Organic Drum Loops has released the Organic Calfskin Kit, a freeware acoustic drum kit instrument in the VST3 plugin format for DAW software on PC and Mac.
Organic Calfskin Kit is a flexible sample-based drum kit instrument. The plugin was developed using the Maize Sampler platform. It offers a range of control parameters for fine-tuning the drum kit’s sound in the user’s DAW.
The individual drum groups provide volume and pan controls, as well as the ability to be routed to a different audio output. The latter feature is handy if you want to apply third-party effects and processing tools in your DAW’s mixer.
Organic Calfskin Kit also features the global volume and pitch bend controls, an adjustable velocity curve, and a so-called “weirdness” parameter, which applies pitch modulation to the drums. Pitch modulation is an unusual effect that can make the drums sound lo-fi, unstable, or just outright weird.
It’s worth noting that the sampled acoustic drum kit was played using three different tools: sticks, brushes, and mallets.
The different articulations add tons of flexibility to the plugin, and you can use a different set of samples depending on your track. The brushed kit will work better for jazzy songs, whereas the sticks are a great fit for classic rock and pop tracks.
Even though the Organic Calfskin Kit isn’t a complicated plugin, the developers provided a set of video tutorials to help speed up the learning process. The first part of the tutorial is embedded below.
The developer also provided a MIDI map in PDF format. The file is located in the downloaded ZIP archive, and it can be useful if you’re planning to use the plugin with an electronic drum set.
The sampled drums sound very good and the plugin is worth downloading if you’re looking for natural acoustic drums. The only problem is the GUI size. It’s not too small for comfortable use on HD screens, but 4K display users might find it too tiny.
You can download the Organic Calfskin Kit plugin for free from the Organic Drum Loops website. Sign up for a free user account to access the download link. The plugin is a 1.1 GB download due to its large sample content.
Organic Calfskin Kit is compatible with VST plugin host applications on PC and Mac. Both 32-bit and 64-bit plugin hosts are supported. The software needs to be installed manually (extract the ZIP archive and move its contents to the VST3 folder in the Common Files directory on your hard drive).
UPDATE: Organic Drum Loops released version 1.1 of Organic Calfskin Kit. It reduces the file size from 2 GB to 1.1 GB!
More info: Organic Calfskin Kit (1.1 GB download size, ZIP archive, VST3 plugin format for Windows & macOS)
More articles:
17 Comments
Fotis
onThank you for supporting us! BPB rocks!!! Everyone, feel free to ask me any questions regarding the VST.
Brenny C
onThanks for the free VSTi, Fotis! Very generous and a really nice plugin!
Organic Drum Loops
onThanks so much for the write-up! We’re so happy to release this plugin to the community and spread the love. Now let’s make some music! Cheers!
Kirill
onFree drumkit with brushes?? Thanks a lot!
Tomislav Zlatic
onThat’s what it is! Cheers! :)
Synthiemental
onHey,
I’m a huge fan of your drum loop kits and samples, especially the Genre kits. They really live up to the name “organic”. You offer such a quality that you maybe should consider charging money for the effort you make and value you produce, maybe by providing smaller free kits and larger “Gentleman’s Edition” kits (similar to Tokyo Dawn Labs’ plugins).
One question about the new plugin: would you consider distributing it as a torrent? It’s quite large and some people in the world (especially in emerging countries) don’t have fast internet connection. Torrent allows incremental downloads over a longer time period with smaller bandwith needs. Also, via torrent, users could contribute by “seeding” (sharing) the torrent files and thereby become contributors, which is a great way of creating a sense of community in times like these!
Thanks for all your work!
Organic Drum Loops
onYeah, thanks for the compliments. Organicdrumloops is based on a give and receive alternative economy model. Charging money for these sounds is not my interest or intention. The goal is to spread this stuff around the world in an open manner to support the progress of the art form, and hopefully create some sort of global harmony in the process.
I like your torrent idea and am looking into it. I’ll keep you posted.
What part of the world are you in my friend?
Organic Drum Loops
onHey, as an update. Looks like the torrent idea is bit more than we’d like to chew off at the moment. I’ll definitely consider this in the future though as we progress. Thanks again for your note and interest!
rubba
on[live 10.1 win10]
Getting spontaneous extreme volume spikes with distortion and program crashes most of the time when changing kits (asio and win driver)
Fotis
onI apologize for the volume spike problem. We are working on fixing it. I have contacted the Maize developers about it. I will also try to optimize the plugin in order to prevent crashes. Thank you!
Fotis
onWe have updated the plugin to 1.1. The volume spikes should now be fixed!
lifestation
onCan’t register. The second recaptcha checkbox doesn’t check.
organic drum loops
onHey, sorry you’re having trouble. Everything looks good on my end. This most likely is a browser issue, try clearing your browser cache and make sure your browser is up to date. Thanks for your interest.
lifestation
onIt was an “outer” internet issue. Solved by itself an hour later.
Solemn
onHow do I install this? I’m not familiar with the VST3 procedure.
Fotis
onExtract the files from the archive in the folder your DAW reads VST3’s from. The most common ones are:
Mac: Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST3
Win: C:/Program Files/Common Files/VST3
Jake
onI put the folder and vst file into my vst plugin but Logic isn’t recognizing it :/. Someone please help! I’ve been so stoked to use this kit haha.