About
This sample pack was part of a college summer research project that I had worked on for over the past month. Throughout that time, I had worked eight hours a day recording my former drum kit, a Tama Superstar five-piece maple kit right in my basement/home studio. I always found the idea of sampling my instruments fascinating and wondered how detailed I could get into delivering the most realistic and authentic sounds possible. I then decided that for each drum to achieve its best sound, was to include at least five different velocities with four additional round-robins. This allows for each drum sample to have a complete set of dynamic range and variations that give it a humanistic touch when played. That is the formula I used to create this sample pack, and applied it to the other two additional drum presets that is included in this pack. Each preset has its own unique quality and character to it that was individually sampled in various spaces and effects. As a drummer, I have always loved the art of experimenting and exploring different sounds of my instrument to find inspiration for building a new type of sound. Sampling these was the perfect solution to give artists, composers, and producers a wide range of sounds that stand in both quality and character.
How it was made.
The beginning of this project started with finding just the right spot to record my drums. This pack contains two drumsets being recorded in different spaces. Stairway to Heaven was recorded in a three-story stairway at the West Chester University Swope Music Building. This Yamaha four piece maple kit was covered in close microphones, as well as a room microphone positioned at the very top floor. This allowed us to capture the entire room as the sound bounced off the narrow walls.
Microphones Used: Kick (Shure Beta 52A), Snare (Shure SM57), Toms (Sennheiser E609) 2x, Overheads (Neumann KM-184) 2x, Room (AKG C414 XLII)
Each drum was recorded four times with five different velocity sets, making the recording session a lengthy process that took two days to complete. After the recordings were completed, they had to go through an additional layer of audio processing to remove extra noises that were heard. I used the audio editing software iZotope RX 10 to surgically remove unwanted sounds.
Once all the audio editing was complete, I then bounced each recording as a 24-bit wav file that were then loaded onto XML code for DecentSampler. Each drum hit you hear are the revised recordings of these long sessions, and resulted in high quality samples that anyone can use for free!
Reviews
The best drumkit I’ve ever used!!!
I love the snare + hi hat + toms…. all good. Perfect for keyboard drumming!!
— CHARLIEtheCAT
3 of the most incredible kits
The pack I downloaded for Decent Sampler included not just The Superstar but also d-mod and Stairway to Heaven. All 3 of these kits are gems. Among the very best sampled kits I’ve tried.
The Superstar has this classic 70s blues/rock sound. Reminds me of “Since I’ve Been Loving You” by Led Zeppelin.
d-mod is “glitchy” in all the right ways. It just screams out, begging for use in industrial music.
And Stairway to Heaven also has a bit of a Zeppelin feel but with the release cranked as if you’re in a highly-reflective space.
With no tweaks, these just sit in the mix naturally and elevate everything. With tweaks for a particular piece of music, they will be dangerous!
Simply marvelous. Thank you!
— shayward
This package is 10/10!!!
One of the best I’ve found in here. Thank you!
— Ismael Angelus
Amazing work
Dude i love these. The cymbals especially sound so good, most drum kits tend to have very bland and lifeless cymbal section but not this one. Had so much fun giving these kits a test drive and im going to be playing these a lot!
Love when people share their work like this.
