Can you tune “that” to “this” key? Introducing Soniccouture’s Tonal Drums.
by Diogo C
10th December 2024
Sponsored by Soniccouture.
Drum tuning is a contentious topic: whilst some will simply go by ear and twist those screws and tighten or loosen a drumhead until “it sounds right”, others will go to great lengths to assure that each piece of a drum set is tuned to a certain key. This latter camp seems to be enjoying a good time right now with digital tuners and smartphone apps which make this easy.
Regardless of the side of the fence you’re in, we can all agree that it’s not an easy process, and changing the tuning on a drum set will take effort and most importantly, time. That’s where digital technology steps in, offering musicians and producers the possibility to manipulate the pitch of a pre-recorded drum until it “sounds right”, or until it hits the desired key. Nevertheless, it’s not a perfect method, as pitch shifting may introduce undesired artifacts as it’s not quite the same as actually tuning a drum. This has been the achilles heel of sampled-based electronic drums as they usually only sample one tuning, leaving everything else to pitch shifting algorithms. Huge developments have been made over the past two decades and these algorithms are now more capable than ever before but they still don't “sound right”, especially when bigger tuning jumps are tweaked.
That’s where Tonal Drums comes in: this new instrument by Soniccouture tackles the issue by sampling properly tuned drums and neatly packaging them so users can easily switch keys without resorting to pitch shifters. In this article we’ll explore their cool instrument library for the Native Instruments Kontakt platform, which not only brings superbly sampled tuned drums but also some crafty tools for beat-making.
The sampling process
Soniccouture is second to none when it comes to sampling, and their track record is one of the most illustrious in the highly competitive sample-based instrument segment, with their Kontakt libraries receiving numerous accolades over their almost twenty years of intense activity. It comes as no surprise that they are one of the first (if not actually the first) to tackle this issue of developing a drum library that actually samples different tunings.
So let’s start with the sampling process, which is always a Soniccouture specialty: this time around they set up shop in the UK’s iconic Rockfield Studios, a residential studio with over five decades of history and where bands such as Black Sabbath, Coldplay, Iggy Pop, Coldplay, Oasis and Rush were recorded, and it also happens to be the place where Queen recorded Bohemian Rhapsody. Suffice to say that it’s a top-notch facility with many excellent rooms, interesting echo chambers, and of course, tons of amazing analog gear, including a mic locker filled with gems and a rare MCI 500 console, which were all used for the sampling process.
The drum kit used for this project was centered around the Canopus Yaiba, a very distinctive high-end set from Japan that is known for taking different tunings really well. It consists of a 22’ kick drum, 14’ snare, four toms (10’, 12’, 14’ and 16’) and three cymbals (hi-hat, ride and crash). Just one kit? Yes, because the focus here is the tuning aspect - and it's quite a unique kit that we haven’t seen sampled anywhere, so there’s that as well! The kit was set up for recording with two microphones on the kick drum (front and beater), three on the snare (rim, top and bottom), one mic for each of the four toms, pairs for overheads, room, echo chamber and live room - users can choose between the Echo Chamber and Live Room mics. These mics are all accessible on Tonal Drums mixer tab, which we'll explore later.
As we come to expect from Soniccouture, this sampling process was as thorough as it can be. For instance, the snare, toms and cymbals were sampled with both sticks and brushes, whilst the kick drum was sampled with soft and hard beaters. The kick drum, snare and hi-hat were also sampled with different levels of damping, with two different damping options for kick and hi-hat and three for the snare. Velocities were also deeply sampled and round-robins are available for all kit pieces to ensure a more nuanced sound, which is enabled by a pool of over eighty thousand samples. Here’s a total list of what’s included in Tonal Drums:
The tuning challenge
Deciding on which tunings to use was the challenge here: the kick drum and toms were quite simple, as they have clear pitches and it was only a matter of twisting those screws to tighten or loosen the drumheads until the desired notes were achieved. In order to improve clarity, the bottom head on the toms was tuned one octave higher than the top head. The kick drum offers C, D, E, F, G and A tunings, while the toms offers the following tunings:
Putting everything together
Although the samples themselves are the core and more important aspect here, there are two features that are also essential to Tonal Drums: the Mixer and the Beat Tools. The first gives users far more than volume balancing and panning, with a range of tools to shape the sound of each drum, whilst the second offers far more than mere step-sequencing by offering tools that can deliver very interesting rhythmic patterns.
Starting with the Mixer, here we have not only individual control of each microphone as alluded earlier in this article, but a full-blown channel strip with four-band equalizer with two parametric bell bands and two shelves, highpass and lowpass filters with resonance control, a fully-featured compressor, a transient shaper, saturation and stereo width controls. The mixer also features two busses which can be assigned to the room and chamber reverbs, which were sampled from the spectacular acoustic spaces at Rockfield Studios, and a master section that is equipped with the same four-band equalizer found on the individual channels, a compressor which is actually a Kontakt implementation of the Native Instruments Supercharger GT plugin, a tape simulator with variable “warmth” and a peak limiter. All channels in the mixer can be routed to individual channels in our DAWs, but with this feature set it’s safe to say that most - if not all - mixing can be done entirely with it.
Now on to the Beat Tools, which are a staple on Soniccouture’s drums libraries and certainly one of their coolest features. Here we have four unique step-sequencers: Beat Shifter, Euclidean Beats, Poly Beats and Blocks.
All Beat Tools sequencers offer a drag-and-drop feature that allows users to send MIDI directly to their DAW’s timeline, and they can also export MIDI files. Tonal Drums also offers different mappings to accommodate both MIDI incoming from electronic drum kits and other virtual instruments such as EZDrummer, Addictive Drums, Abbey Road Drums and others. Remapping is also straightforward, with an easy to access mapping window and MIDI learn functionality for effortlessly assigning each piece to a new note.
Ok, so who is this for?
Although Tonal Drums is for the most part an instrument aimed at delivering an authentic drum sound with realistic tuning changes - and as such it is a must-have for anyone looking for a superb sounding virtual kit - it can also be used in many different scenarios. Here’s a few of them:
Now go make some tune-shifted beats
Tonal Drums is available for the Native Instruments Kontakt platform on Mac and Windows, where it can be used as a plug-in (AAX, Audio Unit or VST) or as a standalone app. It’s important to note that you don’t need to purchase or own Kontakt to enjoy Tonal Drums, as it is fully compatible with the free Kontakt Player. Tonal Drums is compliant with the NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) protocol for seamless integration with compatible MIDI controllers.
Tonal Drums can be purchased for $179, and until December 29 an introductory offer is available with a discounted price of $129. For more information and to buy, please visit the Soniccouture website.
Drum tuning is a contentious topic: whilst some will simply go by ear and twist those screws and tighten or loosen a drumhead until “it sounds right”, others will go to great lengths to assure that each piece of a drum set is tuned to a certain key. This latter camp seems to be enjoying a good time right now with digital tuners and smartphone apps which make this easy.
Regardless of the side of the fence you’re in, we can all agree that it’s not an easy process, and changing the tuning on a drum set will take effort and most importantly, time. That’s where digital technology steps in, offering musicians and producers the possibility to manipulate the pitch of a pre-recorded drum until it “sounds right”, or until it hits the desired key. Nevertheless, it’s not a perfect method, as pitch shifting may introduce undesired artifacts as it’s not quite the same as actually tuning a drum. This has been the achilles heel of sampled-based electronic drums as they usually only sample one tuning, leaving everything else to pitch shifting algorithms. Huge developments have been made over the past two decades and these algorithms are now more capable than ever before but they still don't “sound right”, especially when bigger tuning jumps are tweaked.
That’s where Tonal Drums comes in: this new instrument by Soniccouture tackles the issue by sampling properly tuned drums and neatly packaging them so users can easily switch keys without resorting to pitch shifters. In this article we’ll explore their cool instrument library for the Native Instruments Kontakt platform, which not only brings superbly sampled tuned drums but also some crafty tools for beat-making.
The sampling process
Soniccouture is second to none when it comes to sampling, and their track record is one of the most illustrious in the highly competitive sample-based instrument segment, with their Kontakt libraries receiving numerous accolades over their almost twenty years of intense activity. It comes as no surprise that they are one of the first (if not actually the first) to tackle this issue of developing a drum library that actually samples different tunings.
- Total Library Size: 14 GB Uncompressed
- Sample Rate: 24-bit/48khz Stereo Sampling
- Kontakt Snapshots: 134 (122 presets and 12 templates)
- Total samples: 83,868
- Snare: 49,434
- Kick Drum: 10,465
- Toms: 14,970
- Cymbals: 8,999 (Hi-Hat: 7,224/Ride: 1,135/Crash: 640)
The tuning challenge
Deciding on which tunings to use was the challenge here: the kick drum and toms were quite simple, as they have clear pitches and it was only a matter of twisting those screws to tighten or loosen the drumheads until the desired notes were achieved. In order to improve clarity, the bottom head on the toms was tuned one octave higher than the top head. The kick drum offers C, D, E, F, G and A tunings, while the toms offers the following tunings:
- 10 inch: D, E, F, G
- 12 inch: A, B, C, D
- 14 inch: D, E, F, G, A
- 16 inch: A, B, C, D, E
- C f - G Overtone
- D f - A Overtone
- E f - B Overtone
- G f - D Overtone
- A f - E Overtone
- B f - F# Overtone
Putting everything together
Although the samples themselves are the core and more important aspect here, there are two features that are also essential to Tonal Drums: the Mixer and the Beat Tools. The first gives users far more than volume balancing and panning, with a range of tools to shape the sound of each drum, whilst the second offers far more than mere step-sequencing by offering tools that can deliver very interesting rhythmic patterns.
Now on to the Beat Tools, which are a staple on Soniccouture’s drums libraries and certainly one of their coolest features. Here we have four unique step-sequencers: Beat Shifter, Euclidean Beats, Poly Beats and Blocks.
- Beat Shifter: a sequencer that can shift steps and velocities on each track and even the track direction itself, all based on probabilities set by the user, which makes it ideal for adding variations to a beat.
- Euclidean Beats: a very popular way of sequencing with eurorack modular synth crowd, based on a rhythm generator algorithm discovered by Canadian computer scientist Godfried Toussaint. We couldn’t possibly explain it here as it’s quite a complex concept, but this free online app does an excellent job of displaying it in action.
- Poly Beats: a polyrhythmic step sequencer where each drum track has its own length, so we can set a kick drum with a regular bar of 16 steps whilst the snare only has 12 steps per bar and so forth. Poly Beats also features a randomization option, which is always handy for times when ideas won’t come.
- Blocks: an interesting sequencer where each segment can have its own subdivision, so for instance you can have your kick and snare with four bars with two steps each, but the hi-hat has 8 steps per bar. Each track can also have its own length and speed, so it should be excellent for getting those hi-speed notes (think trap hi-hats) and ratchets coming out easily.
All Beat Tools sequencers offer a drag-and-drop feature that allows users to send MIDI directly to their DAW’s timeline, and they can also export MIDI files. Tonal Drums also offers different mappings to accommodate both MIDI incoming from electronic drum kits and other virtual instruments such as EZDrummer, Addictive Drums, Abbey Road Drums and others. Remapping is also straightforward, with an easy to access mapping window and MIDI learn functionality for effortlessly assigning each piece to a new note.
Ok, so who is this for?
Although Tonal Drums is for the most part an instrument aimed at delivering an authentic drum sound with realistic tuning changes - and as such it is a must-have for anyone looking for a superb sounding virtual kit - it can also be used in many different scenarios. Here’s a few of them:
- Drummers playing with an electronic kit can benefit greatly from a kit that can change tunings on the fly, allowing them to quickly adapt their sound to perfectly match the repertoire they’re playing.
- Electronic musicians looking to add an organic spice to their productions will find a home here, especially with the Beat Tools, which are a perfect fit for adding variations and nuances.
- Mixing engineers and music producers who want to bolster and augment their drums sounds by layering Tonal Drums with other recordings and/or virtual instruments.
Now go make some tune-shifted beats
Tonal Drums is available for the Native Instruments Kontakt platform on Mac and Windows, where it can be used as a plug-in (AAX, Audio Unit or VST) or as a standalone app. It’s important to note that you don’t need to purchase or own Kontakt to enjoy Tonal Drums, as it is fully compatible with the free Kontakt Player. Tonal Drums is compliant with the NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) protocol for seamless integration with compatible MIDI controllers.
Tonal Drums can be purchased for $179, and until December 29 an introductory offer is available with a discounted price of $129. For more information and to buy, please visit the Soniccouture website.
