May 07 2014 – Drumdrops Admin
Folk Rock Drops volume 1 contains 16 drum tracks taking influence from a range of folk rock tracks from the 60s & 70s and can be downloaded as multi-tracks, stem packs or loop packs. The tracks were played by Folk Rock drummer Martyn Barker and recorded by legendary UK Producer / Engineer Phill Brown. The album was recorded at the historic Miloco Livingston Studios in London using a 1966 Vintage Ludwig Hollywood Kit.
These tracks take reference from artists such as John Martyn, Traffic, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and Bob Dylan. Ranging in tempo from 74 BPM to 162 BPM there is a huge range of tracks and grooves to choose from. There are a few ¾ options, plenty of shuffles, and a couple of tracks were played with brushes and hot-rods.
For the sound Phill Brown www.phillbrown.net (John Martyn, Bob Marley, Rolling Stones, Talk Talk, Led Zeppelin) used his years of accumulated knowledge and went back to the time of the 60s when he was based at Olympic Studios.
Phill’s idea was to create a 1960s drum sound with a modern twist. Instead of positioning the microphones close to the kit he wanted to capture a natural drum sound and record the ‘dead’ room. He used only five microphones on the kit: one on the kick, the snare, two kit microphones placed around the kit which provide a surprisingly good stereo picture, and a mono overhead.
All of the mics were recorded through API mic pre’s and recorded straight to 2” tape on a Studer A80 with a 16 track headblock before being transferred into Pro Tools.
The kit was recorded in the drier sounding room at Livingston (we saved
the liver room for Volume 2). Although the sound is controlled it has a great ambience around it. Livingston has been used to record a multitude of hit records over the years and is well known for being one of London’s top drum rooms.
The kit we used for this was a beautiful vintage 1966 Ludwig Hollywood Kit. It is almost identical to the Super Classic kit which Ringo Starr once used, except it has two rack toms rather than just the one. These are great sounding kits. This kit consists of a 22” x 14” kick drum, 13” x 9” and 12” x 8” rack toms and a 16” x 16” floor tom. The snares used were a combination of two Ludwig snares: a 1968 Ludwig 400 14” x 5” and a 1967 wooden Ludwig 14” x 5” snare. Cymbals used were Zildjian Constantinople 14” hi-hats, a 20” flat top ride, a 17” medium thin crash and an 18” K Custom Dark crash.
Martyn Barker has had a career playing the drums professionally for over 30 years. He started his career with the band Shriekback and is a busy session drummer recording and touring. Martyn has played for artists such as Martha and Rufus Wainwright, Richard Hawley, Katherine Williams, Lou Reed, Peggy Seeger and he also played drums on Joe Boyd’s ‘Way To Blue’ making him the perfect choice for this album.
All sixteen tracks can be purchased as individual tracks, as multi-tracks (unmixed), stems (mixed) or drum loop packs. The multi-tracks come with a tempo map and OMF file to export into other DAW. We also provide templates for Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Reason, Reaper, Studio One and Ableton Live and the audio comes as 24 Bit WAVs. The stems and mix packs which have all the drum parts and percussion as separate stems come as 24 bit WAVs and a tempo map. The loop packs contain about 6 x 4 bar loops from each drum track. The loops are broken down into each component EG full mix with and without EMT plate, with and without percussion, and they come formatted as 24 bit WAVs, Apple Loops and Rex 2 files. Each track can be purchased track-by-track or if you buy the album (in any format) you get 20% off the price.
For a little intro teaser video we made please head here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e26s8CVOYeQ
To hear Martyn Barker and Phill Brown discussing recording this album please head here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXammUUZxDA
To hear demos of the album head to the Drumdrops site and listen to up to 1 minute of each track.
http://drumdrops.com/recording/folk-rock-drops-volume-1
For every new customer that signs up they will receive 20% off their first purchase with a voucher code given out on sign up, however they can also receive one of the tracks from Folk Rock Drops as a multi-track, stems pack and loops pack. For existing Drumdrops customers a new voucher code will be mailed out shortly. Stay tuned…