While there isn't really a shortage of electronic drum libraries on the market, Drum Tools 01 is well worth checking out. With well over 2000 samples (over 4300 depending on how you count) the main excitement is where the game is: the kicks and snares. Read on.

In my drum machine shootout, I've already showed how damn obsessed I am trying to find the perfect drum machine. Looking back, I believe this whole mania started way back in the 90s when I got a few floppies from Seba with his own assembled drum kits. The drum kits just suited me perfectly and since the departure of the EPS 16+ I still haven't found a drum kit I always reach for when starting to make music. Naturally, I am aware of the futility of my obsession, as the music I create have mutated many times since then, and in many respects, I am no longer the same person as I was back then. But, my need for finding that perfect drum kit seem to be etched into my DNA.

With that said, it's always with double feelings I start to examine new drum libraries, and Wave Alchemys latest offering was no exception. Drum Tools 01 is almost 800 megabyte large and spans over a total of 4300 files - but almost 2000 of those are 16 bit versions, prepared and 'professionally dithered' for hardware samplers. Although I cannot hear any difference from my own dithering samples and these - I think it is a great idea to include 16 bit version. I got two hardware samplers in my studio and while they don't get as much use as they deserve - hardware samplers/workstations are useful and prepared samples most definitely makes things easier.

Apart from the drum sounds, there are also about a hundred chord and stab sounds and a bunch of 303 snippets in the form of a bonus category. But apart from that and the sound effect category - this is a drum library with a focus set on the synthetic.

The structure is clean and easy to navigate through. As there are quite a few samples here - for example, there are almost 500 kicks, but instead throwing them all into one folder, the samples have been divided into six categories: deep minimal, fx kicks, processed 808, processed machines, punchy kicks and solid kicks. Whether these categories actually help you find the right kick is a question that I discussed many times before in this blog, but Wave Alchemy is trying to bring order and structure and that deserves respect. The samples are also available in soft sampler format in a wide variety of formats: Live 8, Battery/Kontakt, EXS24, Halion, NNXT and SFZ. But before we go any further: let's break down this library into numbers.

Claps: 125
Crash cymbals: 26
Drum kits: 13 (between 33 and 11 samples in each kit.) total number of samples: 311
Drum tools: 60
Glitch: 75
Hi hats (closed): 77
Hi hats (open): 64
Kick drums: 484
Percussion: 621
Snare drums: 256
Sound effects: 90
Xtra bonus sounds: 106
Xtra format 16-bit: 1965

Total number of drums: 2099 (excluding the 16 bit, fx and tonal sounds)
Total number of files: 2295
Total (including 16 bit files): 4260

Already with the claps (starting alphabetically here) Drum Tools 01 shows that this is not a mindless collection of lost & found and 'cool' drum samples. When going through a new library the first thing I do is to throw away the stuff I don't like. I'm very hard with this and usually a third or a fourth stays - the rest goes. My initial reaction with the claps in Drum Tools 01 was A Big Fat WTF. At the first listening - I could almost not find anything I disliked about the claps. Solid good material practically made for a drum dork like me. The claps are snappy and spans from synthetic 909-style to analogue synthesizer zap-noise-style - from the quite ordinary to the not so ordinary - but never becomes too weird.

Crashes are usually the part of most (if not all) libraries where the inspiration and creative spirits hits a low mark - but I don't blame the sound designers for that. Apart from the 909 crash and the electro analogue variations of the 808 crash - there seems to be very little source material to work from. Drum Tools 01 is about average in this respect. The crashes are good and Wave Alchemy tries to create something new by processing the sounds in various ways that sometimes make the crash sound like an outright effect. It's a good attempt and all in all good samples with a couple of fresh sounding sounds, but it's probably not the last word we'll hear when it comes to crashes.

The glitch folder contains sounds of an effectish nature - synthetic rather than analogueish. Personally I didn't fall for these sounds - honestly I found them to be a bit pointless, but that comes from a person who doesn't understand the fuss about this whole glitch-thingy anyway. Sounding like a real block-head, I must say my pulse didn't get much higher with the sound effect category either. The sounds are mostly short tonal sweeps, ufo-esue analogue squeeks that just left me wanting to move on to the dedicated effect libraries of Wave Alchemy or Vengeance.

When we are in our complaining mode we might as well clean it all out (yes, we're royal now). The extra bonus sounds category which contains the 303 sounds - and are almost as pointless as any ripped 303 sounds in this genre. The cleaner sounds can of course be used for bass sounds, but trying to juxtapose these into some 303-ish thing is in my opinion a waste of time. The stabs however is a totally different story - seriously good material and with a good variety of sounds. If you are the kind of person who find inspiration with pre-fab stab sounds - this collection is going to make you Very Happy Indeed. The only bad thing I can say about them is that sometimes (and here sometimes mean rarely) there are a long delay tail following the sound.

But enough of this prattle and let's go to the core and let's get dirty with what really matters: the kicks & the snares. It's difficult not to become impressed by this selection of kicks. The variety is staggering and the quality is outright amazing. The sub categories are logical and although they often contain variations on the same type they are still different - longer tonal bass drums have different overdrive settings so they growl in different ways. A good example of how the processing have been executed gets revealed in the section of processed 808 kicks. if you listen closely you can hear the characteristic 808 booming - but all in all, not any of these samples doesn't strike you as typical 808ish, which is a good thing. The style of the kicks goes from soft to hard to deep to mellow. The balance of processing is at a goldilocks zone - they are processed and full with attitude, but it never goes over the top and you can gladly process the sounds further with additional compressors or distortion units without the sound starting to fall apart.
For all of you who - like me - gets annoyed by kicks with too much layering of other percussive elements, such as hi hats, shakers or even snares, is going to be relieved. While there are cases where you can hear layering, it never gets too pronounced. The drums are generally very clean.
Before moving on to the snares, I'd like to mention the odd, but cool section named Drum Tools. This is a collection of 60 samples which basically is a Build-Your-Own-Kick toolbox. There are 45 deep bass sounds and 15 transient clicks - all ready for you to combine in any way you desire to create the Perfect Kick (tm). Cool, clever and useful.

The same goes for the snares - they are very well organized and instantly gives you a sense of oooh-yes-yes. The fundament of the snares lies with the Roland electronic sound - but processed to the degree were it keeps its snappy soul but still feels fresh (if that makes any sense). I know I've been overusing the word snappy during this review, but that's the word that keeps coming up in my head.  If you want to explore something more different than classic snares - the noise sub category gives you a lot of samples that are more vintage-electro noisy.

If you're into electronic percussion but are tired to death of the 909 toms and Roland congas, you will find lots of inspiring material in this section. The sounds range from electronic congas, toms and rim shots to hi hat-ish noises and squeeks - electronic percussion is a balance act between percussive sounds and effects and sometimes the sounds here feels more like effects and sometimes even go into the land of synth basses.

I am delighted to say there are 13 prepared drum kits included with Drum Tools 01. Ready-to-go drum sets is something I wish more of in general. Or to put it correctly - I wish there were more of good combined drum sets around. Creating good drum samples in an art by itself, but combining the sounds into a meaningful and useful package is totally another. The included drum sets are well combined and makes me wish for more. It's a great service that the kits come in so many formats. I tried the Ableton Live 8 format and the version for Kontakt - and they both worked without any issues.

Another nice touch in this library is that every sample has been uniquely named. The names might not always help you find what you're looking for, but it's looks a bit nicer with names such as technofuture, obese, vulture909, filterfetish, cluedo and pitchfreak than a bunch of kicks ranging from KICK-001 all the way to KICK-498.

Conclusion
When Native Instruments released their Synthetic Drums library for Battery/Kontakt in 2002, they were pretty much alone in that field. Today, almost every producer of sample libraries are releasing their own collection of drums for electronic music. In other words, the market is quite saturated.

In my experience there are two types of sound libraries. First we have the ones that start with a sound/loop and explores that with a number of variations and alternatives - and there we have the ones that only provide you with different ideas. Both approaches have their merits. The ones with different sounds ideas give you a lot of different material, which make the chances higher for you to actually find something useful. The problem when you find something useful - you will most probably start lusting for a couple of variations. The other approach has variations but not so many ideas. Drum Tools 01 tries to combine both ways and practically succeeds to eliminate the 'I wish I had more of XXX'. There are variations but still a broad variety of sounds which range from the almost clean Roland TR-camp to the very processed and ready for action. The crashes are a good example of this. Anyone who listened through a couple of sample libraries knows how little variation there can be among the crashes - some libraries sound like eternal variations on the 909 crash. But not so with Drum Tools 01 - in general I feel that there is a thought and a reason behind the inclusion of (almost) every sound.

To wrap it up - Drum Tools 01 is a very good drum package. Seriously good, as a matter of fact. It's executed in a very professional way, both in term of production but also in terms of structure. I felt very comfortable with this library and quickly became a starting point for me when building beats. The library has its up and downs, but its ups are where it counts and its downs doesn't really matter. All in all, Drum Tools 01 isn't the perfect synthetic drum library, but it comes damn close.

Wave Alchemy Drum Tools 01
Web: www.wavealchemy.co.uk
Price: 40 UK pounds (download).
Good: Seriously impressive collection of drum samples for electronic music. Skillfully processed. Good value for money.
Bad: Nothing serious to complain about.

Review copy: big thanks to Wave Alchemy for NFR review copy.