Until April 9, the cinematic percussion soundset Epic Percussion 2 will be available for free, per the latest Splash Sound offering.
Cinematic Kontakt Drums & Auxiliary Percussion Instruments
Epic Percussion 2 is a Native Instruments Kontakt sample library – the second installment in Splash Sound’s film-style drum-based collection that was first made available in early 2019. Epic Percussion V2 presents an updated version released the following year.
This organized set of sampled instruments offers a mixed variety of orchestral and cinematic sounding drums as well as different percussive elements – from playable drum hits and one-shots to pre-recorded rhythmic phrases.
There are 14 Kontakt patches available:
- Low Hits (bass drum)
- Taiko
- Epic Toms
- Metal Toms
- Concert Toms
- War Ensemble (action/dramatic cinematic drums)
- Solid Snare
- Snare Trio
- Ethnic Ensemble (mixed variety of oriental percussion, incl. hand drums)
- Hand Percussion
- Sub Hit
- Piano Hit
- Cymbals
- Hi Percussion (miscellaneous untuned instruments like shakers and such)
Depth wise, it provides you with 4 microphone positions: A Close signal, OH (overhead), Room and Hall as well as some additional sound design modules and dynamic shapers such as a compressor and hp/lp filters.
The mod-wheel seems to affect the dynamics as well (it acts as an expression control) but there are also a few dynamic velocity layers and Round Robin variations. Some of the RR’s are digital pitch manipulations, while others provide actual alternative takes.
Epic Percussion 2 by Splash Sound is compatible with the full retail version of Kontakt by Native Instruments and is not compatible with the free Kontakt Player.
Also included, in a separate folder, are a bunch of MIDI loops that you can implement in your DAW as well as some FX based samples like different transitions, manipulated samples played in reverse and various percussive hits.
As a side note, I actually covered Splash Sound in this more early blog post, roughly a year ago from now. It was back when they’d released their free (and amazing) Full Kontakt jaw harp which by the way is still available in case you are interested.
