Spitfire Audio releases Hammers - Drums and percussion instrument created in collaboration with composer Charlie Clouser
Spitfire Audio has released Hammers, a comprehensive collection of drums and percussion instruments presented in the sound-specializing British music technology company's dedicated plug-in with customizations in the mapping of the performances inside the GUI that are unique to the library itself; it was created in collaboration with GRAMMY Award-nominated composer, keyboardist, record producer, and remixer Charlie Clouser (Saw, Wayward Pines, Nine Inch Nails).
Hammers represents the best possible representation of my personal vision for the way huge cinematic drums and percussion should sound, with enough variety and flexibility of signals for everyone to craft their own personalized interpretation.
Charlie Clouser
The library offers 1,000 sounds across 58 drums, including detailed hits, ensembles, performance loops, and genre-bending warps recorded in a brutalist space comprising concrete, glass, and steel, allowing for a uniquely sharp attack and controlled reverb for all levels of producers and composers.
Transcendent. This library lifts our craft up an echelon and takes us into a new chapter. Cinematic drums from 2021 and beyond are going to sound like this.
Spitfire Audio co-founder and composer Christian Henson
Hammers features 58 Drums arranged across eight drum types — Bass Drums, Darbukas, Frame Drums, Roto-Toms, Scrap (metals), Snares, Surdos, and Toms — captured in an acoustic environment to allow for fast-paced, hard-hitting performances, with a wide range of mic, mix, warp signals, and a choice of 12 distinctive reverbs to provide effortless control over drum performances using hard, brash sounds with fast attacks and tight, controlled decays allowing for clear and legible patterns when played at speed.
Included is a mixture of over 130 performance techniques and beater types, including options for drum head tightness, to provide access to a wide variety of unique tonalities, adding a deeply humanistic feel to drum and percussion cues.
Composers and producers needing to push things harder can go bigger with 2 Player and 4 Player hits, delivering the natural resonance between the drums heard on the performances, to instantly create huge sounds without resorting to duplicating tracks. The default Ensembles patch positions the entire collection of instruments across the keyboard — perfect for trying out the sounds themselves and adding flourishes to the performance loops, of which there are over 400 composed and performed by Charlie Clouser himself (with a little help from first-call percussionists Hal Rosenfeld and Lucas Fehring).
All are carefully composed in eight-bar loop phrases — all appropriate for their respective (70, 90, 110, 130, and 150 BPM) tempos — to provide an ability to build personalized versions of the patterns by not only stacking and rearranging via clear key-mapping but breaking up loops and end hits so users can control and develop the performances.
The Warped loops capture the heavily processed sounds that Charlie Clouser is known for, personally mixing and treating them using the same techniques that he developed when working with American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails and refined further for use in his film scores. Synths, step sequencers, a huge modular system, and 40 years of collecting guitar pedals and high-end rack-mounted processors all contributed to the 12 signals each forming uniquely warped processing of the same source material, allowing for a large variety of timbres and tonalities.
Price: £199 / $229 / €229 until August 12, 2021 (Reg. £249 / $299 / €299) from the Spitfire Shop. Any Originals Cinematic Percussion library owner ordering Hammers saves 30% off its MSRP until August 12, 2021.
Other Related News
