Drumdrops Vintage Disco & Funk Kit Review

The “Vintage Disco & Funk Kit | Dual Kit Kontakt Player Pack” combines the Drumdrops Vintage Funk and Vintage Disco kits into a single Kontakt Player package. We are taking a closer look at the latest Drumdrops release for Kontakt Player and giving away free copies of the pack to five lucky BPB readers!

The sampled kits attempt to recreate two iconic sounds of 70s music – funk and disco. Together they add up to over 4 GB of compressed data and over 20,000 individual samples. The kits are also available separately as instruments for the full version of Kontakt, as well as in BFD, drum replacement, and three different sizes of WAV samples, starting with the one-shot sample packs which have 44 samples each. To avoid any confusion, the Kontakt Player pack which is reviewed in this article does NOT require the full version of Kontakt to work. It is fully compatible with the free Kontakt Player by Native Instruments.

Funk Tight

The funk kit is the more “normal” twin, so let’s start the review with that one. It is, actually, a good all-around drum kit which could work in many rock, pop, or country tracks. James Brown famously told his musicians that “every instrument is a drum,” so it’s not a surprise that Drumdrops Vintage Funk sounds like archetypal drums. While this is not explicitly a James Brown kit, it certainly sounds like mid-to-late 70s James Brown, P-Funk, or even Osibisa. To be more specific, it resembles a modern hi-fi recording in the same style. Getting it to sound like a vintage recording takes some tape emulation and possibly vinyl emulation as well (if going for the crate digging sound). The built-in effects come in very handy for this, although vinyl emulation is not included and needs to be applied externally.

The sampled drums are a Sonor Hilite kit with typical sizes – 22″ kick, 16″/12″/10″ toms, 14″ snares in 6.5″ and 5″ depths, 14″ hi-hats, two 18″ crash cymbals, and a 20″ ride. The hi-hats have six degrees of openness. There’s also a cowbell, tambourine, shaker, and a Simmons Digital Clap Trap, which was more of an early 80s sound. These are very high-quality drums, and of lighter construction than the thick-shelled Sonor drums typically associated with metal drummers. The lower velocity layers in this kit sound fine and are necessary for all the ghost notes in funk music, but this is not the best kit for low-velocity ballads. Drumdrops Vintage Funk really comes into its own at higher velocities, where the sound can develop that powerful snap.

This particular Sonor kit belongs to and was played by Jan Kincaid who played for the Brand New Heavies for two decades. That raises an interesting question – drum samples don’t need a skilled drummer to record them, so is it worth getting a big name involved? I think it’s helpful to have someone who understands the desired playing style and knows how to set up a kit to get that specific sound, although it’s not as crucial as when making a loop library.

The microphone setup is conventional – close mics on the kick, snare, toms, and hi-hat plus overheads and rooms. That makes this kit sound much more contemporary than Drumdrops’ Vintage Folk Rock Kit or other Drumdrops kits which copy microphone setups from the 2-track and 4-track era. It is also a little too modern for quite nailing the sound of the earliest Funkadelic, or James Brown hits, or low-budget blaxploitation soundtracks (the Memphis Soul Kit, or the 60s Motown kit which is not available in Kontakt format yet, would probably be more appropriate for those). This kit was recorded in a tight, dry room, and even the room mics are only a few feet in front of the drums.

Disco Dead

The genre has been dead for a long time, but the best thing about classic disco drums is their dead (heavily dampened) sound. This kit was recorded in the same room as the Funk Kit, using the same setup and played by the same drummer, but it sounds much more unusual. For one thing, the pieces of the Rogers Big R kit are larger – 24″ kick and 18″/14″/13″ toms. Even the hi-hats are oversized at 15″, and they have five degrees of openness. The snares are both 14″, but deeper than the Funk Kit ones, at 6.5″ and 7″. The crashes are 17″ and 18″, and the ride 20″. There’s also a cowbell, tambourine, cabasa, and that Simmons Clap Trap again.

The bigger drums and lower tuning are something that a metal band might like, but the drums more dampened and recorded in a less “live” room than one that would be common for metal. The kit could work for 70s hard rock drums, though. The Rogers Big R kits are very 70s, too. They’re among the cheapest vintage American drum kits on the market, but they sound good and are solid – they just look outdated, as do most things from the 70s to the modern eye. Such drums are an excellent choice to sample – it’s not like the audience at your gigs is going to be looking at those big ugly cast aluminum kick spurs.

Disco’s basic kick, snare and hi-hat patterns have survived in house music to this day. The dense (relative to most earlier pop music) kick and busy tom fills necessitated dampening the drums. The kick is recorded in dampened and undampened variations, though with the low tuning even the undampened is pretty short and thumpy. The drums here are reasonably and “tastefully” tuned and dampened. They are not as “dead” as the most heavily dumped drums recorded in that era. If needed, that specific can be emulated somewhat realistically with the envelope controls. And speaking of imitating other sounds from that era, the hi-hats are great for playing the typical 70s car chase movie scene hi-hat pattern by mixing partly opened and closed hits.i

Much like the Funk Kit, these drums benefit from tape and vinyl emulation if you’re trying to sound like something sampled from a vintage record. The raw recordings sound like a contemporary recording in the disco style.

Meta Samples

I did not grow up listening to 70s music, so I associate this type of drum sound with hip-hop of the early 90s, which indeed sampled a lot of funk and quite a bit of the more soulful kind of disco as well. These days, getting sample clearance is complicated and expensive, but the sound remains popular – the only difference being that it usually has a more saturated top end than it did in the 90s, for the “vintage hyped” feel.

And that brings us to the most unusual aspect of these kits, which is the possibility that a lot of users will not use them to sound like a real drummer playing a drum part, but instead to sound like sampled drum loops from a classic 70s record. So, samples used to imitate a drum kit which is then used to imitate samples. Modern tracks in the style of 80s tracks which sampled 70s tracks. I guess we have ourselves a case of “Sample Inception”.

If your primary intended use for these drums would indeed be to emulate vintage loops and one-shot samples, it might make more sense to get one of the less expensive kit versions, which include unlocked WAV files. On the other hand, the Kontakt Player versions do offer a lot of additional functionality such as the built-in effects, envelopes, and humanization, all of which I described in more detail in my earlier review of Drumdrops’ Folk Rock kits. So, which version makes more sense for you depends on how you intend to use these drums. If you’re actually looking to play these drums like a real kit, then, by all means, grab the Kontakt version and take full advantage of the excellent drum engine which the Drumdrops use for their virtual instruments.

Summary

These two kits replicate sounds which belong to a bygone era but are still extensively imitated and sampled in modern music. Both kits have a tight, precise sound, with the Funk Kit being a more middle-of-the-road take on the sound, and the Disco Kit being lower and beefier. Apart from the obvious use in funk and disco productions, the Drumdrops Vintage Funk & Disco kits are the perfect fit for a hip-hop producer who wants to create authentic-sounding vintage drums from scratch.

More info: Drumdrops Vintage Disco & Funk Kit Kontakt Player Pack (£90)

The Giveaway

Drumdrops are kindly giving away five free copies of the Vintage Disco & Funk Kit | Dual Kit Kontakt Player Pack to five lucky BPB readers! To enter the giveaway, submit your name and email address in the form below. You will be subscribed to BPB’s mailing list, with the option to unsubscribe at any time. You can further increase your chances of winning by completing the bonus entries (such as subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, etc.).

The winner will be announced on this page on Friday, March 9th. We will also notify the winner via email, so please double-check your email address for typos when entering the giveaway. Good luck everyone and thanks for reading BPB!

Drumdrops Vintage Disco & Funk Kit GIVEAWAY

Drumdrops Vintage Disco & Funk Kit Kontakt Player Pack Review

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The kits have a tight, precise sound, with the Funk Kit being a more middle-of-the-road take on the sound, and the Disco Kit being lower and beefier. Apart from the obvious use in funk and disco productions, the Drumdrops Vintage Funk & Disco kits are the perfect fit for a hip-hop producer who wants to create authentic-sounding vintage drums from scratch.

• Sound

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• Workflow

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• Design

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• Value

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