Modern Retro Drums for Kontakt
/NEW: now includes Drum Particles Kontakt instruments - Modern Retro edition, for even more power and flexibility
Read below for more info. Free for all registered customers, old and new.
Two kits that helped shape the sound of the 90s
Modern Retro Drums features 4 full drum kits sampled from:
a 1997 Sonor Designer kit played with sticks and hotords
a Tama Starclassics kit played with stick and brushes
The kits come with 4 sets of cymbals sampled from a Zildjian set (sticks and hotrods) and a Turkish set (sticks and brushes) and additional Cymbals (Sabian and Ufip) and 6 snares from Ludwig, Sonor and Tama, presented in 13 different versions.
These kits have been largely used since the '90s to craft some of the best selling music ever recorded.
Video - Limitless
Featuring Modern Retro Drums, BBassV and Model 7 Grand piano + a handful of guitar tracks.
Please watch in HD, otherwise the sound quality will be deeply compromised
Sounds and Patterns Video
Please watch in HD, otherwise the sound quality will be deeply compromised
Video - Making of the song Limitless
Please watch in HD, otherwise the sound quality will be deeply compromised
Audio Demos
This is a selection of audio demos for Modern Retro Drums. For more info on the demos, please hit our Soundcloud page.
Some demos are also presented in a Drums++++ version with the rest of the arrangement mixed very low so you can better enjoy the sound of the library.
All demos feature the drums purposely mixed inside the hosting plugin, hence using only the stock effects available in Kontakt.
The only processes applied to the drum sound after it exits the hosting instrument are: a brickwall limiter on the master (Fabfilter Pro-L) and the mp3 encoding.
Some of these audio demos are tracked from the BFD version of Modern Retro (marketed by Fxpansion), but the two share the same exact sample set, hence they testify the kind of sounds one can achieve.
The Room
After a through analysis of the best selling singles from the 90s we realized, contrary to our belief, that drums featured a rather large real room sound, even if sometimes very low in the mix. So we opted for an historical room in Italy that is not operating anymore as a recording studio. When we were granted access to this space, we had just a few days to setup and capture the drums.
The Drums
Another recognizable sign in music of the '90s is the importance in the mix given to the kick: if the '80s saw loud snares, the '90s where all about kick sounds, mixed rather up front and with a lot of work on both the "click" and bottom of the kick sound. For this reason, we opted for an extensive use of microphones on the kicks and we prepared the two kicks we had at disposal in no less than 13 different ways.
The 6 snares offer a range that goes from piccolo snare to lowly detuned and muted either using a cloth or various damping materials, resulting in 13 very usable sounds.
Even if slightly different in regard to recording technique, the single drums from each kit can be easily mixed since they share the same room, mics and positioning in the room.
Drummer for Kontakt - a custom engine
When we decided to support Kontakt we knew we needed to offer a custom interface for drums. Development took a bit under two years and now we are proudly shipping the first version.
The user interface is thought out to be easy and quick to learn and use while featuring the power-user tools some of us love to tweak when working with drums.
Behind the curtains of the engine allows us to:
feature up to 11 round robins - hitting a drum many consecutive times will never trigger the same sample twice in a row
give you the chance to easily build, mix & match the kit in both the 3D (DrumKit) and Mixer pages
manage RAM very efficiently with purge - no need to load separate .nki load just another kit
feature a full-fledged mixer with mute, solo, 4 insert effects: EQ, comp, transient and tape
insert a built-in global and channel-specific preset management
be MIDI mapping agnostic - we already built in support for a large number of articulations
color-coding for easy recognition of drums on Kontakt keyboard
feature up to 4 Room mic channels
give you up to 4 mixable Close mics on Kicks and Snare, 2 for hi-hats, rides and toms
grant drum-specific control on tuning, velocity curve and attack, hold and release times - instant damping, gating or creative effects
feature an exclusive ADH envelope on Room channels for creative effects
intelligently switch pan-pot and width controls in case of mono or stereo channels (and stereo Rooms get both width and pan for maximum flexibility)
insert channel-specific controls in the settings page, like hi-hat control, snare bleed, or cymbals/percussions management
... and much more
The Style Player in Kontakt
We developed a custom Style Player for the Kontakt version.
In depth info is available in the walkthrough video above or read through for some more info.
3 ways of interacting with the MIDI Player
Play from the Kontakt interface: switch in realtime (and in Sync to the host, if desired) between multiple intros, main grooves, fills and outros.
Drag and Drop any pattern to the desktop or your DAW for further editing on MIDI tracks
Assign any pattern to a MIDI key on your MIDI Keyboard and play through in a "one-finger-drummer" fashion
Modify each pattern in realtime (and modifications are kept when assigning to a MIDI Key or dragging to the DAW) at the global or atomic level in terms of:
intensity
tempo (original, x2, 1/2x)
delay: both in ticks (960 PPQ) and musical terms
grid (used for quantize and swing operators)
quantize
swing
remap: used on some kit pieces (for example: remap all snare notes to sidestick or rimshots)
activate each single instrument group (kick, snare, hihat, toms, ride, cymbals, percussions)
You can randomize fills and main grooves while calling automatically a fill every 2, 4, 8, 16 bars (via the Player preferences panel)
All of this turns the 1119 available Patterns, organized in 19 Styles and recorded using a real drummer especially for the release using the same samples, into billions of possibilities at your fingertip.
Styles Galore
With 19 Styles and 1119 patterns, our focus for Modern Retro was in delivering a collection of bread & butter grooves and fills fit to the drum sounds: don't be fooled though, when we use the term "bread & butter" we refer to the highest quality french bread and danish butter one can buy in terms of quality and usability, so much that we crafted all of our product demos with those Styles.
The Styles are freely inspired by some of the most successful singles from the 90s and, again, we were amazed at how much creativity and variety we ended up discovering in those hit songs, to which we added our production style and the musical taste of a first-call session drummer.
Reverb, with class
The IR Reverb module in our engine currently features 36 unique proprietary impulse responses. These are originated from vintage plates, hardware and coveted real rooms, which, when used with drums, push the limits of what can be done with a single drum kit.
Ready-to-go
25 global mix-ready factory presets ease your way into using these drum kits, to which we add presets for each channel, including the reverb path.
... Or mix it your way
Each channel inside our Kontakt engine can be routed to a separate output, when properly configured in Kontakt, leaving you with the freedom to mix the drums using your own plugins or external outboards.
The drum kits
Sonor Designer 1997 Kit
Ludwig 14x6.5 Maple Snare Hotrod
Ludwig 14x6.5 Maple Snare Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 14x5 Snare Hotrod
Sonor Designer 1997 14x5 Snare Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 14x6.5 Snare Hotrod
Sonor Designer 1997 14x6.5 Snare Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 Close Kick Felt
Sonor Designer 1997 Close Kick Plastic
Sonor Designer 1997 Floor Tom Hotrod
Sonor Designer 1997 Floor Tom Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 High Tom Hotrod
Sonor Designer 1997 High Tom Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 Hole Kick Felt
Sonor Designer 1997 Hole Kick Plastic
Sonor Designer 1997 Mid Tom 1 Hotrod
Sonor Designer 1997 Mid Tom 1 Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 Mid Tom 2 Hotrod
Sonor Designer 1997 Mid Tom 2 Stick
Sonor Designer 1997 Open Kick Felt
Sonor Designer 1997 Open Kick Plastic
Ufip China Hotrod
Ufip China Stick
Zildjian Crash 14 Hotrod
Zildjian Crash 14 Stick
Zildjian Crash 18 Hotrod
Zildjian Crash 18 Stick
Zildjian Fast Crash 18 Hotrod
Zildjian Fast Crash 18 Stick
Zildjian HiHat Hotrod
Zildjian HiHat Stick
Zildjian Ride Hotrod
Zildjian Ride Stick
Zildjian Splash Hotrod
Zildjian Splash Stick
Tama Starclassic Kit
Ludwig Supraphonic Snare 14x5 Stick
Paiste Splash Brush
Paiste Splash Stick
Sabian Ride Brush
Sabian Ride Stick
Tama S. Phillips Snare 12x5 Brush
Tama S. Phillips Snare 12x5 Stick
Tama Starclassic Close Kick Felt
Tama Starclassic Cloth Snare 14x5 Stick
Tama Starclassic Damp Snare 14x5 Stick
Tama Starclassic Floor Tom 1 Brush
Tama Starclassic Floor Tom 1 Stick
Tama Starclassic Floor Tom 2 Brush
Tama Starclassic Floor Tom 2 Stick
Tama Starclassic High Tom Brush
Tama Starclassic High Tom Stick
Tama Starclassic Hole Damp Kick Felt
Tama Starclassic Hole Damp Kick Plastic
Tama Starclassic Hole Loose Kick Felt
Tama Starclassic Hole Loose Kick Plastic
Tama Starclassic Mid Tom 1 Brush
Tama Starclassic Mid Tom 1 Stick
Tama Starclassic Mid Tom 2 Brush
Tama Starclassic Mid Tom 2 Stick
Tama Starclassic Open Kick Felt
Tama Starclassic Open Kick Plastic
Tama Starclassic Snare 14x5 Brush
Tama Starclassic Snare 14x5 Stick
Turkish Crash 15 Brush
Turkish Crash 15 Stick
Turkish Crash 18 Brush
Turkish Crash 18 Stick
Turkish Dark China Brush
Turkish Dark China Stick
Turkish HiHat Brush
Turkish HiHat Stick
Ufip Ride Brush
Ufip Ride Stick
Articulations
Kick: Hit - up to 300 unique hits and up to 11 round robin
Snare: Hit, Rim and Sidestick - up to 300 unique hits and up to 11 round robin
Toms: Hit, Hoop - up to 70 unique hits and 4 round robin
HiHat: Tip, Shank, Foot, Splash, Pedal - 6 openings each Tip and Shank position, 4 round robin for each dynamic
Ride: Hit, Bell, Edge - up to 36 unique hits
Cymbals: Hit - up to 24 unique hits
Each articulation features no less than 16 velocity levels, all the way up to 32.
Microphones
Kick: AKG D112, Shure B52A, Audix D6, Sennheiser e902, Audio Technica AT4060 tube
Snare Top: Shure SM57
Snare Bottom: Beyerdynamic M420
HiHat: Shure SM81
Ride: Shure SM81
Cymbals: Shure SM81
Rack Toms: Beyerdynamic M201TG
Floor Toms: Audix D4
Overhead Stereo: 2 x AKG C414B condenser
Overhead Mono (Sonor): Beyerdynamic M260 ribbon (Sonor)
Overhead Mono (Tama): a mix Beyerdynamic M260 ribbon and Audio Technica AT4060 tube
Room Stereo: 2 x Neumann U87 condenser
Room PZM: 2 x Crown PZM30D condenser
Preamps and processing
Neve 1073
API 312
Millennia, tube and solid-state
Brunetti PAR400
recorded through a Studer A800 MKII 2" - 24 tracks tape recorder with Ampex 456 tape (pass through tape - no NR)
EQs and compressors (on mono overheads) were used lightly to leave room for further processing on your side
converters: Apogee AD16Xs with Big Ben master-clock
Now includes Drum Particles - Modern Retro Edition - FREE!
A no frills User Interface with just two simple pages:
Load a full kit Multi NKM or a single kit piece NKI
Select the controlling MIDI Channel
Load the preferred sound
Eventually:
Balance the microphones and optionally feed them into separate channels in your DAW
Set to taste macro and micro tuning, round robin, envelope and velocity-based interactions
Change the controlling MIDI keys in the Mapping Page
Done!
Some applications
Simplify workflow and reduce memory and CPU footprint when you do not need a full drum kit in the production you are doing
Drum triggering:
Easily assign more than one drum or sample to the same MIDI Key allowing for real time drum replacement or layering using any of the available drum triggering plugins
Use the embedded audio to Midi functions present on many platforms (Logic, Sonar...)
Stack as many drums as you want on a single Midi key
Create hybrid kits using our sounds or integrate other developers’ kits with our drums
Open up endless sound design possibilities having the chance to layer, re-direct, retune, change envelope on each drums separately
Finely tune the velocity response of each drum allowing you to better complement a live e-drumming or finger-drumming or to create velocity split stacks of different sounds
(Your own creative ideas here)
Quality you can tell
We released the first multi-mic drum library in 2003, with Scarbee.
We know drums. We know drum-sampling.
We know how to turn a drum recording session into a set of coherent, greatly playable sampled instruments. Not just a collection of sounds. This effort needs a lot of love for drums, time, ear, knowledge, dedication and experience.
Our drum samples have been used on countless tracks in the last 13 years, counting on an ongoing success still sprawling from our first library, Imperial Drums, re-released in BFD format through FXpansion at the end of 2013, our ever-growing product line and the large large number of companies we worked with along the years: Native Instruments, Ableton, Steinberg, Arobas, Cakewalk and Presonus to name just a few.
89.00 USD
(list price 129.00 USD)
DISCLAIMERS:
- this Instrument requires the FULL RETAIL VERSION OF NI KONTAKT 5.5.2 or higher
- this Instrument DOES NOT WORK with the Free Kontakt Player
- this Instrument may be acquired only in downloadable format, download size is about 15 Gigabytes, so expect longer download times on slower connections
Crossgrade from BFD Modern Retro (sold by BFD Drums) available for only 49.00 USD
for more info send us a request here
Features
15 GB compressed sample content size
67499 samples
4 full drum kits (2 sticks + 1 brushes + 1 hotrods)
72 drum pieces
sampled in full detail: up to 300 samples per articulation and up to 11 round robin (Kontakt)
integrated, advanced MIDI player with 19 Styles, made up of 1119 patterns recorded by a top session drummer
recorded in an historic italian studio with choice mics
up to 4 close mics
4 room channels: Overhead stereo, Overhead mono, Room U87 and Room PZM
warm and deep sound, recorded through an analog tape machine
advanced mixing and management (Kontakt) thanks to our custom advanced scripting
recorded at 24 bit / 96 KHz, released at 24 bit / 44.1 KHz
Kontakt Features
Read the dive-in manual for the Kontakt version here
custom 3D graphics with animation on kit and snare drum changes
build your own kit
very quick startup times
advanced RAM management thanks to purge
up to 4 Close and 4 Room mics
tuning, velocity curve and AHD envelope controls on each drum
advanced engine, shared with all future drum libraries
25 global factory presets
up to 11 round robins
large number of velocity splits (always > 16)
36 custom IR reverbs
