Beat Voltage by HowToMakeElectronicMusic
A while ago, ModeAudio released Beat Voltage which is a collection of 247 drum samples sampled from analog drum machines (and other hardware).
Here's my review of the package.
First of all, the pack doesn't contain any loops it's all one-shots and you get plenty of drum sample material to build your own drum kits and grooves.
But lets have a look at the content more closely what exactly does the Beat Voltage hold inside?
65 kicks (40 clean & 25 saturated), 24 claps, 50 snares (29 clean & 21 saturated), 32 percussions, 34 toms, 50 hihats (open & closed) and 15 crashes.
How does the drum samples sound like?
In short: raw and analogue, but at the same time, kind of warm I think it's that analogue warmth doing it's thing there!
The clean kicks hit hard in the 50Hz area and they are deep. The saturated kicks offer (naturally) a more squared tone thanks to the analogue-style distortion.
The snare samples are short and snappy and majority of them contains a pitched tonal element. Of course, this requires a bit of extra work when you produce beats as you (most likely) need to use tuning to make them sit with the rest of your musical material. But it's ok and personally, I think the snares fits to the theme of this sample pack really well.
The percussion folder contains a set of claves, rims (clean and saturated), shakers and reversed cymbals. All good to go with the kicks and snares.
And claps and hihats accompanies the rest of the material really well.
In my opinion, Beat Voltage is a niche' sample pack it covers a very specific range of musical style. It offers that certain sonic quality, which is RAW electronic sound.
I can see these kind of drums to be used in the Left Field, Electro, Minimal Electro or Downtempo type of music. And also maybe in a Deep House music as well especially those clean kicks.
All in all, Beat Voltage is a nice sample pack for anyone looking for that special, raw and saturated, analogue machine drum sound!
The price tag for Beat Voltage is $22.76 and it's available in several formats (FL Studio included). Check ModeAudio's website for more detailed info.
Check the video below for some sound examples and example beat I made with the samples: