The goal of Groove Bias was to create a set of deeply-sampled acoustic drum
kits inspired by classic 60s and 70s records, along with the timeless
breakbeats we all know and love. For decades, these sounds have been imitated
and sampled over and over, but frequently with modern equipment. Not so with
this library. Impact Soundworks’ motto was “the more tubes, the better,” and
engineers were armed to the teeth with beat-up mics, analog gear, vintage
drums and tape machines.
Groove Bias is a superb drum tool for a wide variety of genres. It’s ideal for
hip hop, soul, and funk, but the warm kits and flexible dry recordings make it
well-suited for classic rock, jazz, and fusion as well. With sound sculpting
tools built into the Combinator patches, Groove Bias is even excellent for
many EDM genres like big beat, drum and bass, or breakbeat: just slam it with
even more compression, saturation, and dirt for an instantly huge sound.
For the tweakers, customizing your own kits is simple. Every drum part (snare,
snare overheads, hihat, kick, etc) has its own NN-XT patch. So, you can tweak
any Combinator kit to taste simply by swapping out NN-XT parts for the ones
you want, or even create your own custom kits from scratch.
Of course, while the drum samples are as vintage as they come, they were also
recorded with modern sensibilities: up to 10 dynamic (velocity) levels and 10
round robin variations per note means the ‘machine gun’ effect is a thing of
the past. Snare rolls, double kicks, blazing hi-hat lines and tom fills are
all no problem, even at very fast tempos.
The Kits
“Superfreak” (Milkboy Studios, Ardmore, PA)
As the name suggests, most of this 60s Ludwig ‘Silver Comet’ kit is rumored to
have originally belonged to a certain funk music icon. The drums were recorded
using high-end ribbon mics into an all-analog signal path, most notably a 70s
Neve console with a few busted channels and lots of character. Outboard
processors in the chain included gear by Empirical Labs, Tube-Tech, and
Anthony DeMaria Labs. The saturation present on the higher velocities of some
of the sounds, like the kick and snare, came solely from high gain running
through all the tubes; no overdrive, distortion, or compressor saturation was
applied!
“Tape” (The Audio Lab, Milville, NJ)
This one was a real hybrid, the centerpiece being a 30s Ludwig Pioneer Black
Beauty snare. The kicks and toms were Tamburo original series, along with an
extra 22” Tama kick. Our hats, cymbals and rides were a mishmash of faded,
junked up old metal… just what we wanted. Everything in the kit was recorded
through an analog signal path then finally to an authentic, 24-track Otari
tape machine before being dumped into Pro Tools. Mics used for this kit ranged
in age and manufacturer. Various workhorse mics from EV, Sennheiser, Shure and
Audix were used throughout, and to get the trashy, crunchy room sound, we used
a trashy 70s General Electric cassette recorder mic along with an RCA SK-30.
“Herodotus” (Real Music Media, Minneapolis, MN)
John Gump (a.k.a. KVRAudio member Herodotus) recorded this drum set, which is
the same make and model as Cream drummer Ginger Baker’s drums! Mics used were
a pair of Neumann KM-184s and Sennheiser 441s plus a Royer R-121. All of this
went into some serious outboard gear like a classic UA 1176, Manley Labs
VOXBOX, UA 2-610S and Manley Vari-Mu before finally going to a TASCAM reel-to-
reel tape machine to seal the deal.
What’s Inside?
- Over 3,400 samples / 4 Combinator patches
- 5-10x dynamics & RR variations per drum
- Individual NN-XT patches per drum part
- Authentic analog recording w/ vintage gear
- 3 drum kits from 3 separate studios / signal chains
- 5 snares, 4 kicks, 9 toms
- 3 hats (closed, loose, open, pedal)
- 2 rides, 2 crashes, 2 splashes, 2 rimshots
- Agogo, shaker, bongos, claps, cowbell
- Tambourine, triangle, woodblock
