001 Overview 3 Introduction 3 The Kit 4 The Recording Chain 4

002 Technical Details 7 The Articulations 7

The Maschine Kits 8 The MPC Kits 8

003 Tips & Tweaks 13 Adjusting Pad Sensitivity 13 Finger Drumming 13 Custom Kits 13 Mixing 14

Table of Contents

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'The 60s Funk Kit' is an authentically recorded, multisampled drum kit that perfectly captures the unique sound and vibe of the great funk records from the 60's and early 70's.

Inspired by the kits used by legendary drummers such as Clyde Stubblefield, Jabo Starks, Zigaboo Modeliste and James Black, this kit is packed with a traditional gritty tone, full of the warmth and character youʼd expect to hear from classic vintage drums, all recorded through vintage mics and direct to analogue tape at Gizzard Studios, London, UK.

Every instrument in the kit has been recorded over three unique velocities and features four ʻtakesʼ per velocity, giving you a very realistic sounding kit to create your own unique drum performances. Weʼve also created a number of ready-made Maschine and MPC programs that provide fully-tweaked ʻFinger Drummingʼ friendly kits compatible with all MPC models and Maschine 1.8 & 2.x

Overview

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The Kit For this sample collection we chose the very unique and distinctive sound of the 1960s Gretsch Round Badge kit, as favored by Max Roach, Art Blakey, Tony Williams and Elvin Jones.

This particular set up (12, 14, 20), is very desirable today due to its wonderful versatility. The 20" bass drum covers all the ground between jazz and rock with ease, sounding great both wide and open or tight and punchy.

Additionally we used a beautiful Ludwig Black Beauty snare drum, one of the most famous snares in the world and heard on countless records due simply to its phenomenal sound. We also chose a selection of Zildjian Constantinople cymbals, a pair of vintage 5 star super Zyn hi hats, and to complete the kit we recorded a shaker, hand claps and a tambourine.

The Recording Chain Take a listen to 'Sophisticated Cissy' by the Meters or 'Funky Drummer' by James Brown. Seminal musicianship and drum manufacturing aside, these tracks just sound a world away from the hits of today. From a production standpoint, it's fair to say that tone of the most important factors which defined these drum sounds was the use of analogue tape, a recording medium that uniquely colours the sound to give it that pleasing warmth that we all know and love.

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In the age of the digital studio, a 2" tape machine is sadly no longer a common sight. However some studios, such as Gizzard, realised there is simply no comparison if you really want that sound, and have kept the tape alive through pure love and dedication. This entire collection was recorded directly to a Studer A80 2 inch sixteen track machine via an Alice Stancoil 1970's AM series quadrophonic mixer.

Just as important is the right choice of microphones and their placement. We used a combination of the following microphones to record the drums; a Coles

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4038, Calrec 600, Sure 545 , Calrec CM 100,and a AKG 414, recorded with close and overhead positions to achieve a true representation of each instrumentsʼ natural sound.

The resulting recordings were then transferred from tape as 24 bit WAVs via a MOTU Audio 24 I/O interface, and painstakingly edited down to create the individual multisamples. At no point did we add any EQ, compression or any other type of effects or processing. These sounds are raw and perfectly capture the natural warmth of a vintage recording session recorded to tape.

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The Articulations The kit itself consists of a number of different instruments as well as multiple articulations for many of these instruments. For example the hi hat has three articulations; a closed hat hit across the main section of the cymbal (ʻclosed hat bowʼ), a closed hat hit on the edge of the cymbal (closed hat edge) and a fully open hat. There are a total of 16 unique articulations:

1. Kick drum (Kd) 2. Snare (S) 3. Snare rim shot (Sr) 4. Snare ʻdragʼ (Sd) – this is a short snare roll 5. Pandero Snare (Sp) - a pandero tambourine, skin to skin with the snare 6. Closed Hat Bow (Hc) – the ʻbowʼ is the main middle portion of the cymbal 7. Closed Hat Edge (He) – a closed hat hit on its edge 8. Open Hat (Ho) – fully open hi hat 9. Crash Cymbal (CR) 10. Ride Cymbal Bow (R) 11. Ride Cymbal Bell (Rb) – the bell is the raised central portion of the cymbal 12. High Tom (Th) 13. Low Tom (Tl) 14. Two person dual hand clap (CP) 15. Tambourine (TB) 16. Shaker (SH)

For each articulation we have recorded 12 ʻtakesʼ across the entire velocity range from soft to hard. Thatʼs 192 unique drum multisamples, each provided in three formats:

1. 24 bit WAV – compatible with Maschine, MPC Software, MPC5000, MPC4000, and any other computer based recording software.

2. 16 bit WAV – intended for MPC1000/MPC2500/MPC500/JJOS 3. MPC SND – provided for MPC3000, MPC60 and MPC2000/XL.

Technical Details

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The Maschine Kits The Maschine Kits come in two flavours; a ʻstandardʼ layout and a ʻFinger Drummingʼ optimised layout. Weʼve created the kits in Maschine 1.8 format (mgrp) to ensure they work perfectly in versions 1.8x and 2.x of the software. For full installation instructions, please refer to the included ʻQuick Installʼ guide

The Standard Layout

This layout is based on the typical layout used in many of the stock Maschine Library kits and features all 16 instruments and articulations in a single group:

Each pad features all 12 ʻvelocity takesʼ for that particular articulation, with all the takes carefully mapped to their own unique velocity range within that pad to create a very realistic, velocity sensitive recreation of the original instrument.

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The Finger Drumming Layout

This layout is provided to show how the kit can be reconfigured and optimised for live performance.

Here the main kick, snare, closed hat and open hat are moved up to the second row which allows your fingers easy access to their related articulations on rows 1 and rows 3, without the need to change hand positioning at all. Weʼve also included dedicated ʻghostʼ kick and ghost snare pads which guarantee a more soft sounding articulation when you need it, even when you have ʻFixed Levelʼ turned on. This is of course only a suggested configuration, and you can quickly create your own customised layouts either by dragging your pads around within the group or by copying and pasting between groups.

The MPC Kits There are a number of MPC kits provided some of which will work in all MPCs, while others take advantage of features only available in certain models or OS.

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The Velocity Switching Kit The core MPC kit is the Velocity Switching kit which uses the velocity switching feature that is common across all MPC models. In this kit, each pad is set up to play one of three different samples depending on the velocity youʼve hit the pad with. To achieve full benefits with this kit, please ensure FULL LEVEL turned off! The layout of this kit is very ʻfinger drummingʼ friendly:

With the main articulations on the second row, you now have easy access to their associated articulations on rows 1 and 3, including dedicated ʻghostʼ snare and ghost kicks which guarantee a ʻsoftʼ sample even with FULL LEVEL turned on. The layout for the 12 pad MPC500 is a little different to account for the fact that it only has three columns of pads instead of four. In 60s_kit-500.PGM we have placed the most common articulations on bank A, with the percussion and the toms moved to bank B:

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The Velocity Switching Kit requires a fair amount of system memory, with a slight variation depending on the version you use: 24 bit – 24MB, 16 bit – 18MB, Legacy SND – 16MB.

The Round Robin Kit In a ʻround robinʼ, multiple hits of a pad (regardless of velocity) will play back a different sample each time that pad is hit. In the Round Robin kit each pad is configured to play one of four ʻtakesʼ each time it is hit. This produces a very realistic sounding recreation as it mimics the way acoustic instruments never play the exact sound each time they are hit, instead youʼll always hear a very slight and subtle change in timbre. The articulation layout of this kit is identical to the velocity switching kit except weʼve replaced the clap and tambourine with shakers. The only ʻAkaiʼ MPCs that support round robins are the MPC5000 (60s_rr_kit-5000.50s ) and MPC Software (60s_rr_kit-REN.xpm). Please note that unfortunately you cannot use the round robin feature with the velocity switching feature on the same pad, itʼs an ʻeither-orʼ situation. But you

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can of course customise your kit to contain some pads with velocity switching and some with round robins. If you need help doing this, check out ʻBeat Making on the MPC5000ʼ and ʻMPC Renaissance & MPC Studio: Sampling Laid Bareʼ, which both cover this area extensively: http://www.mpc-samples.com/section.php/8/0/akai-mpc-tutorials/

The JJOSXL Kit Any MPC1000 running JJOS2XL or MPC2500 running JJOS-XL can utilise both velocity switching and round robins on a single pad by loading the 60s_kit-JJXL.PGM kit. Of course this all comes at a price – memory usage is just under 29MB. Just remember that the other kits are also compatible with JJOSXL, so if you need lower memory usage, select one of those or modify the JJOSXL kit to use less velocity switches or less round robins. See the JJOSXL Chopping Bible for more details on how to set up JJOSXL DRUM programs: http://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/209/jjosxl-chopping-bible/ It is worth noting that JJOSXL technical limitations mean we cannot combine open hat muting in conjunction with round robins, so the hats in this program remain set to velocity switching. Please also note that no other JJOS support Round Robins, so use the standard Velocity Switching kit for those.

The Low Memory Kit 60s_kit_low.PGM simply uses one sample per pad to provide a less memory hungry version of the kit (just under 6MB). To enhance the realism, it has velocity-based timbre emulation built in, such as ʻVelocity > Attackʼ (produces a softer sounding sample at soft pad hits) and ʻVelocity > Pitchʼ (which produces slight changes in pitch depending on how hard you hit the pad).

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Adjusting Pad Sensitivity As these kits have been set up specifically for velocity sensitive playback, youʼll get the maximum benefit from ensuring your Maschine or MPC pad sensitivity settings have been calibrated to your particular playing style. So while playing your kit, adjust the sensitivity and velocity curve settings (ʻvelocity scalingʼ in Maschine) until you can comfortably achieve a full range of velocities from your pads, from 1 up to 127.

Finger Drumming If you want to learn some finger drumming techniques and exercises, check out the videos from Jeremy Ellis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEpLD6vD43E Also check out Tim Kroker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpSJHoLDuPA These guys use their own preferred kit layouts, but the core techniques are the same whichever kit layout you adopt.

Custom Kits You can of course build your own custom kit from scratch, either by directly adapting our included examples or by starting from scratch with a new blank program or group. This way you can choose your favourite timbres for each instrument, create a custom layout, and you can substitute new samples (e.g. more percussion, bass, piano etc). For detailed guidance on how to build custom kits in an MPC, check out ʻBeat Making on the MPCʼ books, as well as the JJOSXL Chopping Bible and ʻMPC: Sampling Laid Bareʼ.

Tips & Tweaks

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http://www.mpc-samples.com/section.php/8/0/akai-mpc-tutorials/ For Maschine owners, check out the resources at http://www.maschinetutorials.com and http://www.maschinemasters.com.

Mixing Unlike the heavily compressed and EQʼd sounds youʼll often find in many commercial drum libraries, the sounds in the 60s Funk Kit are completely raw, straight from the vintage mics to the analogue tape, for a traditional, natural sound. This gives you maximum freedom when it comes to mixing, allowing you to achieve the exact drum sound your song requires. The same goes for ambience – weʼve recorded this kit fairly ʻdryʼ with no obvious room ambience, so you can add as much artificial ambience as you may need. Our advice is if you want a natural sounding drum performance, use EQ and dynamic processing subtly, just to help the drums sit correctly in your mix – remember the tape will have added some gorgeous compression already!

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Recorded & Produced by Pad Pimps & Tombongo. Copyright © Pad Pimps & Tombongo 2013. All rights reserved.

Drums performed by Richard Preston

Sample Editing & Programming by Andy Avgousti (MPC-Tutor)

Published by MPC-Samples.com 2013.

For more information go to:

http://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/213/the-60s-funk-kit/