Paree Katti has released Experimental Drums, a freeware drum rompler instrument in VST/AU plugin formats for PC and Mac based digital audio workstations (32-bit and 64-bit).
This is Paree Katti’s first plugin release. It was developed using Maize Sampler and contains a set of seven drum kits with around twenty samples per kit (167 samples in total). The included samples are a mixture of synthesized and recorded percussive sounds. They were all made from scratch and are provided completely free of charge, meaning that you’re allowed to edit them in any way and even mirror them on other websites, as long as there’s no monetization involved.
The instrument is nicely designed, with a very simple control scheme (which is something to be expected from a Maize Sampler based instrument). The interface includes a volume ADSR envelope, along with global pan and volume controls. It would be nice to see a global pitch control included here as well, although it’s still possible to change the global pitch via MIDI. The kits can be accessed directly from the front panel via the built-in browser. The plugin comes with two different skins (orange and blue) which can be downloaded from the developer’s website.
If you prefer using a full-fledged sampler instead of a rompler for your drums, you’ll love the fact that Paree Katti has also provided a separate download which contains all the samples from Experimental Drums in WAV format. A future update will introduce an additional set of samples, increasing the total amount to 300 drum hits.
Experimental Drums is definitely not the kind of virtual drum instrument that will fit many different genres, but it’s worth checking out if you like using organic and noisy percussion sounds in your music. The style of drums it brings to the table is quite different compared to most other drum romplers I’ve tested in the past.
Experimental Drums is available for free download via Paree Katti Music (7.30 MB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/AU plugin format for Windows & Mac OS).
Last Updated on July 3, 2016 by Tomislav Zlatic.
