KRS-01 drum grooves

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 4:38 pm

Hi all of you,

after being very disappointed about the quality of KRS 02-04 (I bought the splits and layers and listened to to the Nu Electro and Mod7/STR-1 packages at a friend who bought them), I was very hesitant to buy the new David Haynes drum grooves library.

Here's my short review: after a second demo listen I still did not think that the audio demos online were the best choice to advertise this library, but I also got the impression that this guy is definitely grooving. So I ran the risk and bought the package.

Imagine my positive surprise:
These are really vivid grooves with A LOT of drive in them.

Korg should have put the groove list online along with the audio demo.
The library covers the following areas:
- Funk. These grooves alone are worth the package from my view. They are mainly variations of 3 or four basic kinds of grooves, but they are each long patterns (16 measures with a small fill at bar 8 and a big fill at bar 16), and they all are great for practising and composing.

The other styles covered are
- Afro-Cuban
- Fusion
- Samba
- Jazz Swing (covering both jazz trio kinds of swing as some more "stomping" bigger band grooves)
- Shuffle
- Blues
- Rock
- Reggae

Yes, David Haynes plays in some more fills and counter-articulations than the usual standard computer midi groove does. But the better of them are palyed in by humans with human feel and drive anyway meanwhile, and the additional accents of this library fit into that development well.

Just imagine having some sessions with drummers like Trilok Gurtu or Vinnie Colaiuta, who also do a lot of accents besides the basic drive, and you will have a clue what this library delivers.

All in all: too good to miss, if you can use the styles mentioned and aren't after something completely else. It's the first of the new Korg libraries which I personally see on a convincing quality level.

Bruce Lychee · Post by **Bruce Lychee** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 5:06 pm

I remember watching Victor Wooten finger drumming almost 20 years ago. I'm interested to hear the new generation. I think this is the one package I want just for fun, especially if it has strong funk grooves.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 7:13 pm

If you buy it, please leave a short feedback. I'm really curious if others enjoy that driving groove style as much as I do.

And don't miss the chance of trying to groove to one of the more complex samba rhythms at uptempo: fair chance to lose the One in a straight 4/4 measure, once you begin to enter into the counter accents game for some measures

DennyC · Post by **DennyC** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:24 am

Great review Jim. I've got a question. Are there rock beats like basic straight 4/4 stuff with rolls and fills that you can copy a measure into one of your sequences and perhaps change the tempo and then possibly put in a fill at the end of a four or eight bar measure?

I guess you can tell that drum parts are not my favorite.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 12:27 pm

Hi Denny,

yes, as you can see in the list above, there are some rock grooves in the library as well. It is not an extended rock library though, as the above styles are all present with ~20-30 paterns each. There are 21 Rock patterns.

Patterns and fiils are not separate, but small and big fills are integrated into the 16 bar patterns.
The library does not only come with user drum track patterns, but also as song patterns, which can be used and edited in the sequencer.

Hope this answers your questions.

jeremykeys · Post by **jeremykeys** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:01 pm

Does anyone know if there are more rock grooves for the Kronos out there? Like Denny C. says about drum tracks. Not my favourite either. I'm also interested in knowing if there are any other time signatures besides the standard 4/4, 3/4, 6/8. etc. I'd like to see some 7/8, 9/8 st right and shuffle grooves as well. I guess I could make my own of course but that requires time. Something I'm rather short on at the moment. Plus, I'm lazy and my grooves usually suck.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 1:46 pm

There's no problem at all to find great midi drum grooves of all kinds.

The main source I know besides content of PC/Mac drum sample libraries is Groove Monkee:
http://www.groovemonkee.com/en/
I would call these drum libraries very skillfull and solid, though they do not offer as much "human feel" from real drumming as the Toontrack and Oddgrooves libraries below.

Among various available sampled drums libraries (like Toontrack, Fxpansion etc.) I personally like the Toontrack midi libraries most: they are played in with a very well done human feel and offer a lot of content per package:
http://www.toontrack.com/index.asp?

There are some smaller libraries out there. One of them is Oddgrooves, but their content varies a lot IMHO. They have excellent funk and west coast libraries with a high human feel factor though:
http://www.oddgrooves.com/

Any midi drum groove library is "for the Kronos", as many have more or less GM compatible mappings, and in doubt you can map the Kronos to a library you like (with the exclusion of extra articulations perhaps).

The David Haynes grooves have the advantage that they fit standard Kronos drumsets from the start.

DennyC · Post by **DennyC** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 2:41 pm

jimknopf wrote:Hi Denny,

yes, as you can see in the list above, there are some rock grooves in the library as well. It is not an extended rock library though, as the above styles are all present with ~20-30 paterns each. There are 21 Rock patterns.

Patterns and fiils are not separate, but small and big fills are integrated into the 16 bar patterns.
The library does not only come with user drum track patterns, but also as song patterns, which can be used and edited in the sequencer.

Hope this answers your questions.

Jim, thanks for the response. My thoughts are you should have a commission arrangement with "fingers". I am now going to purchase this update as soon as the 1.5 arrives. As you had eluded to the samples on the Korg website, and had I based my decision on them...it would've been definitely a no go. But, as for myself and others, you've provided some momentum for the product with your super review. Kudos!

DennyC · Post by **DennyC** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 2:42 pm

Sorry guys, my computer had a hickup, I didn't mean to double post.

permofryed · Post by **permofryed** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:39 pm

Can you give any thought on the benefit of this pack vs a GrooveMonkee pack? I am curious to the functional benefits. Is it organized in a logical manor? Is it quick and easy to access?

I really like the ease of flipping on a drum and jamming. But finding what you are looking for can be a challenge with so many drum patterns.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:59 pm

Both packages have their pros and cons.

Groove Monkee comes in multiformat (GM format plus well lnown drum package formats), is rock solid and offers more grooves of a certain kind at a lower price point. You can check their free packages to get an impression.

David Haynes' library is more limited in pattern numbers, and covers only the styles mentioned each with some examples and variations. It has two main advantages:
- you can use it out of the box with your Kronos without checking drum mapping, in drum patterns as well as in the sequencer.
- it has a strong human touch and a very energetic drive in it, which is not so common in the Groove Monkee Libraries (they don't sound robotic, not to get me wrong, but they don't have as much human touch in them).

runningman67 · Post by **runningman67** » Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:01 pm

So these new drum patterns.

Do they appear on the sequencer pattern page on the preset pattern tab?

permofryed · Post by **permofryed** » Sat Nov 26, 2011 4:13 pm

This pack brings a question to mind. If the pack can install multiple patterns direct to drum track patterns on the Kronos, how can we go about installing a "pack" of our own patterns, without having to manually import them one by one through the sequencer?