No keygroups to wrangle with, no squinting and cursing at tiny key numbers - one click and you’re good to go. I headed back to the pad screen and clicked the little keyboard logo to the left of the relevant pad and then the individual pad sound was mapped across my whole keyboard. As an example, I took the boomy bass drum model, extended the release, modulated it via all four LFOs (each modulated by the successive LFO), passed it through the distortion, modulated the filter with the stepper, sent it through the resonator at really low frequencies and got instant Bebe and Louis Barron. I would say that even if you’re not in the market for a drum synth, if you’re a synthesis nut you should buy this plug-in just for its sound-design possibilities. This makes Drum Spillage 2 tremendously powerful as a soft synth. The more complex algorithms such as membrane, noise and FM offer even more possibilities. At the top are individual level and pan controls, along with Crush (sample rate) and Decimate (bit-reduction) controls with which you can turn even the gentlest of sounds into outrageous noise. Each model has a common bottom pane of LFOs, amp and filter section. Which is handy because even the simplest synth, the cowbell, features four LFOs plus amp and filter envelopes, all of which can modulate each other and some of which are sync’able to host tempo. Again, Drum Spillage 2’s interface is paramount here: some of the algorithms are quite complex, but at no time did I feel confused or swamped by parameters. The sounds themselves are produced by 12 different synthesis algorithms, and are wonderfully tweakable via each pad’s individual instrument editing screen. Audio Spillage are to be commended on their balance here: too wacky and Drum Spillage 2 would be left languishing, never a go-to plug-in too staid and it would be out-competed by aforementioned sample libraries. A lot of the kits seem to revel in wildly bizarre tones that leap out of the speakers, but they are always part of an ensemble which features usable bread-and-butter sounds too. However, even here, the programmers throw us some beautifully mournful percussive tones that sound like goats lost in Scottish fog. ‘Electro’ is the most ‘normal’ of the kits, coming closest to 808 territory. Cycling through the factory banks reveals all manner of zinging, whooping and metal-bashing.ĭrum Spillage 2 arrives with 15 of these factory banks, which are both eminently musical and experimental. I programmed some beats and was impressed by the contrast between the traditional synthesized kicks and snares and the crazier gibberings of some of the pads. It’s crisp, clean and punchy-sounding, very like something I’d spend hours patching up on my modular only to forget about and ruin the next day. The second smile was courtesy of the sound. Whilst this kind of interface has been done before, Audio Spillage’s implementation is leaner, cleaner and therefore more immediate than others. It’s a wonderfully simple way of connecting real-world controller with virtual response, and it makes programming Drum Spillage 2 a doddle as you never get lost: you always see what is playing where. Hit some keys from C1 upwards and waveforms pop up on the corresponding pad. There are 16 pads arranged in a four-by-four grid. Like Apple with iOS 7, Audio Spillage have eschewed the dreaded skeuomorphic design that infects many plug-ins, and instead, present the user with a beautifully spartan and utilitarian graphical interface. The first thing that made me smile about Drum Spillage 2 is its aesthetic. Perhaps a drum synthesizer, albeit running as software rather than an unruly clump of wires, gets closer to the spirit of these machines than static samples? Drum & Drummer Remember, too, that a fair number of classic drum machines, like the TR808 and CR78, used totally synthesized sounds. But if, like me, you miss Waldorf’s Attack and you like to roll your own sounds, Drum Spillage 2 is definitely of interest. If you’re after a vintage Linn, DMX or other sample-based beat machine, this is not the droid you’re looking for. Where it differs from the Steven Slate Drums of this world is in its proud emphasis on synthesized drum sounds. Drum Spillage 2 lets you get down and dirty with synthesized drum sounds.Īudio Spillage’s Drum Spillage 2 is the (surprise!) second version of their Audio Units-format synthetic percussion plug-in for Mac OS X.
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