20th December 2013
Drumdrops has released Royal Drops, which features 15 Soul drum tracks produced and performed by Timmy Rickard from mono sole music.
Royal Drops takes its reference from the music produced at Royal studio in Memphis during the 1970s - home to legendary producer and founder of Hi Records, Willie Mitchell. The tracks are based upon recordings of Hi Record artists Al Green and Anne Peebles, with drummers Al Jackson JR and Howard Grimes providing their unmistakable grooves.
This release incorporates key components found in the classic Hi Records drum sound, including swung bass drum patterns, 8th note emphasis on the hi hats, classically simple drum fills and a few 6/8 drum grooves. A big reason why this drum style is so revered is because of the thoughtful simplicity in which Al Jackson JR and Howard Grimes composed their drum parts.
Unlike the one microphone, large open room drum sounds coming out of Motown and Stax in the 60s/early 70s, Willie Mitchell preferred a small dry room, often using three or four microphones on the drum kit. To capture the same vibe we used the dry live room at Miloco's The Square. The concept behind the mic positioning is unique to this release. Drumdrops used four mic's, each placed in carefully selected positions around the kit, so each mic captures the drum kit as a whole, meaning you can use any one mic as your drum sound, or you can blend some/all of the mic's to create your ideal sound.
All fifteen tracks can be purchased as individual tracks as multi-tracks (unmixed), stems (mixed) or drum loops. The Multi-tracks (which are just the 4 mic positions) come with a tempo map and OMF file to export into other DAW. Drumdrops also provide templates for Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Reason, Reaper, Studio One and Ableton Live and the audio as 24-bit WAVs. The Stems and mix packs which have all the drum parts and percussion as separate stems come as 24-bit WAVs, they also come with a tempo map. All of the mixes have been mixed in mono. The loop packs contain about 8 x 4 bar loops from each drum track. The loops are broken down into each component EG full mix, with and without percussion and they come formatted as 24-bit WAVs, Apple Loops and Rex 2 Files.
Price: From £ 3.00 for an individual loop pack up to £ 60.00 for the album in multi-track format.
For a limited time Drumdrops are offering 20% off any purchases on the album. Use the voucher code royaldrops20 at checkout.
For videos on the making of Royal Drops head here:
For more information or to hear the tracks head over to Drumdrops: www.drumdrops.com/recording/royal-drops
KVR Audio, Inc.
www.kvraudio.com