This project aims to integrate a niche area in music production by catering to the use of acoustic drums in modern music productions to anyone who may not have access to an actual acoustic drumkit for their project.

There are already many commercial kits available which model or sample the acoustic drumkit, though often they are created for specific genres, such as rock or pop music. Other popular genres such as hip hop and drum and bass have both historically featured large use of resampled drums from commercial songs.

“The Kit” is a result of research into classic jazz and blues records from over the past 70 years. Songs were studied at length to uncover the then prevalent techniques and equipment which contributed to their timely sound. These techniques and equipment have been as closely matched as possible, along with the nuances of new technology, contributing to the creation of an authentic replacement for resampled drums altogether. This is presented in the form of a Kontakt sample library.

The finished kit consists of 16 instrumental elements of an acoustic drumkit, recorded through 6 professional microphones and tracked through a high-end SSL console. Many variables of the recording process were taken into consideration to ensure the most versatile recordings possible.

Each drum element out of the twelve is split up into 6 separate microphone positions, with these positions mapped over a separate key. This results in each ‘Group’ occupying 6 keys, beginning at the key of C0. This allows the individual sound of each microphone to be blended together as desired, giving a large possibility of tones available from the kit.

The natural tone of the kit will respond well to further processing such as distortion, compression and saturation, with each group available separately through the use of multiple outputs.