x 14” Gretsch Bell Brass Snare

That kick and tom combination IS the sound of Rock-n-Roll. You have heard this flavor of drums on tens of thousands of recordings across all genres for more than 70 years. Your favorite recording was probably made with drums very similar to this particular kit.

And that snare drum is THE sound that most engineers are looking for when they begin dialing in drum sounds at studios around the world. Trouble is: Most of them don’t have THIS snare drum under their mics. When you think of the quintessential “perfect” snare drum sound or sample, this is the sound that’s in your mind’s ear.

Now, for this pack, I have tuned all of the drums to sit in the lower range of their tuning spectrum. This results in a deep, weighty sound that has plenty of attack and lots of body but that decays quick enough that the sounds don’t take up too much space in the mix.

Reverb LOVES this drum sound.

DRUM SAMPLE FAMILIES:

I have arranged these samples into three families of sounds:
1. DRY - No processing has been done to these. This is the sound of these drums right at the mics, pushed through a set of very carefully chosen, warm sounding mic preamps. These samples will allow you to process and mix to get the drum sound that you want for your particular needs.
2. MIXED / MASTERED - For these kits, I have taken some time to decide on a particular set of sonic outcomes and used my favorite signal path to come up with several different flavors of sound sets that you can use without needing to process or mix anything. Just pop them into your favorite virtual drum machine or sampler and GO!

You can always add more processing on top of these mixed & mastered sample sets, but chances are that you won’t need it.

3. LO-FI - What good sample pack doesn't include a set of really ganky sounding, Lo-Fi samples of some amazing drums that were recorded at an amazing studio… ummm, well, most of them don’t. But since I often lace in some of these lo-fi sounds into my own drum mixes (especially when I need a sound with “teeth”), I thought that I’d include them here.

Other times, especially in programming loops, I want something that’s all gnarled up and crunchy. That’s what these samples are good for!

DRUM KITS KEY:

Here’s a key to help you understand how each of these sample sets are arranged. The letter at the beginning of the WAV file name denotes its kit grouping (i.e. A = Kit A, B = Kit B, etc.)

- KIT A: Close Mic(s) Only
- KIT B: Close Mic(s) with Overhead Mics
- KIT C: Close Mic(s) with Overhead Mics and Room Mics
- KIT D: Close Mic(s) with EQ & Compression
- KIT E: Close Mic(s) with EQ & Compression and Reverb
- KIT F: Close Mic(s) & Overhead Mics with EQ & Compression
- KIT G: Close Mic(s), Overhead Mics, & Rooms Mics with EQ & Compression
- KIT H: Close Mic(s) & Overhead Mics with EQ, Compression, & Reverb
- KIT I: Close Mic(s), Overhead Mics, & Rooms Mics with EQ, Compression, & Reverb
- KIT J: All Dry Lo-Fi samples

SAMPLE DYNAMICS:

Each kit is made up of several different dynamic ranges / volume levels for each drum. You can use any sample by itself, mapped to single key or trigger pad. Additionally, you can map a single key or pad with multiple dynamic ranges, triggering a different sample depending on the velocity of the triggering event. Your choice!

Kick Drum:
- Loud Open (Beater ball comes off of the drumhead after impact)
- Loud Buried (Just like the name implies, the beater ball stays against the drumhead after impact
- Medium Open (Think 50% impact)
- Soft Open (Essentially a ghosted note)

Snare Drum:
- Loud Rimshot
- Loud Center (no rimshot)
- Medium Center
- Soft Center (ghost note)

Rack Tom & Floor Tom:
- Loud Center
- Soft Center

Cross Stick: Your basic Cross Stick sample. Full impact.

*None of these samples have been normalized. I figured that I would let you decide whether or not you needed to do that for your purposes. That said Kits D-I have been Mastered. So, their peaks will usually hit close to -1dB, especially on the louder samples.