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Supreme
Beats
Keyboard Magazine Review - March 1995
Sound Quality 5 STARS
Selection 5 STARS
Formatting 5 STARS
Bang for the Buck 5 STARS
FORMAT: Audio CDs, plus Roland, Akai, Samplecell,
K-2000, Emu, & Ensoniq CD-ROMs.
OVERVIEW: Contemporary, Dance/Hip-Hop, African,
& World percussion loops and single hits.
CONTENTS: Four audio CDs. 650+ loops, 100+ single-instrument
samples. Loop categories include Mozambique, Charleston, cha-cha,
hip-hop, scratch, tribal vocal, industrial dance, soukous, African,
samba, Hawaiian, solo patterns, and more. Single instruments samples
include bamboo tube, bell, bongo, bottle, clave, conga, dumbek,
frame drum, gong, log drum, cuica, shaker, spoons, tabla, talking
drum, triangle, wood block, and so on.
From tribal stomps to contemporary dance spices,
Supreme Beats is just that: Supreme. With four CDs and a gorgeous
51-page booklet, this is one of the most exhaustive and impressive
percussion packages we've seen. And it sounds even better than it
looks.
Bashiri Johnson (whose past employers include
Madonna, Whitney Houston, Donald Fagen, and C&C Music Factory)
plays his butt off on these discs. Nothing fake about these grooves;
it's a feast of human feel, energy, and emotion. Over 650 stereo
loops and 100 single hits are spread across four CDs, featuring
Johnson and an all-star supporting cast of Cyro Baptista, Luis Conte,
Kimati Dinizulu, Daoud Woods, and others. If you're looking for
standard drum kit loops, though, or samples of kicks, snares, toms,
and cymbals, you're barking up the wrong tree. This is strictly
a percussion disc, Holmes. Congas, bongos, shakers, cowbells--you
get the picture.
Johnson is generous with his loop lengths; some
of our favorites range from 4 to 16 bars
long. Listening closely, we detected that certain
of the longer items are actually two repeats of a shorter loop,
but the majority seem to have been played straight through, not
cut and pasted.
Supreme Beats uses the "groove construction set"
approach to formatting. Following almost every loop the single-instrument
tracks that it's made of, which allows you to edit or remix the
patterns. If you can find beats that you think will match, it's
easy to layer a conga and talking drum track from one loop with
the vocal chants of another, and so on. Very, very cool. Loops are
usually played at several tempos-- most often 93, 108, and 120 bpm.
Single samples of the loop instruments can be found at the end of
each CD in a section called" The Hits."
The first of the 4 discs, Contemporary, kicks
off with stomping feet, clattering angklungs, bamboo brushes, and
huff-and-puff vocal rhythms. One of our favorites is the Tropical
Drum Talking loop. Get down, Bashiri. Other disc highlights include
the percussive footwork of tapster Hinton Battle on Charleston Tap,
the pulsing Mozambique loop (timbales, congas, and guiro), &
the hilarious Bash Novel (slide whistles atop clickety-clackety
spoons atop a twangy jaw harp bass).
A couple of acoustic oddities found their way
onto this disc. Check out the instrument list for Vacume [sic]
Groove and you'll come across such goodies as Darbuka, talking drum,
bell bag, and, no joke, radiator. It's not the only automotive instrument
featured on Supreme Beats, either (a brake drum makes an appearance
on the 4th disc).
For songwriters and sample-savvy performers, the
loops-within-the-loops are as valuable as the full-featured ensemble
versions. A solo conga pattern might sound plain when compared to
it's densely packed counterpart, but simple loops like these are
worth their weight in microchips. Layer one of these raw tracks
with a stiff drum machine beat and you'll quickly learn the value
of live percussion.
Don't be misled by their titles; the 2nd CD, called
Dance/Hip-Hop, might bring to mind TR-808 kicks, synthetic hi-hats,
crackly JB hits, shrieks, & so on. But with the exception of
a few vinyl-sounding scratch effects, most of the material featured
here is played on congas, surdos, bongos, ocean drums & the
like. This doesn't mean that the grooves aren't funky. Check out
the ultra-danceable Hip-Hop Triangle Gong loop, or the Tribal Vocal
groove (with chest-pounding vocals, shakers, and clattering iron).
Delicious.
In general, organic instruments are the name of
the game on Supreme Beats. With the exception of one or two unidentifiable
sound effects, most instruments are of the unplugged persuasion.
One of our favorite percussion instruments, the talking drum, is
well represented on this disc. In both ensemble and solo contexts,
its pitch bendy grooves are a knockout. If you're looking for a
new musical flavor, you might try the twangy Hip-Hop Berimbau loop.
The Berimbau - a buzzy stringed twanger - is an excellent match
for the Turtle Udu, bongos, cuica, and tambourine in this context.
While we locked into the grooves on all four discs,
the African disc really grabbed us by the throat. Infectious ethnic
stomps can be found from start to finish, including such standouts
as the chanting, ensemble driven Wosa, E Toi E Toi, and Yebo. With
the latter, both rhythm and vocal sub-tracks are provided.
We had a ton of fun layering these loops with
a few of our demos. In one case, we took track 36, Gyana High Life,
and dumped it into the bridge of a driving rock song. (Sorry, Bashiri.)
It took that once ho-hum section to an entirely new place. If you're
playing to a click, try layering a loop like this into a bridge.
Chances are, your leather-clad bandmates will drop their jaws. When
working with resources like Supreme Beats, half the fun is experimenting
with cross-breeding. What can we layer with what? Samba percussion
with techno sequences make interesting bedfellows.
The final disc, World, kicks off with a few solo
conga patterns before launching into a loop called Island Congo.
Ah...sandy beach, blue sky, hammock, fruity libation. Er, sorry.
One of our favorites on disc four was track 24, Spoons. Since Soundgarden's
1994 hit "Spoonman" reintroduced the utensil, musicians from pole
to pole have been raiding their kitchen drawers in search of a fresh,
affordable percussive voice. Churning a killer spoon line is no
easy chore, though - try it yourself sometime. We'll go the easy
route and use one of these pre-fab phrases. And when we grow tired
of 'em we'll slice and dice them into fresh grooves with our trusty
sample editor.
Another of our favorite instruments, the Udu drum,
is spotlighted on disc four. Tracks 34-42, called Just Udus, feature
Johnson soloing atop the funky, blob-like device.
Before wrapping up, we'd like to commend the Supreme
Beats team for a job well done in the documentation department.
The 51-page booklet that accompanies the CDs provides not only such
data as disc contents, track numbers, tempos, and so on, but also
photographs of the instruments and background information on the
players, the gear, and the recording techniques. Heck, they even
gave the book an index--a rarity in the third-party sounds worlds.
Outstanding.
No review would be complete without pointing out
a few weaknesses--but as far as we can tell, this package has none.
It's that good. Sure, $300 for the audio box-set isn't exactly small
change; maybe offering each CD separately would be a comfortable
solution for those on a tight budget. But if you've ever hired a
professional musician for a session, especially one of Bashiri Johnson's
caliber, you probably paid them that much for one groove. There's
enough material here to feed an army of samplers. Bottom Line: If
we had three thumbs, we'd turn 'em all up. Supreme Beats is a winner.--Greg
Rule
Electronic Musician Magazine (U.S.) Review
5 STARS
This sample library brims with exotic percussion
and infectious grooves.
Supreme Beats is billed as a "percussion library",
and they aren't kidding about the "library" part. Producer Bashiri
Johnson and developer Spectrasonics have provided a comprehensive
set of loops and instruments that includes percussion from all seven
continents. In fact, the only category not represented is the standard
drum set. Originally, the collection came as an elegantly packaged,
boxed set of four audio CDs:
African, Contemporary, Dance/Hip Hop, and World.
Recently, the manufacturer released a fifth, separately available
audio disc called International.
You can now also get the complete library on two
CD-ROM collections at $199 each. In the CD-ROM format, African is
paired with Contemporary on one set, World with Dance on another,
and the material from International is divided between the two CD-ROMs.
The CD-ROMs are available in all popular formats, including Roland,
Akai/E-mu/Ensoniq ASR-10, Digidesign SampleCell, and Kurzweil K-2000.
I auditioned the Roland version.
Supreme Beats is primarily a collection of percussion
loops, though the audio CDs include a modest selection of single
hits and the CD-ROMs have a large selection. The grooves are generally
full and complex, with many percussion parts playing at once. Most,
but not all, offer various solo'ed or submixed loops in addition
to the main mix; in some, the amount of solo'ed instruments is extensive.
Several Dance/Hip Hop and Contemporary selections are actually intricate
and innovative mini-compositions that extend traditional patterns
into new territory.
Producer/Percussionist/Composer Bashiri Johnson
is the prime mover behind Supreme Beats. Johnson, whose list of
recording credits includes Madonna, Donald Fagen, and Whitney Houston,
has taken great care with this project and is clearly proud of his
efforts and those of his collaborators. The copious liner notes,
sprinkled with photos of smiling percussionists, gush with appreciation
for the various players. Johnson's musical commitment and personal
involvement in the project are evident in the loops: these are distinctive,
exuberant tracks, brimming with vitality. And as one would expect
from a musician of Johnson's caliber, the audio quality and performances
are consistently excellent. As a percussionist and drum programmer,
I enjoyed just listening to the tracks by themselves (especially
on the African, World and International discs), using the sub-mixes
to sort out the intricate interweavings of the parts.
Two pieces that stand out in the African set are
"Ju Ju" and the ultra-fast (138 bpm) "Gyana HiLife." Both feature
complex, layered loops, with all parts available separately. Many
of the African Grooves contain vocal chanting; my favorite of these
is the driving "Yebo," which offers several different mixes with
and without vocals. "Triangle Rabbit," from the Dance/Hip Hop set,
is a complex groove utilizing bongos, udo, patum tube, shakers,
and triangle. This is topped by a solo on the "German Rabbit," a
pull cord-style talking children's toy that makes some pretty demented
scratch-like sounds. In addition to the full mix, there are several
submixes (sans bongos, rabbit, etc.), and each individual part is
also available separately. "Daoud Mishabash" and "Daoud Bash French"
(also from Dance/Hip Hop) are very cool patterns that, unfortunately,
aren't as thoroughly broken down into component parts. Both feature
harmonica prominently, but full mixes without the harmonica are
not available. This tonally and harmonically restricts the usefulness
of these loops. "Timbale Bash," from the International CD and the
African/Contemporary CD-ROM, is one of those Latin beats that absolutely
forces your body to move. (My heel is still bobbing up and down
as I write.) I also love the controlled chaos of the ultra-fast
triplets in "Two Conga Bells," although I wish it was also available
with solo'ed parts.
Most of the grooves are available in two or three
different tempos that have been carefully chosen to ease mixing
and matching of parts between different grooves. There are only
a handful of tempos in all, with most loops clocking in at 93, 108,
and 120 bpm. On the Roland version, the files are named so that
they can be sorted by tempo, making it simple to call up a list
of all the loops at, say, 108 bpm. While were on the subject of
file organization, kudos to Spectrasonics for arranging solo'ed
percussion parts under instrument type (such as "Tamborine" and
"Tabla"), as well as by the loops that they are used in. This means
that, instead of having to remember which groove had that cool shaker
part I'm looking for, I can just load up a bank of all the shakers
on the disc. Because the Roland file system allows sample data to
be shared by multiple patches, this uses up almost no additional
space on the disc.
As mentioned previously, the CD-ROMs feature a
much larger selection of single hits than the audio CDs. Also, the
CD-ROMs usually offer not only a selection of different articulations
and dynamic levels for each instrument but multiple hits with subtle
variations on the same basic articulation. There are more than one
hundred conga samples, for example, most of them in stereo. This
thoroughness is highly appreciated, as it makes it much easier to
create dynamic, living percussion parts, either as supplements to
the loops or in their own right.
Because the single hits were culled from the loop,
rather than being sampled individually, their variety and pristine
audio quality are all the more impressive. They have none of the
clipped ambiences or instrument leakage that mar other collections.
Some, however, aren't as highly developed and expressive as they
might have been in the context of a "single-hits only" collection.
Only a few patches offer Velocity switching, for instance.
This is a knockout library. The performances
and recordings are stellar, the CD-ROMs are attractively priced;
I'd recommend that anyone considering the 4-disc boxed set fork
over the extra $100 and buy both CD-ROMs. That way you get the sounds
pre-formatted for your sampler - a great time saver. But regardless
of your preference - audio CDs or CD-ROMs - if you're looking for
a set of percussion loops, it's hard to imagine you'll go wrong
here.
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