TONAL DRUMS BY SONICCOUTURE
KK-ACCESS REVIEW
Soniccouture’s expertise in releasing meticulously detailed and creatively flexible drum libraries is now well established within the industry.
The bar was set high right back as far as early releases such as Electro Acoustic, progressing through to their more recent products such as Moonkits, Sun Drums & AC- Doctor, and continues now with the new launch of Tonal Drums.
TONAL FOCUS
As the title suggests, the spotlight here shines squarely on the ability to tune the kit to compliment the key of your track, which is a production technique that is often overlooked, yet can help to bring an extra level of audible coherence to your music.
TECH SPECS
Tonal Drums runs in Kontakt version 7.10 or higher, either the full version or Free Kontakt Player, and is compatible with all versions of Komplete Kontrol, running the appropriate Kontakt version as a host.
The library requires 14GB for installation, drawing from a pool of 83,868 samples, recorded at 24 Bit/ 48khz stereo using the NCW lossless compression format.
There is a single master Kontakt NKI preset file, which feeds a further 123 NKSN snapshot presets across three categories.
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION
Download & Installation is made simple via Native Access, where pasting in your post purchase serial number will take care of the entire process for you.
Running Komplete Kontrol either in standalone, or as an instance in your DAW will auto scan Tonal Drums into your KK factory browser, ready for you to explore.
KOMPLETE KONTROL PLUG-IN EDIT PARAMETER MAPPINGS CAN BE FOUND AT THE END OF THIS REVIEW FOLLOWING THE USUAL MEDIA LINKS
ACCESSIBILITY
The mention of accessibility often seems a little superfluous to me when it comes to reviewing Soniccouture products, as it is something they have always been mindful of when assigning their NKS controls.
Rest assured that the excellent NKS mapping that we previously acknowledged in the review for Sun Drums, is continued here with only minor relevant tweaks being pertinent to Tonal Drums.
There is a single kit used for Tonal Drums, so the kit piece sample selection option is not necessary for this particular outing.
If you are running Komplete Kontrol 3, there is the added benefit of being able to simultaneously access any additional parameters that have been made automatable for Kontakt, using your DAW parameter list, this gives us the bonus of being able to adjust controls that have not been specifically assigned to the Komplete Kontrol hardware, and pretty much affords us with the maximum possible accessibility.
TONAL DRUMS – THE KIT
As mentioned, for Tonal Drums, Soniccouture opted to use a single drum kit, rather than the pick & mix approach found in Sun Drums.
Their kit of choice for the library was the Canopus Yaiba, which is perhaps a less obvious, yet still respectable choice to sample.
The kit is comprised of 22″ Bass Drum, 14″ Snare, 16, 14, 12, 10″ Toms, 15″ Murat Dirl Hi-hat, 21 / 22 Zyn Rides, & 18 inch Zyn crash cymbal.
For the recording process, Soniccouture have carefully tuned each drum to various whole notes, which given the number of kit pieces , and eventual sample round robins, would have resulted in a tremendous amount of sampling, which is apparent from the large pool of samples that Tonal Drums is fed from.
Soniccouture also then went on to record these tunings, and individual drums in several damping states , as well as including the choice of beater, stick, brush, hard & soft pedals.
This deliberately detailed approach to sampling ultimately pays dividends in the end results, as others may have chosen a far less labour intensive path, and simply recorded the kit once, and then applied the multiple tunings within the sample editor in post production.
I particularly appreciated the decision to include both sticks and brushes as beater tools. Tonal Drums has detailed velocity responsiveness, which when using the brushes, allows for those subtle rhythmic nuances which result from applying those lighter brushstrokes in your patterns to really stand out, and do sound very natural, allowing for gentle skin taps, to more accented shell resonance’s.
Each drum instrument page includes level, pan, tuning, damp, tool (stick or brush), Attack, hold, and decay.
MICROPHONES
The detailed recordings also extend to the available microphones, which rather than the perhaps more typical close, overhead, and room, we get top, Rim, bottom, overheads, room, and chamber, using just the snare as an example.
Each microphone page also includes both high & low pass filters, along with drive to adjust the gain.
TONAL DRUMS KEYBOARD & E-KIT LAYOUTS
Tonal Drums also inherits the Sun Drums key assignment feature, which provides a good variety of keyboard mappings, such as General Midi 1 & 2, Addictive Keys, EZ Drummer, superior Drummer, Abbey Road, along with popular E-Kits such as Roland TD, Yamaha DTX, & Alesis Crimson, as well as the option to add your own templates.
This is a really useful utility, and I wish more drum libraries included it as a standard feature, as surely it must broaden the appeal to a more diverse range of users.
Cleverly, Soniccouture have also somehow managed to script this as a ‘set & forget’ control, meaning that if you change preset, you do not need to continually reset the setting to match your preferred finger drumming style, or E-Kit pad assignments, once again and example of thoughtful attention to detail of those small yet important things.
TONAL PRESETS
The Tonal Drums presets have been divided into three main categories, (which KK MK2 users will find as banks in their browser).
Drum Design: demonstrates that despite there only being a single kit, with judicious use of the user interface, some quite diverse sound design can be achieved, making good use of the tuning and filter capabilities.
Studio Kits – Scales: This section focuses on the fruits of Soniccouture’s labours,with all of that extra sampling, delivering a large collection of pre-tuned kits in lots of tonal keys.
Templates: This section presents a selection of various initialised kit routings, although as far as I can discern, these are unfortunately not further routed to individual tracks when loaded through Komplete Kontrol.
Please make a point of checking out the Soniccouture walkthrough video, where James takes us on a detailed tour and description of how things work within the product.
CONCLUSION
If you happen to be looking for a detailed, natural, yet flexible drum kit to work with in your music, then you really won’t go far wrong with Tonal drums.
The tuning, filter, and microphone controls mean Tonal drums can literally be fine tuned to work across a diverse spectrum of genres.
The sample detail is as ever recorded to a high standard, and the benefit of multi keyboard assignment & E-Kit options ensure wide compatibility for a broad range of users.
Tonal Drums from Soniccouture can be purchased directly from their website for the introductory price of £120.00 (regular price is £169.00), offer ends 9th December.
Tonal Drums – Product Page:
Tonal Drums Product Walkthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gjmNIxTQcw
Komplete Kontrol Plug-IN Edit NKS Parameter Assignments
Page One – Master
Knob 1 – Play On/Off (triggers built in rhythm)
Knob 2 – Level (master output)
Knob 3 – Compressor On/Off
Knob 4 – EQ On/Off
Knob 5 – Tape Saturation On/Off
Knob 6 – Limiter On/Off
Knob 7 – Bus 1 Level
Knob 8 – Bus 2 Level
Page Two – Kick Edit
Knob 1 – Level
Knob 2 – Pan
Knob 3 – tune
Knob 4 – Damp
Knob 5 – Beater: soft, Hard
Knob 6 – Attack
Knob 7 – Hold
Knob 8 – Decay
Page Three – Kick Microphones & Filter
Knob 1 – Beater
Knob 2 – Front
Knob 3 – Bleed
Knob 4 – Overheads
Knob 5 – Room
Knob 6 – Chamber
Knob 7 – High Pass Filter
Knob 8 – Low Pass Filter
Page Four – Snare Edit
Page Five – Snare Microphones & Filter
Knob 1 – Top
Knob 2 – Rim
Knob 3 – Bottom
Knob 4 – Overheads
Knob 5 – Room
Knob 6 – Chamber
Knob 7 – High Pass Filter
Knob 8 – Low Pass Filter
Page Six – Hi-Hat Edit
Page 7 – Hi-Hat Microphones & Filter
As per previous – with Close & Ribbon Microphones
Page Eight – tom 16 inch Edit
Page Nine – Tom 16 inch Microphones & Filter
Page Ten – Tom 14 inch Edit
Page Eleven – Tom 14 inch Microphones & Filter
Page Twelve – Tom 12 inch Edit
Page Thirteen – Tom 12 inch Microphones & Filter
Page Fourteen – Tom 10 inch Edit
Page Fifteen – Tom 10 inch Microphones & Filter
Page Sixteen – Ride Cymbal Edit
Page Seventeen Ride Cymbal Mics & Filter
Page Eighteen – Crash Cymbal Edit
Page Nineteen – Crash Cymbal Microphones & Filter
Page Twenty – Master EQ
Knob 1 – Low Freq
Knob 2 – Low Gain
Knob 3 – Low Mid Freq
Knob 4 – Low Mid Gain
Knob 5 – High Mid Freq
Knob 6 – High Mid Gain
Knob 7 – High Freq
Knob 8 – High Freq Gain
Page Twenty One – Beat Shifter 1
Knob 1 to 8 – Shift Amount
Page Twenty Two – Beat Shifter 2
Knob 1 to 8 – Chance Amount
Page Twenty Three – Beat Shifter 3
Knob 1 to 8 – Shift Steps
Page twenty four – Euclidean Beats 1
Knob 1 to 8 – Steps
Page Twenty Five – Euclidean Beats 2
Knob 1 to 8 – Hits
Page Twenty Six – Euclidean Beats 3
Knob 1 to 8 – Accent
Page Twenty Seven – Euclidean Beats 4
Knob 1 to 8 – Shift
Page Twenty Eight – Euclidean Beats 5
Knob 1 to 8 – Rate
Page Twenty Nine – Poly Beats
Knob 1 to 8 – Steps
Page Thirty – Blocks
Knob 1 to 8 – Blocks: On/Off
Page Thirty One – Keyboard
Knob 1 – Keyboard Mapping Selector
Knob 2 to 8 – Unallocated
(c) Chris Ankin
KK-Access.com
22TH November 2024
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About the Author
Based in Buckinghamshire, England, Chris Ankin has worked as a freelance review writer and contributor with articles published in Sound On Sound, Home & Studio Recording and ST Format Magazines.
He has also successfully worked extensively in and around the music, recording, film Soundtrack scoring, Game & media composition, the creative arts, Charitable trusts,publishing, music streaming and property investments since 1982 whilst continuously and deliberately managing to evade any mainstream recognition under his own name by the use of various pseudonyms.
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