Corry BanksSo my man from Very Sick Beats, JFilt sent over this kit a good while ago. I have to say that my reviews are slow coming lately (shouts to Very Sick Beats for the patience). But this kit review comes better late than never. Lets talk about it.
So first off, the name being Very Sick Keys led me to believe there were no drums samples of note here. Wrong! There are a good gang of drum samples here and I took a liking immediately. I review a lot of kits and like anyone who has a large library i’ve found that I reach for the same few kits regularly. It’s worth noting that this changes from time to time. It’s also worth noting that it looks like Very Sick has worked its way into my short stack of frequent use.
Here is an example of what I whipped up using the drums from this library in Bitwig.
Why? Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s simple. I like drums with character. These drums lend themselves well to boom-bap flavored beats, songs and compositions. As stated on the cover art this sound library is “designed for that soulful vintage sound.” I can easily see how that conclusion is drawn and if that soulful vintage sound was the target this library is a bullseye.
The library contains Rhodes, Pianos, Organs, Clavs on the keys side of things. There are a gang of one shot samples inside of a one shots folder. That folder contains folders labeled Bass Notes, Drums, PianoNotes, Rhodes Notes, Vinyl and Wurley Notes.
The bass samples are plentiful and there are some pretty useable samples. There are approximately 10 bass sample sets of all sorts here including 101, finger, jungle, nock, quake, shake, thumb, west, wood and zapper.
The Rhodes folder contains a few folders with carious notes. There is the Ab-notes, C-Notes & E-Notes folders. Each of these folders contain the specified notes from the top to the bottom of the keyboard. So for instance, the Ab-note folder contains the following notes Ab1, Ab2, Ab3, Ab4, Ab5. The C-notes folder has notes C2 thru C6. I think you get the set up here.
They key here is that the Very Sick Keys library is set up to give you the source files for you to create preset interments by spreading the given notes across your keyboard controller. in my case that would mean creating key groups on the MPC 5000 and playing across the controller. I think Very Sick Beats is onto something if he ever decided to make this kit completely turn key and include program files, key group files or just go all out and creat Kontakt instruments. Although I don’t mind creating the preset instruments and key groups (sometimes), others may not bother. That would be a bit of a shame because the samples are nice and it seems that a lot of organization and effort went into creating them. Still, I guess there is a load folder feature on most 16 pad weilding beat machines now a days so maybe not a big deal.
Getting down to the drums… All processed via the classic MPC 2000XL (I miss my 2000xl, btw), the drum folder contains kicks, hi hats, percussion and snares, each of which are contained in their own sub folders. There aren’t more than a handful of each but then again this is NOT the Very Sick Drums Collection, its the Very Sick Keys collection of samples. I can’t say that the snares are totally unfamiliar (that doesn’t mean that i think they aren’t original, just gives a familiar vibe in use) but I think they all compliment each other. as in the kicks and snares and hats go well together. it was easy to create a pgm file with all the drums included. They play well together. My one gripe is that I had to do a bit of boosting the volume on a couple of kicks but once I boasted them they were good to go. All in all, the drums are dope.
I was particularly surprised at how many goodies were in the Loops folder. There are riffs of Clavs, organs, rhodes, pianos and nearly every instrument that were included as one shots. These are all very usable loops for using however you desire including chopping and rearranging or simply using as loops. The other surprise was the Bonus folder which contained Construction chops and stems and full on grooves with bp’s in the title. I have to say this Bonus folder could have been a kit or library of its own but Very Sick Keys sound library is all the more better for having it included.
All in all, this sound library is worth checking out. What I liked most was the bonus construction samples. If you are interested in creating presets and key groups from the included one shot sample of various keys like the Rhodes the pay off is a nice one. I think Very Sick is on the edge of creating some very cool Kontakt libraries here, or at least I hope thats the direction this is headed. I think their market will open up greatly at that point. Why? Because I think folks want this sample set but I think it would be even better if set in a more user friendly format. I’d love to see a nice multi sampled Very Sick Keys library at some point too. Overall, I think we can look forward to many good things to come from Very Sick Beats. This is an impressive set nonetheless and for $24.99 there is a lot here to rock with.
Included
- 250 audio files in 16-bit/44 WAV format
- 50 rhodes loops plus 10 loops each of piano,wurly, clav, organ, and harpsichord
- 100 one shots broken into sections including drums, bass and keyboard notes for easy mapping
- Loops ranging from 82-130 BPM in soulful genres including neosoul, hiphop, funk, R&B. gospel and jazz
- All sounds are royalty free
- All sounds processed through the classic MPC2000xl
- All loops are BPM and key labeled
- Compatible with any hardware/software system that uses WAV formatting
- Includes Bonus Construction kit with 5 Loops along with individual stems and extra chops