Next up in my series on go-to Orchestral Samples is the Percussion family. If you’ve followed the series this far you’ll know that I choose libraries based on a trade off between how great they sound, how easy they are to use and how much i enjoy using the interface.
If you haven’t read my article How To Choose Orchestral Sample Libraries - An Introduction, then use might want to bookmark this page, go and read my introduction and then come back to this page.
The libraries I’ll look at are as follows:
Project Sam - True Strike
Spitfire - Hans Zimmer Percussion
Soniccouture - Grand Marimba
East West - StormDrum 2 aka SD2 (Composer Cloud)
In Session Audio - Taiko Creator
For obvious reasons there’s no comparison audio for all the choices as several are instruments-specific. So we’ve just created you a short snippet of each library so you can get a flavour. Please note, the SD2 clip is from one of the inbuilt loops.
Thanks to my assistant Mark Fabian for creating these audio examples for me.
Project Sam - True Strike
Project Sam is a Dutch company that has been producing sampled Virtual instruments for nearly 20 years.
I bought their first product (Sam Horns) in 2002 and have owned many of their products ever since. It’s a Kontakt-based library which works in either the free Kontakt player or full version.
True Strike 1 is one of my most used, go-to percussion instruments.
It’s a collection made up of over 50 patches split into 5 categories:
Timpani
Orchestral Drums
Ensemble Hits
Melodic Percussion
Small Percussion
As with all other Projects Sam libraries I own, it features multiple mic positions and it’s absolutely beautifully recorded.
I think the reason I like this instrument is that it doesn’t have a gazillion patches. It seems to have most everything that I need, in the world of Orchestral percussion, both tuned and untuned . It’s so easy to navigate, both in terms of the GUI and within each patch that I don’t really have to think about it.
I especially love the sound of the snare drums, both concert snare, military snares, field drums, snare ensembles, and with snares turned on and off. The timpani in this library is a huge collection and is totally playable with a wide dynamic range but without anything sticking out.
The ensemble hits feature a Gran Casa with a timpani that gives a monster low sound - epic in every sense of the word.
Conclusion
This is one of those rare libraries that is pretty much flawless, so in my projects it gets used on pretty much everything needing orchestral percussion.
Weirdly I have never tried True Strike 2 (made up of World Percussion instruments) but I suspect that it would be every bit as good as this.
PROS:
Huge collection of all of the essential orchestral percussion
Easy to understand, quick to learn
It sounds fantastic!
Not cluttered with non-orchestral instruments (True Strike 2 is comprised of World Percussion as a separate collection)
CONS:
Struggling to think of anything at all!
Spitfire Hans Zimmer Percussion
Originally split into two separate products (HZ01 & HZ03), they have been brought together in one comprehensive Percussion collection. Or actually to be more accurate - two percussion collections, as it’s available in regular and professional flavours. This is one of my few Spitfire bugbears.The Professional upgrade is largely similar but with different stereo mixes of the instruments by industry heavyweights, Alan Meyerson, Geoff Foster, Junkie XL and Steve Lipson. I don’t own this upgrade so I’m featuring the primary library.The playing is taken care of by the best of the best:
London legends - Frank Ricotti, Paul Clarvis, Gary Kettel and Stephen Henderson.
As with all other Spitfire products it’s absolutely beautifully recorded at Air Studios and fits seamlessly into the sonic Spitfire palette.
One of the particularly useful and usable features of this library is the way the new Kickstart GUI has been implemented. Essentially you can access each of the instrument families from one main starting page. Then from the resulting patch, you get articulation choices. And unlike most of the other instruments you can then map the articulation you want to a user defined Key on a new user patch. So you can make your own instruments effectively!
There‘s a separate Kickstart GUI for timpanis, as it’s such a large part of the library.
The instruments themselves range from a crazy-wide variety of world instruments, hits, scrapes, (buckets to Surdos, Boombams to metal scrapes, hits and many, many other things) to more traditional instruments like timpanis, snares and gongs.
Having worked with most of the featured percussionists on my own projects, I can attest to their huge skill and knowledge of their craft - and so I innately trusted the performances and instruments from the get-go.
That said, sometimes a huge library can be hard to navigate and despite their best efforts i still find that there’s so much material here I haven’t ever explored quite all of it! (Probably my failing rather than one of the library’s)
As with all of the other libraries you get multi mic choices and the GUI consists of many of the features as the other Spitfire libraries, but with some percussion specifics (eg options for altering “boom” or crack”).
Conclusion
All in all a hugely versatile library with a myriad of choice, that’s beautifully recorded with some of the world’s finest percussionists - but beware: Such a great library has been used (some would say over used) on many film and TV productions, so it’s a very recognisable sound.
PROS:
Enormous Collection of beautifully recorded sounds
Well implemented GUI with great “Kickstart” landing pages
Mic choices that make sense to all who have used Spitfire products
CONS:
The addition of extra stereo mixes to make an extra “professional” version feels a little pointless and just a way to get me to part with some money.
There’s so much choice I find it daunting and might prefer to have separate libraries for orchestral and World percussion (as seen in the True Strike family)
Often used and so it’s immediately recognizable
Soniccouture Grand Marimba
Grand Marimba by Soniccouture is a specific Kontakt library for nothing but Marimba.
Marimba is such a staple for any media composer and this is the one I always reach for.
Soniccouture made a name for themselves in the world of world percussion with some beautifully sampled niche products like Gamalan, Tongue Drums and Pan Drums.
This marimba ticks all the boxes for my instrument criteria.
Firstly, it sounds just beautiful. It’s got multiple velocity layers (15 to be exact) across its 5 octaves so that it accurately represents my playing style with subtle changes.
Secondly, it looks fabulous. It’s quick and easy to pick up and there’s no visual clutter.
Thirdly the GUI makes total sense and the controls are seamlessly integrated.
In addition to the gorgeous single hits across all those velocity layers, you’ve got a fantastic tremolo engine with the ability to change the speed of the tremolo subtly via a Midi Cc. This means that in addition to syncing the speed of the tremolo to my DAW’s tempo, I can marginally humanise the tremolo performances by subtly changing tremolo speeds, which gives that extra dollop of realism to the performance.
In addition to choices of a softer mallet or harder stick (via cc if a quick change is required), there is a bowed option. This is a beautiful, ethereal sounding instrument (or eerie, depending on the situation) that adds texture and nuance to all performances.
I really don’t have a single quibble with this instrument and it’s like seeing an old friend every time I open it!
Conclusion
If you intend making money from media music then you’ll end up using a marimba on a very regular basis and if you are going to do that, you’ll want this instrument. It’s quite simply the best marimba I’ve tried and I wouldn’t be without it!
PROS:
Beautifully sampled, with huge velocity choices for incredibly nuanced performances
Really quick and easy to use GUI
Tremolo engine that sounds super-realistic
Choices of sticks, mallets or bows
Allows 4 part polyphony - As if a player is holding 4 mallets
CONS
Not a single one!
EastWest Storm Drum 2
Storm Drum 2 is yet another of the East West Composer Cloud instruments that I highly recommend if you are being budget-conscious as well as quality conscious!
East West describe this instrument as “over 12gb of percussion madness which exceeds all other instruments”. This is a pretty bold claim but in part it lives up to this in my opinion.
It works on the East West Play Engine (This is Play 6 at time of writing) and is downloadable within the composer cloud as mentioned - meaning no extra purchase required if you are already paying for this monthly.
Although Storm Drum 2 (based on the HUGELY successful but now discontinued Stormdrum) has a huge library of multi sampled individual hits from an enormous variety of different instruments, for some reason I’ve never really used it as a one-stop-shop for individual part creation.
I think this is due to the fact that I find the Play GUI itself just not as welcoming and easy to use as some of its rivals. So I don’t tend to think of this library in that way, even though it has HUGE possibilities for those that want to explore it.
For me, the real power of this library is in the premade MIDI loops offered in different styles “from Hypnotic to Bombastic”.
Because the pieces of individual loops have been chopped into their component pieces, every facet of each loop is available to manipulate, remove or change. Any and every loop can be played at whatever speed you like and if you like one layer of a loop (the bongos are great but the shaker isn’t), you can just remove the bits you don’t like or change them.
Conclusion
Initially I found it an extremely quick and easy way to create heavy taiko style chase action cues, but over time I’ve delved a little deeper and some of the smaller percussion is equally usable as it’s just so easy to manipulate. For this reason, even though it’s been around a long time and there are lots of alternatives in this sphere, I still find myself coming back when I need a quick scratch pad of percussion as a layer in a larger cue.
Of particular note are the booms, bass drums and aforementioned taikos. As with all the Hollywood Orchestral series, they are beautifully recorded in the signature East West Studio 1 facility and it does blend perfectly with the rest of their orchestral library. This means that even if you had nothing more than the Hollywood orchestral series, you could create some really convincing mockups, were you to put the time into tweaking them.
PROS:
Huge collection of beautifully recorded Percussion
Fits seamlessly into the Hollywood Orchestral ecosphere
Premade MIDI loops with totally configurable parameters are incredible and have been used on countless tons of film and TV projects
CONS:
I find the Play GUI a little difficult to use and the colour scheme of this is similar to some of the other instruments making it hard to tell apart
Some of the mapping is tricky to understand
It’s been used and maybe overused on so many famous projects that it’s not exactly a new sound!
In Session Audio - Taiko Creator
The final product I regularly use is Taiko Creator by In Session Audio. It’s designed for both Kontakt and the free Kontakt Player.
Firstly a caveat. There are SO many libraries with huge, bombastic, taikos and many of them are fantastic. These include Spitfire Orchestral Percussion, Vienna Symphonic’s excellent Percussion library, East West and MANY others have great taikos that are all eminently usable. However, this taiko-specific library seems to resonate with me (no pun intended) as I often find an instrument-specific library a quick and useful solution for some things.
As with everything the sounds, GUI and implementation are the areas to consider.
In each and every aspect of these, this library comes up trumps.
The mainstay of this library are huge cinematic percussion ensembles based around this Japanese instrument which has become synonymous with thunderous cinematic percussion. Taikos in the real world range from an instrument 4 metres in diameter weighing nearly 4 tonnes, to tiny small hand versions.
So what sets this library apart from those of its competitors?
Well firstly as with many other Orchestral manufacturers, there are multi mic options which make an enormous difference to the sound world of the Taiko. Adding in Far and Room mics to the close mic create a totally different sound the more you add.
But the main difference is that when creating a Taiko ensemble in this instrument you can choose how many taikos are in the ensemble and that is something that is not available in many other libraries.
There are options to both change the amount, tightness and hugeness of the drums in an ensemble “group” and you can while away some serious hours happily tweaking this for maximum hugeness. However, if you are short of time, Taiko Creator will take this job on for you. You give the instruments a few specifics (eg size of drums, number of players, stereo spread) and it randomly creates you an ensemble. For me this is an incredibly quick way to make an instrument that is new but also fits the brief I have been given.
Also like Stormdrum, Taiko Creator offers a huge array of Midi preconfigured loops made to work with the drums in the collection. Patterns are split into different parts of a song (intros, fills, endings etc) and you can manipulate the speed, velocity and several other parameters of the loop. They are instantly usable and I’ve played these instruments via loop starting points on more projects than I care to remember.
Conclusion
As with Grand Marimba, this is an instrument-specific library and just like Grand Marimba I really can’t fault it in any regard. It does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to be a one-stop-shop for all my Taiko needs.
PROS:
Immediately playable out of the box.
Fantastic hugeness of sound but also a huge range of smaller drums
Cleverly adopted easy to understand GUI
Superb MIDI patterns which sound great whether tweaked or not
The ability to choose how many instruments are in an ensemble is priceless
CONS:
Taikos can be an overused Media sound and having a set as good as this isn’t going to help!
Really no others - It’s as close to flawless as you can get
Layering
I think something that is worth mentioning especially when writing for percussion is layering. As you can see from many of the above libraries, they specialize in a particular area or style. But what happens when you work on music that is more hybrid? Layering allows us to combine the thump and full sound of Taiko Creator with the beautiful organic sound of True Strike. And a bit of small ethnic percussion form HZP can really add another dimension to a groove made with Stormdrum. The blending of the spaces and recording techniques of these libraries can really work together to create a unique percussion sound, hand-tailored to the specific musical style you are working on.
My Percussion Desert Island Choice
Well - I’m going to cheat YET again and choose two.
For an all in one orchestral collection, I’d have to go with True Strike. I use it pretty much every day and wouldn’t want to be parted.
However no desert island is complete without the sound of a marimba and Grand Marimbas are an indelible part of my arsenal - so they are my desert island marimba choice.
Up next week
We are taking a look at the world of the Orchestral Harp.