General Drum Kit Info

Sound Packs and Samples

  • All Uppercussion sample packs, drum kits and sound libraries are 100% royalty free.
  • All sound packs come with WAV samples, which can be used in any DAW or any program that can import audio in WAV format.
  • The sample pack folders are arranged by sound type for easy access to the single WAV samples. Drum samples and one shot samples have separate directories with categorized sound type folders within them.
  • It is not necessary to own a software sampler to use the WAV files, but to use the drum kits the supported software samplers are required. The supported programs are listed in the 'Format Info' menu above and on the individual product pages.
  • Several sound packs also include additional synth note samples that are not necessarily included in the drum kits, and can be imported separately.
  • Single note synth samples have loop markers in the WAV file headers so that the notes are perfectly looped for long sustained notes. The loop markers may not automatically be imported in some software samplers and might need to be turned on manually.
  • Most single note samples and stab samples are in the key of C to easily integrate them into your workflow.
  • WAV samples are 24-bit, 44.1 kHz, stereo.

Drum Kit Functionality

  • No additional effects are added to the drum kits or instrument patches, allowing for easy insertion into your mix. Some of the audio demos for the sound packs have additional effects added to the mix in order to provide examples of how the kits can be produced.
  • Closed Hihats and Open Hihats are set to the same mute group / choke group in most drum kits, and are mapped to pads 3 and 4. This can be turned off manually in the drum kits.
  • The number of voices for all kick drum samples is set to 1 by default. This is so that fast kick drum playing doesn't cause unnecessary peaking due to overlapping sub frequencies. The number of voices for the kick drums can be changed manually in all drum kits.
  • Cell colors / pad colors are assigned in drum kit formats that support them. The colors are set according the the drum sample types in the individual cells.

Drum Kit Layout & MIDI Mapping

  • The drum kit layout is designed for use with 16-pad MIDI controllers and interfaces.
  • All drum kits are mapped from C1 to D#2, or MIDI note numbers 36 through 51.
  • C1 is mapped to the bottom left drum pad, and it progresses upwards with D#2 on the top right drum pad.
  • For most formats, the 'main' four drum samples are on the bottom row, and include a kick drum, snare drum, closed hihat and open hihat (or as close to this as possible for drum kits that are not as "traditional"). Extended drum and percussion samples are mapped to the higher rows.
  • An example of a typical drum kit mapping is:
    • Row 4: Crash/Misc, Stab/Misc, Stab/Misc, Ride/Misc
    • Row 3: Tom/Perc 1, Tom/Perc 2, Tom/Perc 3, Tom/Perc 4
    • Row 2: Kick 2, Clap, Shaker, Snare 2
    • Row 1: Kick 1, Snare 1, Closed Hihat, Open Hihat
  • Drum kits within the same sound pack have similar drum mapping layouts among the kits for seamless switching from one kit to another. The drum kits also have a similar layout among the different Uppercussion packs, but due to the different sound requirements of the various genres and concepts, the mapping is usually not exactly the same and sometimes adjustments are required to fit with another sound pack.