Folk Percussion is a Sensory Percussion 2 sound pack made up of hand drums, claps, snaps–and even spoons–from all over the world. It contains eleven detailed, multi-velocity Sensory Percussion mappings of:
- A bendir
- Two bongos
- Dhol
- Djembe
- Two dumbeks
- A tiny finger drum
- Pandeiro
- Two Indian Taal drums (bayan and dayan)
This pack also has extensive claps, snaps, and wooden spoon sounds. Folk Percussion is a celebration of hand drums of worldly cultural heritage.
The 23 presets include everything from straight-ahead variations of the detailed mappings to useful percussive cycles, to far out pulsing dreamscapes.
The Recording Process
Many of the instruments were purchased or rented from The Music Inn, an iconic West Village music instruments and record store. Once we got our hands on the instruments, we took them back to our studio where we recorded as many logical gestures (zones) as possible. For example:
- Bass Tone
- Slap
- Edge
- Open Tone
- Finger Tone
- Finger Slap
- Finger
- Muted Tone
- Muted Slap
And, not only that, we recorded three overall velocity levels of each zone, with five example hits (round robbins) per level. Additionally, we recorded some “extended techniques” for some of the instruments, such as finger rolls, sweeps, digs, etc.
The Sets
The 23 sets are designed for maximum drag & drop-ability. You can, of course, open the session and play through all of the sets, but you can also navigate further down into any set in the library and drag in:
- The full set
- An instrument mapping from inside the set
- A single zone or zones or sequencer from inside the instrument mapping
- A single sample either from sample folder structure of the pack, or from inside an instrument mapping
Sets like Arid Drums, Communal Drums, Environ Drums, Verdant Brew, and frameGoblets are “straight-ahead” mappings. But what does “straight ahead mappings” mean when translating the playing surface of a drum head to the sounds of hand drums? Well, that’s certainly up to artistic interpretation, but with Sensory Percussion 2 tracking up to 10 zones of your drum, we’ve come up with some natural analogs.
For example, we’ve found that either bass sounds, or heel/toe cycles sound great when mapped to Sensory Percussion Edge zone. Finger hits sound great mapped to the Rim Tip. Open tones work great mapped to the Sensory Percussion Center zone. Open slap sounds work great when mapped to Rimshot Center, while closed slaps are great mapped to the Rimshot Edge.
Sets like Hand Drum Symmetry, Groove Schema, Circle Dream Rhythm, patriciaCakes, and Pulsing Cadence are sets built from cycled drum maps.
One of the really cool things about Sensory Percussion 2 is that you can cycle pretty much ANYTHING and make really rad intricate patterns. In the case of these sets, the entire instrument mappings are what is being sequenced. So, for example, if you repeatedly hit the center of your drum in Circle Dream Rhythm, you hear open tones of the Dayan, Bayan, Bendir, High Bongo, Low Bongo, Silver Dumbek, and Djembe. But…if you repeatedly play the edge it will cycle bass tones of the same Dayan, Bayan, etc. Same story with Rimshots/slaps, Rim/finger tones.
Sets like Swamp Forest Percussion, percScape, and Euphorbic Drums and Rustic Space Drum Pattern are the more adventurous, avant-garde sets, comprising more wild FX assignments, blended composite sounds, and audacious textures.
