Making Music
  Computer Music Software and Hardware

Kickin' up a storm

Stormdrum is the biggy of the bunch and another from Nick Phoenix. In true Hardcore style the blurb reads: "What would happen if you gave Godzilla drumsticks?" Eat them, probably. But before his did that he might just thwack out a few thumping good rhythms... Stormdrum must contain the largest number of multi-sampled drums ever collected in one place, recorded by four world-class percussionists and not Godzilla.

The drums were created with a Big Film Score sound in mind and there is a greater variety of drums here than you can shake a, er, drumstick at so to speak. Phoenix reckons it took a year and a half to edit all the drum parts. And you can believe it.

 Stormdrum is a program of two parts, one using the Kompakt player and the other using Intakt. The Kompakt section brings together masses of individual drums from numerous drum kits. They are divided into six sections - acoustic drums, electronic drums, large percussion, metal shop, prepared piano, and small percussion. The first two sections are further subdivided: acoustic into individual drums such as cymbals, kicks and snares; and electronic into hits and kits.

 Given that you can load eight collections or instruments into a Multi, by setting more than one to the same MIDI channel you can quickly combine them allowing you to create custom drum sets to play from a single keyboard. Of course, you can play up to eight sets of sounds via a sequencer with no restrictions at all.

The big score

Bearing the big film score concept in mind, this collection doesn't disappoint with a veritable plethora of ethnic percussion to complement and bridge any gaps in more traditional kits. 

If you want something a little more ready-to-go, boot up the Intakt version of Stormdrum. This contains over 120 drum loops constructed in the main from exotic percussion. The six categories will give you a flavour of the content - action beds, big beats, ethnic chase, fast breaks, film tech, and thunderous. There are over 120 loops here but when you consider that each loop may contain several grooves activated by pressing different keys on the keyboard, you soon realise that the sum is significantly greater than the parts.

The collection is inspired and inspirational and although much could be used with traditional pop, rock and dance material (check out the big beats section), it will be the musician looking for something a little more exotic who will really get the most from this collection.

Customs duty

The custom sample format means you cannot use the samples outside the program (although you can use them with NI's own Kompakt software which gives inveterate tweakers even more tweaking options) so you can't hive off any favourites to use in your own favourite sampler. Neither can you load and play other samples through the host software. If you think of these programs as stand-alone sound modules it will help resolve the anomaly of a 'fixed sample' sampler.

Although these instruments have tremendous tweaking facilities, it's debatable whether many users will make much use of them. The strength and popularity, therefore, of these programs will rest primarily on their sounds - and based on that criteria they should be very popular indeed! Native Instruments and EastWest have created a new type of instrument using high-quality samples that enable developers to produce unique, innovative and exciting sounds. The platform lends itself to almost infinite development and there are some 20 products already in the line-up. 

But no matter how good the sounds are - and they certainly are excellent - the structure limits the instruments to the supplied samples which, in spite of the tweakable interface, inherently limits the sonic variety. So, in a manner of speaking, you're buying an instrument that can do one thing but do it exceedingly well. There are audio demos of the programs on the East West website so you can hear just how well they do it, too. And then you'll agree that the franchise is likely to prove very popular and probably as addictive as Rollos - try one and you'll inevitably want more.