Recording - July 2010 - 48

RECORDING'S

SHOWCASE OF SOUNDS

Sony Continental Drift and Continental Drift: Aftershocks
By Mike Metlay
[Full disclosure: These libraries were produced, engineered, mixed, and edited by Paul Vnuk Jr., one of our contributing authors.—Ed.] The newest libraries in the Sony Sound Series: Loops & Samples catalog, Continental Drift and Continental Drift: Aftershocks, are world-music libraries, featuring instruments from eight ethnic groupings: African, Asian, East Indian, Arabic, Celtic, Native American, Ukrainian Gypsy, and Appalachian. The material is presented in 24bit/44.1 kHz ACIDized WAV file format, usable in almost any DAW.

Content Okay, enough griping about the layout—how are the sounds? Fantastic! The recording and editing are as pristine and perfect as the performances are gritty, honest, and absorbing. While some concessions have been made to use in Western music, especially with respect to tuning, the 18 musicians play with effortless looseness and a sense of easy rhythm that has nothing of the metronome about it. Ancient instruments like the African kora squeak and groan as they’re played, and percussion instruments like tabla, djembe, taiko, and dumbek are represented with multiple rhythms, many with long pauses, designed to fit together and build interesting and varied songs. Some instruments are deliberately played rushing the beat, and those loops may start almost in mid-note, with the loop ending on an attack, because that results in the best feel. I love this. There are lots of inspiring loops here, but my personal favorites are the amazing finger bell and bell-ensemble rhythms, and the East Indian vocal loops—traditional Kirtan vocals sung by Ragani (interviewed February 2009). The guzheng, a Chinese zither, is represented not only with traditional flourishes, but with nearly three dozen extremely cool rhythmic figures, in some places sounding almost like an acoustic guitar played in a rock style. Throw one of these into an arrangement in place of traditional guitar strums and give your song something special! While most of the loops were recorded very cleanly in an airy room environment and without effects, a few special tricks appear here and there, like dubby “juju” guitars or Enya-style Celtic female voices awash in reverb. Aftershocks adds unusual instruments like Tibetan singing bowls and Andean flutes for timbres that range from the soothing to the eerie. Beautiful performances, impeccably captured—what’s not to like? But wait, there’s more There’s even more material from the recording sessions than has appeared on these libraries, and Sony is making it available to the public in various ways. To accompany this review, Sony has graciously allowed Recording to offer a time-limited link to a special package of samples from the Continental Drift sessions. These samples, 101 MB in all, include loops that add onto the two main libraries (numbered to dovetail with the existing samples), plus performances on a pre-Civil-War Martin guitar, and are available to all our readers free of charge. Just go to http://tinyurl.com/RecMagSonyBonusContent before July 31, 2010, to download yours!

Organization: The Continental Drift library comes as a 2-CD set or a download from Sony’s online store, with about 1.4 GB of material in all. Aftershocks is available only as an online download and adds just under 1 GB more samples. Both libraries come as ACID loops; there are no single hits or notes for any of the instruments, except when provided as accents in very short loops. Some ACID-format example songs and a “making-of” video round out the content. The libraries are subdivided by ethnicity, then by instrument; each instrument folder contains numbered samples, sometimes named by stylistic content. For example: the East Indian folder has a Harmonium subfolder that contains four numbered samples each of Harmonium Female and Harmonium Male. (Did you know that the higher- and lower-regis- Conclusions ter harmoniums were named “female” and “male”? I didn’t.) Organizational griping aside, the material presented in While Sony sells Aftershocks as a separate product and it contains these libraries is world class. Sony continually sets the bar many new instruments of its own, including all of the Appalachian very high for its 24-bit collections, and the Continental material, it’s obviously designed as an adjunct to the first title—all its Drift libraries are no exception. But don’t take our word for samples are named/numbered so you can dump them into the same it—try the free download we’re offering! folders as the first library’s samples and not have any conflicts. For example, Continental Delivery: Online download (both volumes) or 2 CDs (Continental Drift only) Drift’s Arabic/Oud folder has 12 loops; Format: 24-bit/44.1 kHz ACIDized WAV files Aftershock’s has five more, numbered 13 to 17. License: User licenses but does not own content; use is royalty-free in We’re not sure why some Aftershocks instruments were placed where they were (didgericompositions, samples cannot be used in libraries or on their doo in the Celtic folder?) but as you drag and own. Full license agreement available online at drop to arrange your hard drive’s library, you http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/loop_libraries/eula.asp can put the loops wherever they seem most Documentation: none sensible. Sony, please: put these two libraries Prices: download versions, $69.95 each; Continental Drift on 2 CDs, $73.95 together, organize them neatly, and make More from: Sony Creative Software, www.sonycreativesoftware.com. them available as a single big download, if not as a DVD release!
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RECORDING JULY 2010

http://tinyurl.com/RecMagSonyBonusContent http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/loop_libraries/eula.asp http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com

Recording - July 2010

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