EASTWEST

Jun 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Dan Phillips

The seminal band Aerosmith broke new ground by combining funk grooves with hard-hitting rock, and the band's distinctive sound was due in large part to the kit work of drummer Joey Kramer. In this loop collection from EastWest, Kramer teams up with Aerosmith producer Marti Frederiksen to deliver an exciting assortment of rhythms à la carte.

The Joey Kramer Drum Loops and Samples library is available in four versions: as two audio CDs ($89.95), two CD-ROMs in Akai format ($179.95), and as a ten-CD set containing multitrack Pro Tools and Acidized WAV versions ($299). The Pro Tools and WAV versions each consist of eight CDs of multitrack material along with the two audio discs. The Pro Tools version also works with any Mac program capable of reading Sound Designer II files; I reviewed the library using Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer.

Groovy, Baby

The different library versions all include 34 “grooves.” Each groove is presented in several variations, including simple-busy, hats-ride-cowbell, fills, and so on. A groove might have as few as 2 variations or as many as 30.

Grand Canyon, for instance, includes 24 variations with 8th-note and 16th-note hi-hat patterns, closed and half-open hi-hats, cowbells as “ride” (simple or busy with and without tasty hi-hat accents), sparse and busy kicks and snares, and intro and outro fills.

The audio CDs provide stereo versions of all the loops (about an hour's worth of material) and also include a small collection of single hits. The CDs are essentially the same except that the first disc (labeled Dry) has only the natural room sound, and the second (labeled Wet) adds reverb. For my taste, the Dry loops have plenty of natural ambience; the Wet loops seem a bit boomy. Still, it's always nice to have options.

Multitracks

The multitrack versions offer a substantial 2.9 GB of data. All of the stereo mixes are included, of course, but the real gold is in the multitrack masters, which provide separate tracks of mono kick, snare, and hi-hats, along with stereo toms and stereo room ambience. Two of the grooves, Grand Canyon and Jelly Box, include a mono cowbell track.

With the multitrack grooves, you can import the loops into your favorite DAW and mix the rhythm tracks to suit your taste. Simply adjust the levels, EQ, compression, and other effects on a track-by-track basis. On the other hand, these recordings are so good that you may not want to mess with them very much — adjectives like thick, full, and slamming come immediately to mind.

It's also worth noting that you shouldn't expect the sort of track separation you'd get with MIDI drum samples. These are live recordings of an acoustic kit getting a serious workout; Kramer clearly shows the skins no mercy, and there's plenty of microphone leakage to prove it.

High Style

As good as these recordings sound, of course, it's Kramer's expertise behind the kit that really makes them shine. Although he can certainly get fancy when he wants to — with facile hi-hat work and subtle snare ghosting — some of my favorite grooves are deceptively simple.

Gorilla Salad, Garden Gate, and Saddle Bag, for example, are based on the most basic rock beats: snares on 2 and 4, eighth-note hi-hats or toms, and simple kick patterns. However, Kramer's renditions are anything but bland; they're a full-out assault, driving relentlessly forward without pause or hesitation.

My other favorites include Crown and Feathers, a 12/8 pattern with ghost snare notes and a beautiful feel, and the almost gentle (for Kramer, at least) cowbell grooves of Grand Canyon.

My only serious gripe is in the area of documentation. Although a few tracks are identified as fills, it would be handy to have more complete descriptions of the variations in the written documents and in the file names. File selection would be easier if you could see which grooves had intros, outros, cowbells, toms on eighth notes, and so on. Moreover, the file names show only the track information (hi-hats, snare, kick, and so on) and not the name of the groove itself, which makes things a little tricky if you try to use several grooves in a single project.

However, these minor complaints don't even come close to stopping me from recommending this collection. The material is nothing short of fantastic, combining first-class recordings with phenomenal playing. If you're looking for hard-hitting rock loops, put this one on your shopping list.

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Overall EM Rating (1 through 5): 4.5

EastWest; tel. (800) 833-8339 or (310) 271-6969; e-mail sales@eastwestsounds.com; Web www.soundsonline.com