High School Drumcorps

Marching Percussion Kontakt Library

High School Drum Corps is a multi-sample drum library focused on the powerful, tight sound of a small marching band drum line. There’s a certain unique punch to the hard mid-tones and truncated dry snaps of marching snares and bass drums. It’s quite distinct from the solid, pleasing punch and smooth resonance of typical rock, jazz and symphonic percussion - these drums are meant to be heard loud and clear from a great distance, delivered with the staccato snap of a military formation. Mike was a marching percussionist back in his youth. To record this library, he returned to his old alma mater many years later to capture the feeling and sound of playing in a small marching drum corps live and in the flesh.

Soundiron's goal was not simply to sample the sound of watching the band from the bleachers, but to put you right there in the drum line yourself, all the way from the rehearsal hall to out onto the field on game day. To do that, they recorded the drum line in both a large indoor band hall and an open-air outdoor football field environment to provide you more freedom and really put you right in the action. The hall has a live room wetness, while the field position has a much drier sound, with a subtle echo and natural environmental background.

The indoor version was recorded in a wood, tile and fabric surfaced band rehearsal hall. The outdoor recordings were done on the stadium field, so there are occasional stray sonic elements buried in the sound from the outside world. Soundiron also sampled some live marching band and parade ambiences you can use to add realism and sound design. With 2 Marching snares, 5 tuned marching bass drums, and ensemble strikes, this library has all the flavor and awkward charm of a high school marching band drum line, with plenty of pop, crack, whump and boom to kick off your next composition. High School Drum Corps fits perfectly in any genre from Trap to Latin, and it’s ready to sonically smash your next cover of We Will Rock You or The Final Countdown. March on!

Contents

The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. They've also included 20 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.

This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. The customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.

The interface is rounded-out by Soundiron's modular FX rack panel, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes our favorite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. They’ve added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!

Product Specs

• One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format

• Indoor & Outdoor recordings of marching snare, 5 tuned bass drums, crescendo rolls, ensemble strikes

• 20 Ambience patches created from the source content

• 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples

• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets

• 1,563 stereo samples

• 1.32 GB installed

• Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator

• Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments

This library requires the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later.