Demos

Studio live

Ruffrider

Stadium rock drums showing off the sound.

Cats in the scene

Easyrider

Grooves with bass and keys and showing off the natural ambience on the drums. By the way, the drum stick and the sound of the drummer moving are included in the kit.

Beginner's guide to grunge

Easyrider

A nasty sounding teen band in a cheap studio. Check out the sloppy drummer's ride. Bad yet realistic, and created just because it's possible. Just imagine the concentrated look on the punster's faces, and then look at the studio engineer shaking his head in frustration...

Introduction

“If there's one detail about these kits that sets them apart from others, it's the ride. It sounds alive and real.”

The 'Riders were recorded around 1999-2000 when drum sample libraries still sounded quite bad. Back then kits were rather small, catering to the limits of aging hardware samplers. There was sometimes good velocity switching and even simple adjustable bleeding on some libraries. But the norm on the rides, for example, was two samples: loud and quiet. That's not exactly realistic. Still today, even on the biggest libraries, there are mostly only two types of ride hits because of General MIDI requirements.

There is another serious plaque eating away realism on most drum libraries to date and it's only recently begun to change. The samples usually have 'large diaphragm condenser valve mikes everywhere', instead of the usual and crude 57's and D12's we are used to hearing. The large diaphragm sound, while impressive on its own, does not work awfully well in busy mix downs. As such most kits are still only usable as scratch pads. They certainly aren't rock, and they lack balls and realism.

Mission goal manifested itself: there clearly was a lack of real sounding drum kits "with attitude" and things could certainly be done a lot better than before. At the sessions the kits were set up as "dry studio live". The microphones at the sessions were the stock standard drum mikes used in studios everywhere. Things were generally kept as natural as possible with all the bleeding, noise and human error. The final samples are very slightly pre-processed to gently nudge you to the intended direction.

Of course there are nowadays drum libraries getting closer to the 100 GB mark and other free quality kits. The 'Riders seem to hold up well against them, although competition isn't the intention. Obviously, there are no multiple microphone choices for each drum, or freely adjustable bleeding. But the 'Riders are pretty much in the top class when it comes to realism, unless you're into really gentle playing styles. And the included rides are unlike any other libraries, probably better, too.

Supported formats

Copyright

©2004-2006 Michael Kingston

All Rights Reserved. All samples contained within Ruffrider and all text within this document are the property of Michael Kingston. The samples in Ruffrider are licensed to the original downloader of the instrument for use in music production only. Copying, duplicating, selling, electronically transmitting, renting or other uses of these sounds not specifically for the purpose of personal, non-profit music production is prohibited by law. Please do not distribute these samples from any other website unless given express permission. It should be noted that these samples ARE royalty free, but if you wish to use them in such a way as you'll be making money from it (be that in any form) you must ask permission.