Rinascimento Percussion

Of all the things in which I lack understanding non-chromatic percussion is high on the list. When you get to Renaissance Percussion, I'm totally at sea. Then again I suppose few are experts on Renaissance Percussion and those that are are currently busy at the Renaissance Faire.

The Percussion 'Instrument' is quite large in Rinascimento clocking in at almost 2 gigs compressed. This is because the sample list tops 3700. More than any other instrument type percussion needs velocity layers and round robins as the sound changes quite dramatically from soft to hard and you can get the 'machine gun effect' very easily if you don't have a decent number of round robins. All the short articulations have 4 round robins and a sufficient number of velocity layers.

Until 200 years ago the Bass Drum was called the Turkish Drum as the Turkish military regiments were the first to use them. Apparently the sound hasn't changed all that much in the last 500 years as the Bass Drum sounds solidly thumpy (technical term). The Bass Drums are the first set of colored keys on the left. As with most drums here, the single hits are on the white, OK light blue, keys toward the bottom and the black keys and light keys as you go upwards tend to be multi-hits. The Red keys are what the manual calls 'Long rolls' and they aren't kidding as they run over 10 seconds and then loop so you could play that roll for the rest of your life. The Green G# is a crescendo / decrescendo while the A is a crescendo.

The Bass Drum generally benefits from some reverb and space. If you want bass without the boom, Close works nicely but as you move out to Mid you start getting the punch and Far does feel like you are in the back of the room with the sound hitting you in a few waves. Put all three together and you have some nice BOOM! What can I say, it's a big drum that sounds like a big drum.

Up next, keyboard right, is the Rullante or Snare Drum. Don't things sound cooler in Italian? Apparently the Europeans developed the Snare during the Crusades as their answer to the Bass Drum being wielded by the other side. Neil Peart would have been a General. The configuration is the same as the Bass with the single hits lower and the red and green keys being long rolls and crescendos With all due respect to the armies of the west, the snare has always sounded like a wimpy bass drum to me and it does here as well. You can hear a bit more bite as you move up through the velocity layers. The overall volume seems a bit low to me, though I suppose you don't want it overpowering the bass drum. As with the bass, the three mic perspectives feel significantly different and summing them gives more punch.

Moving on up to the Frame Drum, which seems like a big tambourine. You'll need to play with these keys to get the feel for them. Some of the keys seem to be more of a tambourine at low velocities and more of a drum at high velocities while other keys seem like a tambourines all the way. The red key is a long tambourine shake and the greens are kind of odd. At first I was scratching my head but then as I starting playing more, the Frame Drum kind of grew on me. It is interesting how the timbre changes across the velocity curve. Same solid mic work as the other drums. Note on the green especially here, there is a final hit on release so if you leave it too late the release sounds really weird. So time your release on green.

What is a Long Sheel Drum? Anyone know as I sure don't. It seems like a more relaxed version of the Bass Drum. You can play it loud without getting that bite you get at the loud end of the true bass. It sounds quite primitive to me and if you were scoring a film about native peoples of Africa some centuries ago this would fit the bill. As before single hits low, Red is a a roll and above red is supposed to be green but someone made a mistake and made it blue. Glad I'm not the only one who makes those mistakes! So high blue here is the crescendos.

Finally at the top we have miscellaneous rhythmic sounds. If you know what these are post them in the comments section. The C# is the handclap. Each round robin sounds a bit different and you can get a pretty cool handclap groove going. D# is the woodblock which sounds suspiciously like someone hitting a block of wood. E and F sound like fairly traditional drums with skins. I'm not sure what to make of C and D.

The releases are over long, but I'm assured that there will be a patch out to fix this issue.

Overall this sounds like some good Renaissance Percussion to me. The Frame and Sheel drums are different enough to be an interesting addition to most anyone's percussive library and the Bass and Snare are solid.

Back to the top