Acoustic Slate kits for download - and thoughts on making beats in NS2
Here's a couple of acoustic drum slate kits, these are based on free kits available online. I'll post some more as and when I create them.
1:
And here's a sample of the kit in action, with some additional compression and reverb:
Big Mono Beat - When The Levee Breaks
This kit is based on the free Big Mono kit from Analogue Drums, you can support them by buying some of their very reasonably priced drum kits, which can easily be imported into Slate (with velocity layers etc).
The Big Mono kit has several variations on the snare mapped directly to pads to make up for the lack or round robin samples in Slate. Each drum has 3 velocity layers.
2:
A sample of this kit in action:
This is sampled from the Drum Loops HD app, which I really love (it has some great beats you can sample and use in your tracks). This kit doesn't have as many velocity layers but I have mapped variations on the pads, and when played with varied velocities it still sounds great.
Comments
So I own many drum apps on iOS, and beats are always the foundation of any music I make so I've spent a lot of time messing around with drum apps. I tend to prefer acoustic drums to electronic ones but I think the discussion applies to all genres of music.
I think NS2 is absolutely awesome as an environment for creating beats and rhythms, I love Slate and I especially love the sequencer, because it allows you to create variations and changes really effortlessly.
There's plenty of great drum apps on iOS, from DrumPerfect Pro to Patterning, the Lumbeat apps, Drum Session, iSpark and GarageBand. In all of these apps you can create great beats, with variations etc... The problem is always that it's a real pain getting from these apps to a DAW. Sequencing within the drum app is usually easy, but then syncing that with an arrangement in another app like Auria or Cubasis is a pain. The only way to avoid that is to use an all-in-one environment like Gadget or GarageBand, or sequence in your DAW.
NS2 has the combination of a great sequencer and a great drum sampler, and this looks to me the best environment for creating beats either for final mixing in NS2 itself, or easy export to Auria. I'm really happy with this because I can sequence and arrange beats so easily, it's great.
One stand-out feature is how easy it is to create new kits in Slate - compared to other apps (I'm looking at you DrumPerfect Pro) making a kit in Slate is really fast. 3 velocity layers that you can blend between is just about right IMO.
But to make NS2 even better there are still a handful of features I think it needs, so that the workflow and the end result shine over all the other apps:
1) Velocity-sensitive pads. Ideally along the vertical axis, just like the single-pad view, but also available in the 16 pad view. At the moment I workaround this by using the pads in Xequence, but it would be much better if I could do this all directly in NS2. Having velocity variation is essential to creating natural sounding beats.
2) Round-robin samples in Slate. Again this is essential if you want to avoid that machine-gun sound. particularly on snare drums. For now I workaround this simply by importing multiple snares to multiple pads, and varying which pad I hit, but real round-robin samples are essential in a drum sequencer IMO.
3) Realtime (non-destructive) swing. On drum machines you can set swing interactively and listen in realtime how that affects the beat. This makes it much easier to find just the right swing setting. You can also do this in GarageBand with it's non-destructive quantize and in Auria with non-destructive groove templates. In NS2 swing (and quantize) can only be applied destructively, and you can't listen to the results in realtime, so finding the right swing setting is a difficult and laborious start/stop process. I realise this is probably not easy to implement, but it would make using swing much more useful, because at the moment it's a bit of a guessing game.
Great kits, thanks for your effort and sharing your patches and banks !!
you mean "quantize" feature in sequencer which has now just visual overview how notes will be shifted after applying ? Audio feedback during tweakimg is on todo list ;-)
For now i use method apply - undo - apply again - undo.. not ideal but usually (thanks to visual feedback during tweaking) after 2-3 iterations i'm satisfied
Good to hear that!
Here's another Slate kit, based on the free MegaReaper kit, this one has 3 velocity layers for every drum and some snare variations mapped to pads:
MegaReaper kit
And here's what it sounds like:
MegaReaper Beat - Honky Tonk
@richardyot nice work. Thanks!
Awesome. Thanks for making these!
Another Slate kit:
60s Drum Kit
This is based on the free 60s kit from DrumDrops. It has 3 velocity layers and some snare variations. You can support them by buying their very reasonably priced kits, the Single Hit packs are perfect for Slate because they come with 3 velocity layers for each drum, and they're only about £12 on average - a bargain. I particularly recommend the Modern Folk Kit, it comes with variants for sticks, brushes and rods and sounds great.
This 60s kit is perfect for the funky drummer vibe, the original Funky Drummer and Amen Break loops date from the 60s and have this bright woody sound found on this kit. Add some compression, reverb, and a bit of dirt and you can create your own gritty and funky loops.
Here is a sample:
60s Kit sample
T> @richardyot said:
Another winner! Nice job! Your kits have a really nice sound to them.
yeah, thanks for your efforts!
Two new Slate kits, there are based on the free Easy Rider kit by Michael Kingston:
Easy Rider version 1
Easy Rider version 2
There are 3 velocity layers for most samples (except the crash cymbals which have 2). It's a polite acoustic kit, suitable for a more laid-back vibe.
Here is a sample of v2 in action
Nice! Thanks
Another new Slate kit for download, this one is based on the free 1960s Ludwig Oyster Blue Pearl:
Ludwig Oyster Blue Pearl for Slate
And here is a sample of the kit in action, with some additional compression and reveb
Hey all, what’s the best way to install these kits?
Assuming you have the Dropbox app installed, when you click on the link, you’ll get to a screen that says “zip files can’t be previewed...” hit the three dots at the top-right and select Export. Then select Copy to NanoStudio 2. The kit will be added under your User folder in Slate.
It might be different if you don’t have Dropbox, but the key is simply to use the export / open-in dialog to copy to NanoStudio 2.
Thanks, @richardyot, these are great!
As @number37 already said if you click on the link you should have an option to "Open In", just select NS2 from the list of apps. This should work even if you don't have Dropbox, it's just a link at the end of the day.
Two new Slate kits for you, this time with percussion elements, most of the pads are multi-sampled, derived from various free resources on the internet:
Tambourines
Sleigh Bells
I really appreciate the stuff you’ve been posting here. Thanks!
My pleasure - there's more on the way!
Another new Slate kit, a collection of maracas and shakers:
Shakers
A percussion kit, with cowbells, triangles, guiros, rainsticks, woodblocks etc... Uses all 32 Slate pads:
Percussion kit
Thanks for all these @richardyot. Can never have too many percussion samples.
These are beautiful additions to the collection, thanks a lot!
Man you're unstoppable .. great, trully great contribution to community ! You're hero !!
Here's a variant on the 60's Po Kit, this one has different snares and kicks, the snares are damped which is a really typical 60s sound (they were often damped with tea-towels):
60's Pop Kit v2
Thanks! I really like this one. It really does bring up a 60’s vibe. It had be reaching for my guitar for some surf-rock licks.
Some more stuff:
Hand clap samples: I sampled these myself with a condenser microphone, 3 layers per pad, 16 pads:
Hand Claps
And two kits sampled from the Drum Loops HD app, they sound pretty good, 3 layers of velocity in most pads:
Pop Kit Modern
Pop Kit Vintage
The Jazz Kit from the first post has been updated, now with some additional pads with brush scrapes on the snares:
Jazz Kit
This is really nice and organic, thanks! Definitely using it sooner or later!
These kits are freaking gold. Thank you so much @richardyot