Hand Held Sound Flying Hand Percussion - awesome

[David Polich]

I got an email from PSP Audioware announcing a promo they are running in conjunction with
Hand Held Sounds this weekend (13th thru the 15th). 50% off two of Hand Held Sounds' products - Flying hand Percussion and Mad Drumkit. Just use the promo code "psp4valentine"
at checkout.

Mad Drumkit didn't really strike my fancy, but I did pull the trigger on Flying Hand Percussion, which with the promo code came to $89.50 This is without a doubt one of the best recorded percussion libraries I've ever used. Maybe THE best recorded.

It's 10 GB of, well, hand percussion instruments, like frame drums, djembe, bongos, congas, clay pot, water bottle, bell stick, bell trees, anklungs, claves, shakers, triangles, cajon, and more. The articulations for each instrument include numerous hits in different positions, plus finger rolls, taps, hand flutters, rubbing, scraping, etc.. most any articulation you can associate with each instrument. The quality is absolutely stunning. There is convolution reverb included with each instrument as well as different microphone positioning, although each instrument comes up as dry with the close miking as default (hooray).

No offense to MOTU's Ethno 2, but for a much lower price you get just about every hand percussion instrument you need or want, in high definition.

Even when the price goes back to $199, this library is still a good deal. Highly recommended.

http://www.handheldsound.com

[mhschmieder]

Like Dave, I was sitting on the fence on this one as I suspected it to be primarily loop-based, but the PDF was available so I studied it, and in the meantime Dave had bought it and given it his approval. It is definitely player-oriented, and even more so than most other libraries as they make it easy to catch a lot of nuances of hand drumming.

I went ahead and bought MAD as well (first in an upcoming series of drum libraries, but also employing an articulation-mapping scheme that will come into play in what looks to be an upcoming marimba library).

Be warned that FlyingHand Percussion takes a REALLY LONG TIME to download.

I'm hoping to give it a try tonight, but a higher priority is to evaluate ALL of the SPL, Maag, Brainworx and related plug-ins before the massive sale ends tomorrow.

My main percussion library has been BFD Percussion, for many years, and augmenting with various world libraries and dedicated instrument libraries when needed (or when one is very deep and strong for a single instrument vs. the catch-all libraries).

Therefore my main shootout will be vs. BFD Percussion. FlyingHand Percussion may win on choice of players and instruments alone, as they picked professional players and top-end gear vs. the mostly more generic low-to-mid-end instruments other sample libraries work with.

[monkey man]

Thank you for the info, Dave! I've been searchin' for a decent conga sound through 25 years of hardware ROMPlers and samplers. Been waiting for a definitive (read: irresistible) reason to go ITB for percussion (yes, mainly for my beloved congas). This could well be it. It's a way off still, but when I do get around to actually buying some plugs and VIs, this will surely be on the list along with PSP and SM.

If you renamed that link, Dave, you've accidentally added an "s". Maybe it's that or perhaps it isn't, but either way it doesn't work. Silly me, I've had the page trying to open in the BG whilst on the forum here, occasionally hittin' "reload", thinking it was my flakey connection.

Here's the link:

http://handheldsound.com/

[monkey man]

Be warned that FlyingHand Percussion takes a REALLY LONG TIME to download.

Have no fear, Mark.

From the site:

* Brand new Interface featuring a detailed visual display of articulations, playing zones, mixer and more.
* Better handling of round robin alternates.
* A single patch design with all microphone positions including samples load/unload.
* Brand new Legato Drumming™ engine, which includes auto nuance and gesture control including dynamic muting.
* Patches load much faster.
* Compatible with Kontakt 4 and above (full retail version required).
* Downloadable and watermarked.

Bummer that I'd have to buy Kontakt; I'd not planned on this. Don't tell me: I'll need it for the SM stuff too? Seen no mention of this so far here and I've watched all the PooToob vids as well, so if it's indeed the case, folks must've simply assumed that it's a given.

[mhschmieder]

Yes it's singular vs. plural for the company name.

I meant slow download speed for the installer/library; haven't had a chance to try it in DP yet. It took too long to finish and now I am madly trying to evaluate every single plug-in from Plugin Alliance before their sale ends later today.

As for congas, I had to do a LOT of customization to BFD Percussion to get proper "tight" tuning and eliminate resonance, etc. I laugh when I try some of the presets others have made. I get a pretty good sound out of the Gon Bops congas, which are more traditional Cuban style (heavily tapered), but the timbales and some of the scrapers have been more successful for me.

The congas will in fact be the first thing I hit in FlyingHand Percussion when I evaluate my purchase, which is now looking unfortunately like it will have to be after the sale ends as I have a full-day jazz gig tomorrow.

Note that this may be the only library to contain a Bongo Cajon. The library is from 2006 and I never became aware of that hybrid instrument until about 3 years ago, so I'm surprised it got included as I think it's still a pretty new instrument.

[jloeb]

It is an amazing library, one of the more amazing things about it being that it had more or less all of the capabilities and detail that it has now when it was first released nine years ago. (I bought in 2007 soon after release when it came on a deck of DVDs in a beautiful handmade papier maché case, and if you think it takes a while to load now, lemme tell ya... SSD recommended.)

Amazing, forward-thinking approach to this library which, like Vienna, prefigured many of the practices that are increasingly standard for pro level sample libraries now. Still better than most, possibly all, hand percussion libraries in existence, as Dave indicated above.

[bayswater]

I bought the Mad drums. They close to no brainer cheap with this offer and sound great. They do an excellent job of avoiding a machine gun sound. I think they're going to prove very versatile when you add processing.

[stubbsonic]

I have a question about their samples and just a meta-question in general.

I downloaded the freebies from HHS and am looking forward to playing with them more.

When I was previewing the samples, I noticed that they weren't normalized-- i.e., soft hits are quiet samples. When I make samples, I always adjust (boost) levels for quiet hits and normalize everything them and let the sample player handle the dynamics, otherwise the velocity scaling gets more complicated effed up on the programming end.

But I know some sample library providers seem to go with this "don't-touch-the-levels-during-multi-velocity-layer-sampling" approach. Any opinions here?

[monkey man]

Yes it's singular vs. plural for the company name.

I meant slow download speed for the installer/library

Doh! Silly me, I misread your comment. Sorry, Mark. Thought I was delivering good news.

As for congas, I had to do a LOT of customization to BFD Percussion to get proper "tight" tuning and eliminate resonance, etc. I laugh when I try some of the presets others have made.

Ha! If my efforts to reduce "sustain" or release times on my h'ware synths over the years are effectively the same thing you're talking about - jinx!

You're probably referring to unwanted, perhaps project-clashing (dissonant) resonances that can't be tuned to where you'd prefer them to be without their starting to sound unrealistic. Either way, you like 'em tight 'n snappy, as do I.

The congas I've been stuck with over the years are usually "short" enough, especially with editing, but have never sounded the biz. Heck, as long as they sound realistic, and as long as I can shorten sustains if need be, I'm sure I'll be happy. Better have a listen to the sound examples at the FHP page...

The congas will in fact be the first thing I hit in FlyingHand Percussion when I evaluate my purchase, which is now looking unfortunately like it will have to be after the sale ends as I have a full-day jazz gig tomorrow.

Oh man, please share your thoughts on 'em once you've done the evaluation in the most indulgent detail possible, Mark!

Good luck for the gig man.

[bayswater]

But I know some sample library providers seem to go with this "don't-touch-the-levels-during-multi-velocity-layer-sampling" approach. Any opinions here?

Interesting question. I've always done the don't touch approach, not for technical reasons, but because it never occurred to me not to.

But now you bring it up, a reason to do it this way would be to keep the room, mics, etc. consistent across the velocity layers for a specific sound (and across notes for that matter). If you play a series of snare hits with decreasing levels, wouldn't your approach make the room and mic noise increase relative to the signal? If the original sound being sampled was very quiet and you normalize it, you'd hear boosted room sounds and mic noise. You'd want all that to be consistent.

Maybe for entirely unrelated reasons, the dynamics on the Mad drums are quite distinctive and pleasing.

[stubbsonic]

It wouldn't matter if you boosted levels during sampling of quiet hits. You normalize everything. You just make sure that you re-create the basic dynamics with velocity-amp-scaling. The relative level/activation of the room isn't lost when you boost levels at the pre. It is important to record onto more than 14 out of your 24 available bits-- even though those samples are typically played at a very low level. But even normalizing quietly recorded hits though not ideal fidelity-wise, still makes the programming work better.

With samples recorded without touching the levels, your quietest Layer 1 would either have no velocity assigned to control amplitude, or if it did, you would have to then boost the level of the layer because the low velocities combined with the low level of the recording would make it not scale properly or match the next layer.

The alternative is to have no velocity control on amplitude at all which means you simply have as many dynamic levels as you have layers. I suppose if you have enough layers, you might not notice that velocity is only switching layers and not controlling the level.

[bayswater]

Yes, I suppose you end up with the same thing with both approaches in theory. In one case you boost the level of signal and noise with normalizing, then play it back at lower levels. In the other you leave the signal as recorded and play it back without reducing the level. But wouldn't the first approach risk introducing more artifacts, inaccuracy and general rubbish than the second?

[stubbsonic]

If given the choice between normalizing and or low level samples, I'd opt for the former. Boosting gain digitally doesn't really damage the signal-- it just doesn't help it.

And the other option of riding levels during sampling/recording is the best solution (IMO). You control the gain, get max resolution on the digital side, and after all is said and done, you have 127 smooth levels of velocity/amp.

This is my exclusive way of working in sampling and it works REALLY well for expressive, dynamic instruments. The alternative just doesn't make any sense to me.

I suppose the test for this and any sample set would be to run set up a sequence with a series of smoothly crescendoed MIDI notes and see if steps or switches can be heard.

[David Polich]

I don't think low-level samples are all that much of an issue in FHP. Yes, the range between
softest and hardest hits in instruments like the congas and frame drums is very very wide, true.
But percussion instruments have that dynamic range. In FHP, nothing is normalized, it is what it is. I prefer this approach to sample mapping, and here's why.

The softest hits will exhibit less brightness, "click", "slap" and "edge", If you bring up those
hits' level via normalization, but you don't normalize the hardest hits, then you have the
quieter hits at nearly the same level as the loudest ones, and it just doesn't sound natural.
This would be true of any acoustic instrument that is hit, struck, or plucked.

One could argue, well, the quietest hits are too quiet and I don't hear them speak, and the instrument doesn't "cut through". But in the real world, the same thing happens - percussionists have to routinely slap or strike instruments very hard if they want to be heard above the rest of the band. Ask any professional percussionist.

Things like shakers and the stickbells in FHP are on the quiet side, no matter how hard you
hit the keys to trigger them. So in that case I just stick a trim plug on the insert for the Kontakt track, if I'm cutting those instruments (I cut everything as separate audio tracks - including shakers, claves, castanets, whatever, each instrument gets its own track).

[bayswater]

Dave, that was my take on it, but you explained it better.