The presence that you hear in each chosen timbre, even before you start editing, is outstanding. The main thing that hits you with this package is how beautiful it is sonically. As if all of this weren’t enough, there’s also the FX section, which offers four elements which all lend themselves nicely to drum usage, through compression, EQ, delay and reverb.
This feature is keenly demonstrated in the pattern- and kit-based presets, with one patch sporting significant melodic EDM credentials which will be immediately identifiable to most – seriously impressive and useful. On the most basic level, just changing the decay of elements such as the kick and hi-hat is something we love to do with a machine like a 909, and the ability to draw this in as automation is a real boon. Once you’ve discovered this feature, it’s hard to stop drawing things in, forcing you to stop before things go too far. It’s probably best to think of this as step control of these elements, and opens up an enormous Pandora’s box of delights for creating interesting textures. This makes it easy for creating degrees of expression, in peaks and troughs, but where it comes into its own is in the ability to draw in pan, pitch and decay.
You draw in steps you wish to play on the appropriate line that corresponds with the instrument, with velocity control as required. While some might want to use Drum Designer purely as a sound source, I found myself drawn into the palette-like potential offered by the sequencer side of the software. The chances are, if you want an electronic-tom type sound, there will probably be something not a million miles away that a change in pitch can’t help but turn into a tom. Well, that was a mistake: the reason being the sheer wealth of timbres available and the programmability of each one. My immediate thought was that this might feel limiting. Exploring the menus will yield access to various sound effects, but the essence is firmly placed on the basic kit. This story is replicated elsewhere with the snares, hi-hats and cymbals, although the default kit does reinforce the fact that it’s clearly centred around these kit elements, while offering kick, two snares, clap and four cymbals, which also includes the hi-hat.
It’s likely that you might want to enlist the use of the filter to tame this, particularly as decay times can be set to the extreme of 10 seconds, which is long enough for any 808 kick tail. Using the latter allows for all sorts of complex shaping, making it easy to create those sinusoidal sub tones which you might associate with urban grooves. There’s plenty of opportunity for envelope change, which can be done through use of pots or by simply clicking on the envelope graphic. These can be treated individually, and in themselves are their own partials.
The kick is one of the more simplistic sounds, with the immediate offer of two timbral elements in body and tone. Sonic differences here are stepped and can be reasonably substantial, presumably because it is so easy to make an edit, although it’s worth pointing out that the selection of a timbre at this level will remove any changes that you might have made, even to elements such as the envelope or filter.Īs we’ve moved into the world of editing, it’s worth mentioning what’s on offer. Listening through all of the sounds, they do seem to flock together, as one sound can clearly offer association to the next. Categorising drums is always a thorny issue, as so many of the names relating to these instruments are connected with trademarked drum machines, so UVI has steered away from this by using adjectives, with the occasional triple-digit mention of the 808, which would be very difficult to avoid otherwise.