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Afro-Cuban Percussion sample cd reviewed by SonicControl
Format:
GIGASTUDIO
Overall
Rating:
(4/5) Afro-Cuban percussion is a new Latin percussion library from Sonic Implants (creators of Drum Series 1, also reviewed), designed to give you, the musician great sounding stereo Latin percussion samples right "out of the box". Afro-Cuban percussion is strictly a library with single hits - you won't find any elaborate loops or performances here (you might want to check out our review of Roots of South America by Big Fish Audio for those). Instruments and playing provided by Joe Galeota (a Berkeley Boston Professor) of JAG Drums. The samples contained in this library were recorded at Blue Jay studios in Carlisle, MA., with engineering by Mark Tanzer (NRBQ, Carly Simon, Patty Larkin, Jerry Marotta, Livingston Taylorand others). With the proper credits out of the way, let's see what this library offers. There is quite a variety of different Afro Cuban percussion instruments on this CD, including Afoxe, Agogo Bells, Ankle Bells, Birimbou, Bongos, Caxixi, Cha Cha Bells, Claves, 3 Congas (Quinto, Secundo, Tumbadora), Cowbell Hi/Mid/Low, Cuica, Finger Snaps, Frogs Eggs, Guiro Cuban, Guiro Meringue, Jam Blocks, Large Basket, Rattle, Maracas, Pandiero, Reco Reco, Repenique, Samba Whistles, Sencero, 3 Surdos (Bambo, Cortador, Macana), Tamborim, Timbales, Timbalitos, and Vibraslap. Each instrument sample also features up to four velocity layers. Most of the bell, shaker and scraper samples have one to three velocity layers (usually pp to mp)). The Congas and Bongos all have three velocities (pp, forte and double forte) as do the rest of the hand drums. The stick drums have been sampled in a similar fashion with varying sampled velocities (some, such as the Timbales and multiple Surdus have pp, mp and mf; others such as the Timbalitos have pp, mf and ff). The miscellaneous finger snaps, vibraslap and cuica have one sampled velocity. Divided on the CD into three folders (one per instrument group; Bells, Shakers and Scrapers, Hand Drums and Stick Drums), each drum sample has two variations: an ambient room version and a close mic version. The ambient versions aren't overly ambient - there's just that subtle bit of ambience that lets the percussion sit naturally in your mix. The ability to be have the choice of ambient and close mic versions is wonderful instead of leaving you with only one static, and rather boring choice: either ambient or close mic. While these may not be the most detailed percussion samples in the world with a profuse number of velocity layers and seemingly infinite attack variations, they sound great, they perform great and they work right out of the box - you just load them up and go. The Bells and Scrapers are indeed usable, but the stick drums and hand drums are the true standouts of this library. The samples are relatively tiny as well (there is a total of about 140 megabytes worth of samples on the CD), so they're great if you want to reserve memory for more detailed instrument samples that you may have to load into your sampler. Even if you plan on hiring a real percussionist to perform on your tracks, I found that these work exceptionally well as percussion "temp tracks" - that is, MIDI mock up realizations of the lines than you intend to have a live musician play (Drum Series 1 was super for this as well). For example, I stuck together a small piece that calls for this type of spicy Latin percussion as a MIDI sequence. The majority of the instruments will remain sampled, while I want the percussion to be live. When the time comes, I don't plan to use my MIDI mock up percussion tracks with these samples and I will instead record the percussion lines live. Mind you, I'm beginning to doubt whether or not I need to hire a live percussionist, but it'll give the musician a feel for what I'm aiming to record from him and his instruments live when I play back the sequence. And the good thing is, the percussion line that I put together sounds real enough as to not offend most percussionists as it rattles their ears for the first time. At least I hope not. Much like Sonic Impants' Drum Series 1, the samples here are stereo only. I would have loved to see some mono versions of these samples since always mixing with stereo samples does put a few limitations on what you can do with pre-panned instruments. According to Sonic Implants, mono samples are currently not planned for release. Regardless, the stereo samples sound great, they are super clean and they come alive and jump out at you when you play them. The hand drums (congas and bongos especially) are real standouts. I found that I could achieve the best results by picking out the samples from the existing patches and creating my own patch with the samples that I needed. This way, I could access everything that I needed for my sequenced percussion line in one patch. By creating some other dimensions available through giga key-switching, you can really put together some stellar Latin kits - it just takes a bit of work to customize things to your liking (but well worth it in the end). At the time of this review, I also noticed that the individual patches aren't available for download on the Sonic Implants site as they are with their Drum Series 1 library. More velocity layers and more of a selection of attacks for all of the sampled instruments here would have been even better, but Afro-Cuban percussion is a library that is worth checking out for it's meager price of $100 if you need single hit stereo Latin percussion samples. |