Ever heard of KJ Sawka? If not, you must go check out some of the YouTube videos of him playing drum & bass on a set of acoustic drums. This is one of the first videos I saw of Kevin doing his thing. Pretty slick eh?
With Loopmasters’ Live Drum & Bass Drums these kind of drum beats can now be part of your productions.
Hospital Records continue their Loopmasters sample pack series by bringing you Kevin Sawka’s goldmine of Jungle, Drum’n’Bass and Breakbeats utilizing no loops and no extended samples -only his two hands and two feet.
If you can catch him in the right moment – live, at a show, or in a studio session – you’ll witness him perform each and every 808 bass kick, snare slap, and compressed high hat tick himself, in real-time – now you have the chance to capture the essence of this man within your own recordings – using the ‘KJ Sawka – Live Drum and Bass Drummer’ sample package from Loopmasters.
Live Drum & Bass Drums features a large collection of drum loops and samples.
Live Drum & Bass Drums features
- 600+MB original content.
- 351 dry Live Drum and Bass Drum loops captured through a vintage neve console.
- 46 FX drum loops.
- 100+ live drum hits from multiple custom kits, percussion and top loops.
- 19 drum kits pre-programmed for creating your own patterns, including full kits, percussion, cymbals, kicks, snares and FX kits.
The drum loops are categorized in a number of folders — e.g. Breakbeats, Jazzy Beats, Fills Builds And Breakdowns, etc. The Drum n Bass Beats and Jungle Beats folder are subdivided in folders indicating the type of drum kit that was used. Most samples also include useful information in their filenames, e.g. KJ_FL_175_Bonham_kit_8bar_loop2.aiff is a 175 bpm beat, 8 bars long, performed on a Bonham drum kit.
Most drum loops are 4 bars, many are 8 bars, and a smaller are just 1 or 2 bars (mostly the fills).
The 100+ single shot drum sounds are used in the 19 drum kits for use in your favorite sampler (Kontakt, EXS24, etc.) so you can create your own beats. The patches include full drum kits, percussion, fx and more.
Check the media player on the Loopmasters website for more audio clips from this sample library.
So what do I think?
Formats: Apple Loops, Ableton Live, Reason 4 ReFill, Acid/REX, Multi-format DVD
Price: £29.95 – £39.95 GBP
Much like the actual drumming skills of KJ Sawka, this sample library is pretty insane. Drum and bass is probably my all time favorite music genre so I am a bit biased.
Within the dnb genre I have a slight preference for the drumfunk music by artists like Paradox (and Alaska), Seba, Macc, etc. KJ Sawka’s amazing drum beats are perfect for this genre. These beats and breaks just cry out for major choppage action.
The drum loops are mad tight, yet not too tight if you know what I mean. The recordings are excellent, capturing the funk and drive of KJ’s playing technique. I love the sounds of all the different drum kits he uses, with multiple kicks and snares.
In short: awesome drum and bass beats by an awesome drummer.
More information: Loopmasters / KJ Sawka: Live Drum & Bass Drums
