Undercover by Ohm Lab
This week we review Undercover, a collection of found percussion samples from the crew at ModeAudio. From cardboard boxes and water bottles to scissors and velcro, we let you know what we think!
There is no better way to engage with the world around you than to turn everyday ordinary sounds into music and the recently released Undercover collection lets you do just that! As you may already know, we are huge fans of found sounds and field recordings in general, but especially when being put to good use in music productions. This particular sample pack features some rather interesting choices, in regards to which household items grabbed the attention of the guys over at ModeAudio. Sonically pleasing and universally familiar, each of the sounds you will find inside of Undercover are not only a delight to use, but wildly flexible.
Delivering relevant and useable sounds at the highest quality possible, is one of the most integral goals of any sound design company worth your attention. We here in the Lab think that ModeAudio always delivers on this and has set such a high benchmark standard for themselves that the selection process of sounds must be an interesting conversation and one we'd love to hear! I can just hear them now, actually
No, no, no that coffee mug is all wrong. I think we need something wider and deeper if we're going to capture the essence of the average cup of coffee sliding across the kitchen table. And put some coffee in it! Or, The velcro capture is alright but it'd be better if we got just a little fuzz in there first so it sounds more natural.
These are things you can sense, more than you can hear. Just like the ongoing conversation about the true feeling of analog synths versus analog emulations produced by software synths and the people programming them. You could grab the same-sized box and hit it with the same whisk, spoon or spatula and easily capture something very different. It's these smallest of details that make this pack of found percussive sounds stand above many others, that are often times too clean or lifeless in comparison.
We wanted to share the purest examples of some of the sounds in Undercover that we could in the short amount of time we have to turn these reviews around. So we went with an old school building block approach and processed nothing, leaving you with a demo track that is a real representation of the sounds as you will find them yourself. Grabbing between 12-15 sounds at random, and tossing in a few subtle synth elements to balance it out, about five minutes later we had what you hear below. No mixing or mastering has been applied.
(We also spent a lot of time transforming these sounds into different types of foley effects, which were all awesome, BTW! So the Undercover collection is for much more than just music production!)
[Please visit the original review page to listen to Ohm Lab's demo]Here's what you'll find inside Undercover:
- 30 Mixed Objects Samples (layered kicks, claps and hi hats)
- 23 Kicks & Thuds Samples (boxes, bubblewrap, tubs & more)
- 63 Metal Samples (keys, lighters, screws, tongs & more)
- 29 Plastic Samples (containers, calculators, cases & more)
- 27 Other Objects Samples (paper, velcro, zips, mugs & more)
- 19 Wood Samples (sticks, woodblocks & more)
- 16 Glass Samples
- 12 Snaps Samples (scissors, ice & more)
- 11 Lids Samples
- 10 Found Percussion Sampler Patches