This has been a season of obituaries, but when it comes to music, tributes can’t be silent. Francis Preve has a special set of free sounds on his Symplesound platform.
One of the tougher losses to swallow for so many producers recently was Florian Schneider, the pioneering co-founder of Kraftwerk. Francis digs into the analog, synthesized and processed drum sounds that defined that sound – and helped shape so much music to follow.
These come in formats you can use right away, learn from, and make your own:
Ableton Live 10.1 Drum Rack (since it’s just a Rack, that means it works even in Live Intro)
Roland TR-8S (both kit and pattern plus 8 beat variations – this is a good illustration of how to package TR sounds)
18 drum loops in .WAV format you can use anywhere (Logic, Reason, a module, whatever)
You could also dig into those kits and use the one-shots, too, of course, since both the TR and Live formats can be opened without those particular tools (albeit without some of the nice customization).
Fran also has some videos showing how these work:
Also, TR-8S owners, you won’t want to miss Fran’s master class on the instrument, which is now exclusively on his site and includes still more preset content:
Thanks to Francis for sending this in. I know Florian meant a lot to many readers, so if you’ve done tributes, I’m rounding them up now to share very shortly – be in touch or leave a comment.