Last week we invited our friend Adam Michalak to the studio to make some small production tweaks with some of our favorite patches from the Drums of War series. Adam is the stage manager at the SONY Streisand Scoring Stage and has sat through the recording and mixes of hundreds of scores from all our favorite composers and engineers, he is also worked with us recording the Cine-series.
Both Drums of War 1 and 2 are rather organic libraries, if you could have listened to the recording sessions for each you would hear a sound in the room that would closely resemble the final sound of the product. Therefore, our intention here was not to spoil the general identity of the library but perhaps adjust them so they accomplish more or less the same thing while leaving room for other instruments to contribute to the mix.
Here we are passing along before and after audio, screen grabs and precise channel strip settings for use in logic, with logic’s complimentary plug ins while using the default patches. Note these settings can easily be reproduced for very similar results in the sequencer of your choice.
You can download the package here by clicking this link.
DOW1 Sub Boomz Before and DOW1 Sub Boomz After
Drums of War 1 – Sub Boomz
Notice the sharper attack, identifiable snap and longer/tighter ring out. Designed to cut in the mix and take up less bandwidth.
Drums of War 1 – Titan Ensemble
This particular patch has become a sort of a standard hollywood big drum sound so we didn’t want to do much to spoil it. Just some gentle compression to finesse it into the track easier. It is a patch that works quite well naked due to its recording environment.
Drums of War 1 – Combat and Battle Drums
If memory serves us correctly these drums where fairly similar to one another, a sort of antiquated medium sized drum. We’ve often thought of these drums as partners for one another and these settings realize this. Panned hard left and right - adjusted slightly to compensate for the combat drum being slightly louder. Added head and slightly scooped mids allowing them to cut easily. Perfect for “fills.”
Drums of War 2 – Frame Drums
If you listen to Irish Music you will note that frame drums can really put out a huge and deep sound given their relatively small size. However for cinematic use, we have other patches that can give us the boom in a cleaner fashion. So here we decided to omit the lower half of the drum’s spectrum allowing the frame drums to exist in their oft desired treble range, especially effective at mezzo and soft dynamics.
Drums of War 2 – Mondo Toms
Here we did some more extreme work to make the toms more “tommish,” closer to the sound heard in rock and pop albums. There are times when you go to great lengths to mask a tom but use this when you actually require one.
Drums of War 2 – Sub Boomz
The sub boomz from DOW II were recorded on a taiko rather then the orchestral bass drum so they naturally are a bit higher in nature. Sometimes this is desirable, as a low hit can often be more of a statement then one wishes to make. The eq settings for this patch is intended to be a bandwidth filler, an opposite of the DOW 1 sub boomz. This will blend nicely with ambient textures and snap/attack less then its older comrade.
You can now take advantage of the Drums of War Bundle (DOW I and II for 199$)
Hi all,