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Smart Loops Pro Drum Works Acoustic Collection & Percussion Collection From the site..... Acoustic Kit: Acoustic standard size drums recorded dry, with no effects. EQ and compression applied to enhance the natural quality of the drums, and to provide a little punch common in various rock music styles. Over 6,000 straight-feel and shuffle-feel loops. Trap Kit: Acoustic drums using smaller drum sizes, and tuned for a unique, small, up-front type of sound. Minimal EQ and processing applied. Thunder Kit: Acoustic drums recorded with powerful effects and processing to create big sounding drum tracks for today's aggressive rock styles. Percussion Kit: All Percussion Kit loops were performed by Eguie Castrillo who has played with Tito Puente, Steve Winwood, Michael Brecker, etc. All the loops in this collection have been recorded dry so you can add your own effects, and mix the percussion the way you want. Over 375 percussion loops featuring agogo, bata drums, bongos, canjira, claves, congas, tablas, timbales, and more. Back in 2007 I grabbed some of the Smart Loops Drum Loops. I decided on the Download set of their Acoustic Drums, which came in Straight 4/4 and Shuffle feels. These were a sub-set of their Pro Works collection, and were stated to have over 3000 loops per set, for a total of 6000 loops in the download. The total cost was $75, a bargain for such a collection. I also, a week later, grabbed their Percussion Collection to round out the "set". I got it, on special, for $15. Then, in 2009 I grabbed the Thunder & Trap Kit Collection's. (Everything below relates to the Acoustic Kit Collection, the new Overview 's for the Thunder & Trap Kit Collection's are at the bottom of this page. JCS .) The drum sounds are very punchy and clean. Without any additional tweaking I feel that they fit well into most mixes, and with a little compression they fatten up quite nicely. The Percussion is also clean & crisp, and when combined with the Drums create a great Rhythm Section that gel's VERY nicely with each other! I was use to collections from Acid, Drums On Demand, and Beta Monkey, and tho they sound great, and mostly work for what they specify, there really was not any way to mix & match the loops, even from the same CD. The sounds were too different, and the tempos were off just enough to make stretching the loops, when you DID find a few that worked together out of various set, almost impossible. Not so with the Smart Loops Collection. To have close to 6000 Matching Loops that will tempo stretch accurately is, well, unheard of in my book! The selling point's are the sheer variety of loops you get, and that they all work together like they are meant to! And I mean in the way they match up (the editing is spot on), sonically (all of the 1000's of loops sound the same in tone & volume), and in the range that they cover BPM wise. The Percussion set is the same, it matched up perfectly in all the same ways. And when I say match, I mean drop them together and your track is done, no going thru adjusting the volumes of individual loops, or tweaking their tone. They blend in so well with the drum tracks that you would swear that they were recorded at the same session. There are a total of 109 Folders of full beats between the 4/4 & Shuffle sets, 5016 loops total, covering every combination of HH-Ride_Tom_Snare_Kick Combos that I have needed, and coming from a life-long drummer that is a LOT of turf to cover so well in a loop collection! I have only needed one "feel" that was not already in there, and that was created using the one-shots in about 2 seconds......fantastic! And speaking of One Shots, this is another area where this collection shines, and it is SO simple that I can not believe that no other loop maker has done it. Besides the single hits at up to 6 different velocities per drum, ALL of the Fills & Cymbals are separate from the loops themselves! Yup, you read right, every Fill, Crash, Sizzle, China, Pang & Splash cymbal is separate from the main loops. Have you ever found that perfect loop combination, only to have it ruined by a Crash Cymbal in the wrong spot, or worse yet, one that the ending ring cuts off all of a sudden because the loop ended? No more, not when you have this set! YOU choose where to place the Fills, YOU choose where the cymbal accents hit, YOU choose where that Cowbell comes in....and the cymbals carry over to the next loop, across 2 full measure's depending on the cymbal.....It is so simple it is brilliant! It is the same with the Percussion loops, with the included One Shots you can create almost ANY rhythm that a Rock - Pop - Modern Folk / Country track could need. And to end on, they are super simple to match up across the 100+ folders. Select any loop that has, say, 06, in the Name out of any of the folders, and they will pretty much match up into a useable feel.
Now, after all of this are they perfect? No, not at all. The sound of them, tho nice & punchy and having a nice room ambiance to them, is a major downfall when you go to compress them, you REALLY need to know how to use a compressor to tweak them just right without bringing too much of the room into play. The punchy sounding kick can get to be too much in some tracks, so you will also need to know how to use a Parametric EQ so you only remove the frequency that is conflicting with the track. The Hi Hat & Ride Cymbals, which are in every loop as part of the rhythm, are mixed a little too low to my ear, thus the need to either use EQ or Compression to bring them forward a little on some tracks. The overall tone of the tracks is starting to sound a little dated, but is still a whole lot better than most tracks coming out of the mid level so called "semi-pro" studios of today. Tho they claim 6000 loops between the Acoustic 4/4 and Shuffle collections, I am about 180 short of that mark, and it has never been rectified...... The naming convention is a little "out there" at first , but once you get it, it is super easy to find the loops in the style / feel you want. And all the loops are only 1 Measure long, while some of the fills are only 2 beats long. But even with these problems, I can honestly say this....I have, as of 7-9-09, EZ Drummer, 8 DOD Collections, 11 Beta Monkey Collections, and more miscellanies ones than I can count. And tho I can find useful loops most of the time to create some good sounding tracks from the "other guy's", I seem to always gravitate back to the SL collection. For ME, they just have every building block you could want to create a tailor made, real sounding track for your song, with a minimal amount of fuss & tweaking.
Added 6-1-09: The Trap Kit Collection A lot of the positives & negatives mentioned above also apply to this collection. This sets sound is totally open compared to the tight, processed sound of the Acoustic kit. The drums have a wide open, ringing tone that appeals to the drummer in me, because it sounds like it would if your recorded a well tuned, live acoustic kit in a decent room, with nice mic's, before you went nuts with all the effects. The drums have a higher pitched tuning, but this seems to be focused mainly on the Kick & Snare drums, the Toms, Fills, & Cymbals sound pretty much like the same ones from the Acoustic set without processing. This makes the Cymbals sound alive & ringing, and the tom's have a nice round tone, but the tuning on the toms sound the same.
Added 6-20-09: The Thunder Kit Collection Since I have been extremely happy with the loops that I have bought from SL, when the 20% off coupon arrived I thought, "OK, let's complete the Pro Drum Works Collection!". So within 5 hours I had the Final Kit on my hard drive! All the + & - mentioned above also apply here, but there is one more problem, this collection lacks a lot of loops compared to the Acoustic & Trap Kits (I am working with Frank at Smart Loops to find out what the discrepincy is with the counts, so as soon as I know something, you all will know something!) This kit has an aggressive mid-range tone to it, along with a classic 80's - early 90's "Drum Hall" reverb - delay on the drums. Again, the Snare & Kick sound like the only drums that are diffrent from the other two kits, while the Toms, Cymbals & Fills sound the same. The only diffrence is, like the other two kits, are the room effects on them. This set will drop right in a mix that has aggressive distorted guitars & gritty bass tones. The kit itself lacks almost all low end, and will punch thru a pretty dense wall of sound. Am I happy with it? Like the other two kits, the answer is a resounding YES! A few final thoughts on the Pro Drum Works & Percussion Collection.... I have found the Percussion set to be solid, with all the elements working together like a great percussion section should. Even on dense mixes, these need very little EQ to make them hold there place in the mix. There are only 2 things that bother me about the collection. First, there is no Vibra-Slap! This is a main stay of every percussion collection I have ever seen. And second, the Chimes, tho they sound nice, are also limited in that they sound like they were just "hit"......there is no "wash" of sound, just a sudden solid wave of sound going both down & up in pitch. Some more subtle variations would have gone a long way to make this instrument complete. As for the Kits..... Every pattern & naming convention is the same among all three Kits. And this is way cool because of the following 2 scenarios... Say I create a drum track for a song, but as I am mixing it I find that the Acoustic set is too "slick" for this track. Since it is already tweaked I can not remove the effects, but by matching up the Pattern numbers I can replace the entire drum track with the Trap or Thunder kit and BAM! A totally different set that gives me a different sound that I can work with. Scenario 2....I have a great track going, but because of the way loops work I can not separate out the Snare, Kick, etc individually without a lot of work....but the track needs "something".....and I found out how to give it that.....double or triple up the kits! That's right, create a track that uses 2, or even all 3, of the kits and layer them. By blending them and using different effects on each kit, or only on one, or none on any of them, I can create a unique sound that has to be heard to be believed...and yes, the drumming & editing is tight enough to do this with no artifacts or phasing problems! The biggest problem I am having with the Pro Drum Works collection is the loop count. Every one of my Download collections is off from what is advertised, and all three add up to a lot of missing loops.
**ATTENTION!** As of 8-22-09 I have not heard back from anyone at Smart Loops for over 2 months. This is the last email I have from them dated 6-26-09 ..... ===== I’ll have to have someone else do a thorough search, as you did, to see if there’s any missing files from the download that are on the disks. I would hope not, and our original count was just off for some reason. But, I can’t imagine us being that far off. I’ll try to get some more info. Thanks! Frank ===== Now here is my last email, the one that got the above response..... =====
From: Smurf Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 2:49 PM To: Info@smartloops.com Subject: My Final Count of the Loops, Please Read Hello Frank, Yes, it's me again. I am just sending along my finally tally for you to check out. Again, I am NOT ticked, just trying to figure out if the downloads are missing files compared to the DVD's, that is all. A definition to start with, from Wikipedia..... "Definitions "Loops are short sections of tracks (probably between one and four bars in length), which you believe might work being repeated." A loop is not "any sample, but...specifically a small section of sound that's repeated continuously." Contrast with a one-shot sample. (Duffell 2005, p.14) "A loop is a sample of a performance that has been edited to repeat seamlessly when the audio file is played end to end." (Hawkins 2004, p. 10)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_loop===== Smart Loops Numbers from My Full Pro Works Drum Collection, Download Version. 6-22-09 ===== All the counts below are with all the folders cleaned of any Audio Tip's, Text, or Help Files. The only thing in the folders are the Audio loops themselves.This is my count as of 6-21-09. ===== The Acoustic Kit Collection has 5,897 files in 129 Folders total, including the Hits and One-Shots Folders. The Trap Kit Collection has 5,670 files in 129 Folders total, including the Hits and One-Shots Folders. The Thunder Kit Collection has 5,335 files in 120 Folders, including the Hits and One-Shots Folders. So out 18,000 total loops between all 3 Kit's, we only have 16,902, a shortage of 1,098 loops to start off with. Now, out of the 16,902 files that remain, let's remove the Hits and One-Shots Folder files (since they are not loops by the above definition), which break down like so... Acoustic Kit 4/4 Hits and One-Shots - 273 in 7 Folders Shuffle Hits and One-Shots - 261 in 7 Folders ===== Trap Kit 4/4 Hits and One-Shots - 253 in 7 Folders Shuffle Hits and One-Shots - 254 in 7 Folders ===== Thunder Kit 4/4 Hits and One-Shots - 253 in 7 Folders Shuffle Hits and One-Shots - 253 in 7 Folders ===== For a total of 1547 Hit's & One Shots. Add these to the original 1,098 loops that are missing and the total amount of loops that are missing comes in at 2645......which drops the overall total down to 15,355 loops, a good amount away from the "Over 18,000 Loops" between the 2 DVD's. ===== Now, out of the unique drum loops that remain, there are number of loops where the Snare Drum does not that match up with the rest of their respective collections. And I am talking about in the Loops themselves, not in the fill folders, where I realize that an Aux snare might be in use. This makes them almost useless for mixing & matching with all the other ones because it IS a noticable Tone & Timber variation, at least to me and about 1/2 of my musician friends. The ones I am referring to are as follows....
In the Acoustic Kit..... In the 4/4 Collection folder, there are 172 loops where the snare drum don't match the rest of the collection. This includes the Entire Basic A + Funk A folder. In the Shuffle Collection folder, everything was fine. ----- In the Trap Kit..... In the 4/4 Collection folder, there are 276 loops where the snare drum don't match the rest of the collection. This includes the entire Basic A + Funk A Folder, and all the Double Time folders. In the Shuffle Collection folder, there are 140 loops where the snare drum don't match the rest of the collection. This includes the Snare Double Time Hats, and the Snare Double Time Hats A folders. ----- In the Thunder Kit..... In the 4/4 Collection folder, there are 395 loops where the snare drum don't match the rest of the collection. This includes the entire Basic A + Funk A Folder, and entire Basic D + Funk D Folder. In the Shuffle Collection folder, everything was fine. ----- Now, adding up the ones that the snare drum does not match the rest of the loops, a total of 983 among various folders thru out the collections, this brings the total of matching, usable loops down to 14,372 loops ....a total of 3628 loops short! Even with allowing the way you count Single Hits as Loops, and allowing that every snare that is tuned higher is a aux snare (a lot of us drummers use them) that still does not account for 1,098 loops missing from the total of the raw folders. Now what is there DOES work great together, better than anything else out there that I have found, and if we get down to it 14,372 loops that match up this great is fantastic! But it is still falls short of the advertised "Over 18,000 Loops" that the entire Pro Drum Works Collection says it has. Now, again I want to emphasize that I am NOT ticked off, just wondering if there are files/folders missing in the Downloads that are on the DVD release...I mean I DID just by the Thunder Kit even with our count discussion going on, so that shows you that I think you have a great product! I look forward to hearing from you when you have had the time to check this out, and I will not bother you anymore about it. Thanks. ===== As you can tell there are some big differences between the counts, so when / if this ever get's sorted out I will come back to this page and update it.....but at this point I would say..... ask about it before you order these loops I really do love them, but the counts are off by over a 1000 loops, even when being very generous with the counting.
I will update this page as soon as I get information about the counts!
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