Swirly Drums - price reduced to just $9 permanently

[DSmolken]

Yup, my instrument-sampling journey started on this forum, and several years later it's gotten really serious. I made this:

https://www.karoryfer.com/karoryfer-sam ... irly-drums

It's a brushed drum kit which started out with an attempt to sample snare drum stirs (those circles drummers make with brushes) in a way which would be usable at any tempo. A lot of brushed kits skip stirs, or include them as tempo-specific loops, but I wanted something that would be usable in any song, no matter what feel or tempo it was. I did that, and then I redid it in a way which would not require a keyboard and mod wheel, but be playable from an electronic drum kit. So, that's why they're swirly.

The rest of the kit just sort of tagged along with the snare, but it also ended up being pretty unusual. Inspired by the small kits drummer friends bring to small gigs, we sampled a 20" marching band bass drum and a cajon played with a kick pedal. We also sampled a darbouka, djembe, two bongos and cowbell being hit with brushes, a broken crash cymbal with three big chunks missing, a cracked splash, and a metal drummer's nice China crash and five toms. There's also a reasonably "normal" ride, crash and splash, with the ride getting a buildup control - roughly emulating the brush slightly muting previous hits, and also reducing the number of polyphony voices that busy ride patterns eat.

The hi-hat has six degrees of openness, foot chik and splash articulations, plus pedal return noises, and Peter Jones' sophisticated muting rules.

Walkthrough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnT7_3I4KJ0

Was $29 originally, now just $9.

[pljones]

Obviously, I like the hi-hat response on this .

The snare, though - it really does play well. Most brushed snares on an e-kit are... well, hard to use (one place ns_kit7 didn't get it right). Here, you can play and the response feel usable. Obviously, you're not getting the same response as a real kit but it's pretty easy to adapt to.

You're getting a kit with "character".

[DSmolken]

Thanks. I'm really happy with how the stirs work. I don't think any existing kit has sampled stirs in this way - we didn't sample stirs being performed like they might be in a song, but sort of used the brush and snare to record raw material from which a model of stirs could be built. The first version of the model sounded good, but was a pain to use from a keyboard, and could not be used from an e-kit at all. The second version sounds right, is a lot easier, and can be triggered by a drum pad hit.

I've also done some testing for another potential drum kit with another novel feature - blendable hi-fi and lo-fi mic setups, so it can go from nice and crisp to total cardboard, before using any FX. And I have a Communist-era electric 12-string guitar already recorded as raw samples.

[woggle]

Very impressed with this, I do like targeted libraries with a distinct sound character. Been wanting a good brushes library for a long time. Thanks

[Michael L]

I bought it too. Its a great idea -- a drum kit with a subtle sound and quite expressive articulations. Nicely recorded and dry, thank you. Also, a very clear demo video.

[woggle]

I bought it too. Its a great idea -- a drum kit with a subtle sound and quite expressive articulations. Nicely recorded and dry, thank you. Also, a very clear demo video.

Yes to the good video

[DSmolken]

Thanks guys - being our first commercial library, it's great to see this kind of feedback.

And about that video... I got a singer that I produced a track for last year to narrate it, because the first version I narrated myself sounds like an angry military instructor. Here it is, just for laughs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWF-3ZXqWD4

[Michael L]

You showed excellent musical taste in choosing that singer!

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

This looks great. Any issues with Sforzando regarding latency?

[DSmolken]

No latency or dropout issues when testing from a keyboard (except for an earlier version of the stirs, when I was trying to get the sampler to do something really weird), but I didn't do a lot of testing with very short latency - maybe pljones did more of that, being an e-kit user. Sforzando also works quite well with SM Drums which has a somewhat larger sample pool, too.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

No latency or dropout issues when testing from a keyboard (except for an earlier version of the stirs, when I was trying to get the sampler to do something really weird), but I didn't do a lot of testing with very short latency - maybe pljones did more of that, being an e-kit user. Sforzando also works quite well with SM Drums which has a somewhat larger sample pool, too.

Thanks! It was just a comment from a current, unrelated KVR thread that made me question it. I guess I'll wait for pljones to weigh in, though I suspect there is going to be no issue at all

[DSmolken]

We did have a Mac user report an issue with the slashes in the file paths, I made a hotfix for that, now we'll see if it works, and if it does I'll update the main Zip. I guess everybody else so far is Windows?

[Michael L]

Gratulacje, the hotfix works for all instruments on Mac 10.11.

[pljones]

Can't say I've ever had issues with Sforzando.

[DSmolken]

Gratulacje, the hotfix works for all instruments on Mac 10.11.

Thanks! The download is now the fixed version, and I've confirmed that it works.