Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional

The ultimate cinematic drum sample library

Spitfire Audio joins forces with the biggest name in film scoring to produce the ultimate drum sample library for cinematic percussion. Featuring the ensembles and solo instruments used by Oscar-winning Hans Zimmer in his blockbuster scores, we've drawn on his years of creativity and studio experimentation to give you all you need to create epic drum composition. From tombeks to taikos, playing from whisperingly quiet to thunderously loud, we've worked with Hans' Grammy award-winning team to capture the highest quality recordings, featuring the same players in Lyndhurst Hall at AIR Studios, London, where Hans records his biggest scores, all mixed and produced by the man himself.

The Professional edition also includes additional mixes by producer royalty Junkie XL, Geoff Foster, Alan Meyerson and Steve Lipson, including CPU-friendly stereo mixes and 10 individual microphone positions.

Produced by the master of film scoring

Hans Zimmer is one of the most successful, influential and prolific film composers of his generation. Having won countless awards including Oscars, his scores for films including Gladiator, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight and Dunkirk he is considered one of the greatest living film composers. Hans has defined not only a compositional style, but also a production approach and sonic innovation that has influenced a generation of composers.

Made in close collaboration with Hans Zimmer and his team of Grammy-winning engineers, musicians and technicians, we present Hans Zimmer's expert, authorised take on cinematic percussion production. Herein lies not an emulation or synthesis of his approach, but a recreation; the same world class studio, musicians, instruments, signal chain and engineers, overseen in every detail by Hans himself with the same attention to detail and perfection, coupled with Spitfire's pioneering technology designed to offer you ultimate creative customisation.

London ensembles and solos

Hans Zimmer Percussion combines the output from two extraordinary recording blocks. Material from the "London Ensembles" block features four of Hans' go-to percussionists - Frank Ricotti, Gary Kettel, Stephen Henderson, Paul Clarvis - performing a variety of instruments and styles, in what is essentially a distillation of over a decade's worth of musical experimentation and innovation.

This includes his classic selection of drum ensembles and key solo instruments:

Low Booms, Low Boom Gallery, Taiko Ensemble, Tamtam Ensemble, Boobams Ensemble, Hi Taiko Solo, Low Taiko Solo, Large Taiko Solo, Bass Drum Gallery, Gong Drum Gallery Solo, Surdu Ensemble, Dohl Ensemble, Tombek Ensemble, Bombo Ensemble, Buckets & Snares Ensemble, Buckets & Crushers Ensemble, Bucket Top & Darbuka, Paper Djun, Piatti, Anvils, Timpani Ensemble. Instruments played by Paul Clarvis include: Bucket, Snare, Crusher, Paper Djun, Tombek, Dohl, Darbuka, Surdu.

The remainder of the library features long term Hans collaborator and percussion legend, Paul Clarvis (Spectre, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, Star Wars) who plays a beautiful selection of solo instruments that offer added bite, detail, focus, clarity and nuance to this epic series. Hans loves the quiet layers more than any other so as well as the bitey thunder you'd expect, there are lower layers that offer up the potential for engaging delicate drum programming to help tick your cues along.

The blockbuster sound

As per many of Hans' scores, this library is recorded in Lyndhurst Hall at AIR Studios, London, via an impressive signal chain: 96 rarefied microphones into Neve Montserrat preamps, into the world's biggest Neve 88R desk (which was exhaustively re-gained at every dynamic layer for optimum signal quality), via a dual chain to HDX and Prism converters running at 192k. We have recorded the drums and articulations each with up to 9 round robins and 6 dynamic layers per hit; there's well over 30 TB of raw material from these sessions alone.

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