New Zealand based virtual instrument developers ModWheel have created HUMDRUM: a beautifully recorded, authentic Calfskin drum set, including bass drums, snares & toms (large, medium, & small), rim shots, and thrums patches.

Features

• Set of Calfskin Drums including Bass Drums, Snares & Toms (large, medium, small)
• Deeply sampled, up to 9 round robins and 6 velocity layers
• 24bit 96kHz Multisamples (3,200 samples)
• 4.0GB Core Library (2.1GB via lossless compression)
• Requires the full version of Kontakt 5.3 or above
• Price: $55

Installation

The installation process is similar to most samples libraries: after purchasing HumDrum, you receive an email with a download link. After downloading a single RAR file and “unRARing” it, you can place the HumDrum folder wherever you like on your hard drive. The library takes up 2.1GB on your hard drive and consists of 12 instruments and a user manual.

Interface

The HumDrum interface is simple, straightforward, and intuitive. There are 3 different panels: the Main Panel, the EQ Panel, and the Info Panel.

The main panel differs a bit for different instruments, and it is divided into 4 parts.

• Reverb Level – reverb level for close and room microphones
• Room control – controlled by the mod wheel, transitioning from 100% close mic to 100% room mic level
• Stereo Spread and panning – effectively changing the overall sound by altering stereo width and pan.
• The middle section contains between one and three knobs
  • Sustain knob – allows you to control the amount of sustain of separate hits, using Kontakt’s Transient Master function. The lower the sustain setting, the shorter the tail of the note, allowing the user to limit the natural sustained tone/ring of the drums.
  • Speed/Pitch knobs – allow some tempo adjustments to the Flams and Ruffs in each instrument, as well as pitch variation on Humdrum Thrum, Misc Drum Hum, & Tom Rolls.
  • Stutter key – found on C6.

For boosting or cutting low, high, or midrange frequencies, each instrument contains an EQ panel.

I like the idea of the info panel with all the articulations and keyswitches listed.

Conclusion

As HUMDRUM is first library from ModWheel that I have personally experienced, I can tell you that I like the audio quality, as well as the whole experience of playing with sampled calfskin drums. With 9 round robins and 6 velocity layers, these are some well sampled drums. There are lots of different articulations like flams, ruffs, rolls, playing with mallets and sticks, snare on and off, as well as my favourite articulation – the thrum together with stutter key. These drums sounds like they are with you in the studio, and with possibility of changing stereo spread, panning, and controlling the transition between close and room mics, you have really nice sounding calfskin drums set.