$50
NEW: "Snowbanks", focused selections from the Avalanche Library, perfect for mobile music production:
Just the Studio Master recordings, $5usd: Snowbank -- Clean
Just the "Viny" versions, mono and stereo, $10usd: Snowbank -- Vinyl
Just the SP-1200/Lo-Fi vinyl versions, $15usd: Snowbank -- Dirty Vinyl
Questions or inquiries: contact@saltmountainmusic.com
It's an Avalanche!
Ever since I got addicted to Hip Hop in the mid-90's I've wanted the "premium" samples. You know which ones. For the last several decades I've worked on learning all about music production and honed my skills on various instruments. Now, it is time to put those skills to use. I have spent the last few years focusing on learning Funk drumming the right way, the way that the drummers who created the iconic breaks did it. They didn't have YouTube, or lots of tutorials, or MasterClass, or in many cases access to lessons. So they learned by ear, by "feel", by going to shows and watching other drummers, by playing rhythms they heard in the world around them, and as a result invented the style of drumming that we call "Funk". It is not Rock drumming. It is not Jazz drumming. It is its own thing, and requires a different set of unique skills. Thus I've spent countless hours listening, watching interviews and original performances, practicing, recording, messing it up, then doing it again, over and over and over. The result is I have created a number of drum loops that are actually "old school" breaks. Many libraries claim this. It's a tall order, to create breaks that can stand up to the OG records. "Avalanche" delivers.
Not only are these "classic" breaks, they are organized with hip hop (and all other kinds of music) production in mind, both using modern DAWs and old-school samplers. The "For_Your_DAW" folder contains .wav files that you can simply drag and drop into any DAW. You have the studio master recordings. You have Stereo Vinyl versions. There are Mono Vinyl versions. I've researched how records have been made and sampled over the decades, so you have "45rpm" and "78rpm" versions that emulate what happens when you speed up a record and sample it. The "SP" folders contain these breaks as they would sound if sampled into an SP-1200. There are 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16-bit versions of the samples, sped up 2x, 3x, and 4x from the original speed and slowed down again to the original tempo. This preserves sample rate reduction and other artifacts from the process so you can find exactly the right amount of "dirt" for any of the loops.
If you own samplers, I've included the sped-up files which take up less space. You have 2x, 3x, 4x, 45rpm, and 78rpm versions as .wav files that will load into any sampler that takes mono .wav as input. The 45 and 78 rpm versions are special; when you speed up a record on a turntable, the audio on the record is sped up but the "RIAA" eq curve is applied to that sped-up audio signal coming from the needle. The sound on the disc itself has been eq-ed specifically for the constraints of cutting vinyl, and every turntable applies the "RIAA" eq curve to the signal coming off the disc to "restore" it to how the master sounded. Thus when you speed up the record, that EQ gets applied to that sped-up audio. It's not simply the normal-speed version played back at a higher speed. Doing this has several effects, among other things it emphasizes lower frequencies in the original recording once you slow them back down again. This gives extra "depth" and "girth" to the samples which you can hear. Both the "For_Your_DAW" and "For_Your_Sampler" 45 and 78 RPM versions have this baked in.
I am not interested in creating yet another loop library that tries to get every drum sound known to man with a gazillion hits and no actual rhythms besides what you can get from quantizing and applying swing in a DAW. The original Funk loops that Hip Hop producers sampled are unique _because_ they don't line up to the "grid", and the patterns played by the drummers on those records don't fit neatly into "swung" and "straight". There is a whole word of rhythmic expression outside the "grid" and adding "swing". These loops have that. They are meant to be used as loops, although you may of course sample individual hits as you please. You might recognize a few of them, several are fairly faithful to the sources that insipired them. Others are completely unique, my own humble additions to the Funk drum loop lexicon.
With your purchase you are granted a non-exclusive license to use these loops, both for non-profit and for-profit purposes in your music productions. Go make Hip Hop magic. Sell your works. Make art. Get money. That's all good.
You do not have the right to redistribute the library, in whole or part, either stand-alone or as part of another library. And yes, I will be checking. I am also a computer programmer and know all the ways in which things end up on the internet (from the days of FTP sites and AOL message boards through Usenet and torrents and the "dark web" and everything else...). Don't be that person. I don't want to involve lawyers and lawsuits and neither do you. Just pay the $50, it really isn't that much relatively speaking. If you really want to re-sell, see below.
If you're a company like Akai or Kurzweil or Dave Smith Instruments or LoopCloud and/or an independent reseller and you're interested in bundling this library with your products, feel free to contact me -- contact@saltmountainmusic.com. We can work it out.
I appreciate your purchase in the way that only a small-time independent musician can; every purchase helps me dedicate more time to creating awesome things. Thank you, thank you, and thank you for your support. It really means the world to me.
ENJOY!!!
-Andrew Plewe-
Owner, Salt Mountain Music
Credits --
Dummer: Andrew Plewe
DSP, Packaging, Demos, etc: Andrew Plewe
Recorded at Salt Mountain Studios (Salt Lake City, Utah) and June Audio (Provo, Utah)
Recording Engineer, June Audio: Jed Jones
Thanks to all the random people on the internet who've provided feedback over the years, to the Avalanche Loop Library beta test crew, to the amazing drummers from whom I've tried to absorb as much as humanly possible, to the internet for providing research resources and historical information along with videos of original performances, and to the Universe without which there'd be no us. Special thanks to June Audio for being a totally awesome place to record. If you're looking for a recording studio to book in Utah, I highly recommend. They are real professionals who know their stuff. Much love to all the Hip Hop artists and producers whose art makes life worth living.