Before Christmas, Somerville Sounds released Soft Drums Lite, a free drum library for macOS and Windows.
The holiday plugin drop is a 64-bit-only release available in VST3, AAX, and AU formats.
Somerville Sounds’ Jon Meyer said he was inspired by folk, Americana, and singer-songwriter music when creating Soft Drums Lite.
He observed that for folk music, sometimes using drumsticks is too much while using brushes is too soft.
Therefore, for Soft Drums Lite, he covered the drums with tea towels and used ProMark Broomsticks and a fluffy kick beater to create an “in-between sound” that bridged the gap between sticks and brushes.
For the release, Meyer took his original Soft Drums prototype from several years back and gave it a new look and some new features.
Soft Drums Lite is the little bro of Somerville Sounds’ Soft Drums Kontakt Player instrument, with the paid version offering many more customization options.
You can tell that just from looking at the interfaces, as Lite is super no-frills, while the full version has a packed interface with lots of options for switching up the sounds.
Soft Drums Lite has the advantage of running without the need to install Kontakt Player, though.
True to his usual style, Meyer provided scant info about the plugin on the product page and instead gave the full breakdown of the origin and operation of the plugin in their introductory YouTube video.
Soft Drums Lite is available via a ‘pay what you want’ format. You can enter as little as $0, although the dev notes a suggested price of $5.
Once you choose a payment amount and add the plugin to the Somerville Sounds cart, you’ll be prompted to enter most of the details usually required for a physical purchase.
Signing up for the Somerville Sounds newsletter is optional and is checked by default.
Once you’ve completed the cart, you’ll be taken directly to a page where you can download either the macOS .pkg file or Windows .exe file with a single click, with the plugin having an approximate download size of 227 MB.
Earlier this year, I played drums on a folk album, using a combination of sticks and brushes, and listening back to some tracks, I do think the sticks were just a tad too much.
So, I could see how Soft Drums Lite’s in-between sound could be very handy in the toolkit when working on folk and acoustic music.
Check out the deal: Soft Drums Lite (FREE / Name-your-price)
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