Modular Drums 1

After our take on some modern analog classics – Jomox Xbase 09, Vermona DRM-1 & DSI Tempest – which we sampled thoroughly for our Raw Drums libraries, we decided to take a more experimental route this time and build a set of custom drum kits and sounds out of Pepe’s (Positif) huge and tasty Eurorack modular.

The idea was not just to build an assorted set of drum samples, but something that had a certain sound to it, something coherent that could resemble a real retro drum machine when mixed together.

The inspiration came from the story behind Roland’s own TR-808 voice design. It’s been said that some of the mythical TR sounds were first synthesized via a giant System 700 modular housed at Roland’s engineering lab in Japan, and that those patches served as the template for the circuits behind the now legendary voices of the 808.

We’ve recorded all raw sounds directly from the modular as round-robin multi-samples x4.

This multi-sampling technique, given the slightly unstable nature of modular synthesizers, brings more liveness and realistic analog character to the sounds, since no samples will sound the same when put in a row while building a beat.

More than 2050 modular drum samples and dozens of kits built for Ableton, Maschine & Akai MPCs.

What’s not to like?