Modern Folk Rock Kit - Kontakt Pack

The Modern Folk Rock Kit - Kontakt 5 Pack is based around a 1980s Gretsch Kit owned by drummer Martyn Barker. It is perfect for getting a good modern Folk Rock sound. These samples were recorded and mixed by the legendary Phill Brown (John Martyn, Bob Marley, Rolling Stones, Talk Talk, Led Zeppelin). Like our Vintage Folk Rock Kit, This kit is in fact not just one kit but three kits in one as we have recorded the articulations with sticks, brushes and hotrods. However the main difference (apart from the kit) is the way it was recorded using close mic techniques rather than the five mic technique on the vintage kit.

This Gretsch kit is a 1980s Maple 4416 and it was setup and played by specialist Folk drummer Martyn Barker (Rufus Wainwright, Richard Hawley, Katherine Williams)

For the sound Phill Brown close mic'd this kit as a contrast to the 5 mic process used on the Vintage kit. Mics used were classic drum mics such as Shure SM57s, AKG D112's, Sennheiser MD421's and Coles 4038's as overheads. This kit was set up in the bright live room at Livingston Studio 1. All mirrors and tiles it is one of the best drum rooms still left in London. Phil close mic'd the Kit in a pretty standard way and had two room mic's to give size, energy and openness.

This Gretsch kit consists of a 22" x 16" Kick drum, 10" x 7", 12" x 9" and 13" x 10" Rack Toms and a 16" x 16" Floor Tom. The snares used were a combination of two Ludwig Snares. A Ludwig 400 14" x 5" and Martyn's Ludwig Brass Shell 14" x 6.5". Cymbals used were Zildjian Top Rock 14" Hi-hats, a 20" Rock Ride, an 18" Zildjian Paper Thin Crash and an 18" Plain Paiste Crash. The kit also includes a shaker and tambourine.

The Kontakt 5 pack requires the full latest version of Kontakt 5 and it contains the brand new Drumdrops Kontakt Instrument which has been rebuilt completely from the ground up. The new instrument comes with a completely new GUI and has many new features. Special focus has gone on the compatibility with E-Kits so e-kit owners can completely customise their kit to work perfectly with the instrument using our new MIDI CC data page. The new instrument includes many new features such as:-

* Featuring a brand new instrument completely rebuilt
* New mixer design with routing to DAW, 4 Aux Sends (2 reverbs and 2 delays)
* New Channel Effects - EQ, Compressor, Shape, Tape Control
* Mic Mix section allowing you to mix the close mics, overheads and room mics on each drum.
* Drum Voice - edit the attack, hold, decay and tuning on each drum
* Humanize - Randomly change the volume, velocity, tuning & timing of hits.
* New Master Effects Compressor, Limiter, EQ and Crush section
* Stereo width control and L/R swap
* Improved MIDI groove player now with 2111 loops (318 Folk loops)
* New MIDI Map section for easily building and saving your own Maps
* MIDI CC Editing Page - Edit the parameters controlling the snare, hi-hat and cymbals
* The best E-Drumkit compatibility
* Loads of Snapshot presets included mixed by different engineers
* 16940 samples recorded in 24 velocity step and 5 round robins
* Switch between Sticks, Hotrods and brushes.

You can see a walkthrough guide of the Kontakt Instrument {See video at top of page}.

The Kontakt 5 Pack of the Modern Folk Rock Kit is available exclusively from the Drumdrops store for £ 45.00. Head over here to find out more.

To listen to some examples of these samples head over here.

We used this kit when recording the drum track album Folk Rock Drops Volume 2. You can see a video about the recording of Folk Rock Drops Volume 2 on youtube here.