Revisiting Abbey Road & Studio Drummer

Abbey Road Patches: www.dropbox.com/sh/vd2s848lg7...
Studio Drummer Patches: www.dropbox.com/sh/n5npnmkmp2...
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[@PeterDeLegge]

Thanks for this. Cory, you easily do the most thorough, honest, insightful and useful/helpful sample library reviews and tips (like this video) that I've seen to date. Please keep up the good work!

[@ctatrains]

You just updated a product I've had for years and didn't use to a product I've had for years that I will start using. Great sound and tight. This is like having a new drum plugin that is current and radio ready in my book. Kudos to you for sharing this. Very cool of you.

[@Sticksonic]

These patches sound very nice! Going to try them out in my next project!

[@user-jn7ud7cu5w]

I had the same issues with these kits when I first started with them about 10 years ago. And just like you, after gaining a bit more experience (and buying better monitors/headphones), I found the Abbey Road drummer kits to be at the apex of drum libraries due to all the velocities and variations of hits. I saw some post--years ago--where someone peeled back the curtain on a bunch of drum libraries and the Abbey Road kits were at the top of food chain for velocity and variation. The hardest one to tame is Studio Drummer, for sure. It's the kicks in that library--there's something about them that feels so disconnected from the rest of the samples, so you gotta start fresh with the "INIT" setting and build these sounds from the ground-up. I tend to start by muting all the OH/Room channels and balance the direct mics first, in mono. Once I've got that balance, I solo and balance the overheads (again, in mono) and then un-solo it and bring them into balance with the direct mics. I basically am just looking for the right balance with the cymbals. Usually, the room mics are good, so I don't do much to them except some compression and a little EQing.

[@SirhcMezz]

Thanks for sharing these!!Amazing work mate!!

[@artsal]

Thanks I really love your settings I’m going to try this

[@TerenceKearns]

Well well well. They really do sound alright after all.

[@TerenceKearns]

I just installed all of your NKIs and updated the resources paths by doing a "save as" to overwrite the original .nki. A work around for the grooves not being there is to load a factory version just after the Cory version and then find the grooves you want and drag them out into the DAW (onto the track where the first instance of cory's version lies).

[@kalintonev]

Excellent work! I definitely think if you put some more efforts producing more of these patches, there will be users willing to pay for them (including me)! Cheers!

[@kuhtipp]

Wow, sounds amazing. Thanks for the work

[@RichardFriendartist]

thanks for your hard work and sharing. subbed and liked!!

[@Goldfishclown]

I found this video nearly two years after you made it, but I'd still like to thank you for your generosity in sharing the improved patches. Your hard work is much appreciated!

[@theinfinate]

wow that awesome, you should tell NI to update their product with these settings and yo0u should get some coin for it! They sound on par with EZ drummer now

[@extralifedisco]

Quite a nice update! I really like the abbey road kits but was pretty shocked by how dull the presets were. Their UI is pretty weird but their mixer and FX interface is very extensive and sounds great once dialed in. Mixing a full drum kit is a lot of work no matter how you do it, so I suppose it's aimed more at engineer types who want those dry sounds to work with. Still, selling such a deep-featured kit with zero presets and a handful of mixer settings is an odd choice even for NI. Thanks for the kits!

[@rt5u]

Wow that black 70s kit is bonkers

[@MarkusJunnikkala]

I like the Abbey Road libraries specifically because they're quite unprocessed and natural, and as you said, very responsive to playing due to the sampling depth. This allows me to get the performance nuances I want and do whatever I want in the mixing phase. But yes, if you're looking for mix ready sounds right out of the box for a genre-typical sound, there are better options.

[@PandaThiefChannel]

What options would these be?

[@mybiggrin]

Dude thank you so much. I love you.

[@kiedrowski_sd1056]

Loving your patches. Perfekt for dusting off those drum libraries I never really used, tbh. Just like you've said, I was very underwhelmed by them. Speaking of drums - do you plan on reviewing the recently released Drumatic Creator from In Session Audio? The library is on sale for a few weeks and I'm still hesitating investing in new drum and percussion libraries. There's just too many of them. Because you also reviewed their Taiko Creator, which I am loving to death, I'd really appreciate your opinion on it. Keep up the great work, Cory! Best Regards

[@paul.j.diwiak]

oh wow! Tbh i love the abbey road modern drummer sparkle kit. It's my go to kit for any pop/rock-like stuff! (or I'd say: for anything but orchestral and jazz), even compared to other drum libraries like Addictive Drummer or Steven Slate Drums! It's super natural to play with my E-Drums but even with a keyboard and the midi files from all AbbeyRoad/Studio Drummer are useful, not always great, but a good starting point. But that's just my point of view and it's always a matter of taste, I guess ;)

[@R2D269ing]

Great video! Any chance you would do a more in depth tutorial on the work involved inside of kontakt? I would love to try this out for myself.

[@studio_musique_audionomie]

Thank you Cory !

[@sojerz1044]

Sounds great are there presets in these samples as well or no?

[@del-marmare1646]

especially like your 80's setup.

[@dare2win215]

Man! Are you using a drum kit to trigger these or all programming? WOW. I love the Komplete drums, but you are a magician. I need to learn to mix ASAP. I use these, Handheld Sound's MAD, SD3, SSD5, 8dio's, Reason Drum kits, and Addictive drums all of the time and if I could get them to sing like this I'd be a hit maker. I want to try BFD and GGD, but at this point I think I might be set on drums. Thanks for the patches!

[@CoryPelizzari]

I play my drum parts on my midi keyboard with my fingers. If you want me to mix any of your drum parts I'd be happy to as long as you have all the unprocessed stems. It's something I enjoy doing when I have free time.

[@dare2win215]

@@CoryPelizzari WOW. Any plans to make finger drumming tutorials or give any tips? And, when I have some tracks worthy of processing, I'll definitely give you a ring!

[@CoryPelizzari]

@@dare2win215 I'm planning a video series called "Drumming for Keyboardists" but it's going to be hard to put together into what I'd consider an easy to follow and useful guide.

[@YuutaShinjou113]

I would use the raw presets and mix them outside the library.

[@Statictothesoundmusic]

This is incredible. I tried to add the files to the “instrument folder” under each of these kits in my files and I can’t figure out where to find them once in Kontakt. Can anyone give me a hand here? Thanks a ton.

[@brentmosher4825]

Hi . I downloaded the patches and placed them in the appropriate instruments folder but they don't work. The GUI is all blanked out and they won't load. What might I be doing wrong?

[@del-marmare1646]

Legit AF

[@jazzybeeff]

How open this patches in the application? I could not figure it out. Thank you Cory.

[@MattLGreer]

Perhaps it would be good to talk about the process you used to tweak the drum kits? Or is it easy and straightforward and just requires time/focus/attention?

[@CoryPelizzari]

It's a bit complex to describe, a mix of things I've picked up over the years mixing drums. Perhaps I'll make a video about it one day.

[@vigilant545]

@@CoryPelizzari yes please 🙏👍

[@bpmac123]

Great sounds on the nki's, but when loaded the drum key locations don't correspond with the original library locations. Is this by design, or am I doing something wrong? Also, the grooves are missing. Anyway, they sound great. Thanks for doing this, and for sharing the patches!

[@CoryPelizzari]

I remapped the keys, but you can remap them to the way you like in the remap page. The grooves are missing because I had to make room for the velocity script and the grooves were the only thing I could really get rid of without affecting the entire instrument.

[@bpmac123]

@@CoryPelizzari Yes, I get it. I had to batch-resave all of the libraries to keep things connected. Well done, and thanks!

[@Bezowinz]

@@bpmac123 before I grab these - because they sound great - is it as simple as batch resaving to get the grooves back? I use them sometimes.

[@jimrunfola]

I love your remixing of the drum sounds and would love to use your patches but I’m having problems uploading them to my Kontakt7 player. I am using a MacBook Pro with an apple M3 pro chip and Sonoma 14.3.1. Could you please give me some info how I can upload your awesome patches to my studio drummer? Thank you!

[@angelocast]

love it! Are these libraries compatible with mac M1s?

[@artsal]

Yes

[@Bezowinz]

These sound great! Should I save these as snapshots or user presets?

[@CoryPelizzari]

Just save them as instrument files (.nki).

[@Bezowinz]

@@CoryPelizzari pardon my ignorance. I know how to do that within Komplete, but how do I save an external file as an nki? Or maybe I'm asking how I load the external file?

[@CoryPelizzari]

@@Bezowinz You can download the .nki files from the dropbox to the same instruments folder as your Abbey Road or Studio Drummer library, then pull them in from your Kontakt browser window (and browse for the sample folder if the patch can't find the samples). Then you use Kontakt to "save as" (using the save icon in Kontakt) and re-save the patch.

[@Bezowinz]

@@CoryPelizzari got them loaded and saved. Thanks! If you could help me with the last step and get the midi grooves back, I'd appreciate it.

[@CoryPelizzari]

@@Bezowinz I had to delete the MIDI Grooves page to fit in another script, so that page is gone.

[@stevenluna3756]

Question! Do you have a large variety of kits to choose from?

[@CoryPelizzari]

Not quite sure what you mean. All the kits in Studio Drummer and Abbey Road are shown in the video. I do have a lot of other drum libraries as well.

[@anzatzi]

I enjoyed hearing these libraries. Generally, I liked the original kits better, except where there were serious gain issues. These sounds are meant to sit behind in a mix; they are not 'rock hero' drums like EZ drummer. Think Motown, Beatles, etc. I think some of your mixes made the toms too prominent. Thanks

[@osamashawky7853]

Thanks for ur nice video . But I'm really need to know is it important for drums be In scale or not . If must be in scale . How to do that. Any library can control scale before playing drums 🥁

[@t1rrr0n]

Are your patches only for Kontakt 6? I tried to open the Studio Drummer patches with Kontakt 5.8.1 but it says my version is too old to load these.

[@CoryPelizzari]

Yeah Kontakt 6. But it's for the Kontakt 6 Player so you can download that version for free.

[@t1rrr0n]

@@CoryPelizzari Oh, didn't know that. Just tried and it's working. Thank you!

[@mitruxlovesmusic]

When i get the abbey road im gonna be crazy

[@bachirmessaouri4772]

Hi and thanks for this. Unfortunately, the "Late 60's" patch doesn't work here. It says while loading that 16088 files could not be found in "resources/Samples/ARD_60s....nkx. When loaded, the interface is unreadable. Besides, something I don't get is that the name of your library is "Abbey Road 60's Late Kit Standard". This one is anywhere to be found. it's either full, vintage or Lite here but haven't seen anywhere that "standard" kit in my setup or even online. I was so eager to trying your patch as it is exactly the sound I always wanted to achieve and haven't found anywhere else.... Anyway, you already helped me so much, I thank for all this. It's brilliant. Take care!

[@CoryPelizzari]

You may have to browse the entire Abbey Road folder to see if it locates the samples (often the samples folder and the .nkx are in different places within the library folder), either that or there could be an issue with different versions of Kontakt.

[@Joshua-rq9dv]

They look amazing, but I don't think they work anymore for Kontact 7, please let me know if I'm wrong.

[@LittleRichard1988]

They should work in Kontakt 7. All versions of Kontakt should be backwards compatible with any library created on any previous version of Kontakt.

[@TheFriedSky]

Thank you! This sounds great, but the instrument does not show the grooves any more. Dp you have any idea why this would be?

[@CoryPelizzari]

There wasn't enough room for all the script tabs so I had to throw the groove script.

[@TheFriedSky]

@@CoryPelizzari Ah, that's too bad. Thank you for your reply!

[@patrickjosephtobin8014]

The originals for me