Textured Beats | Sound On Sound

As the title suggests, the Textured Beats library is built around drum loops. In this case, the loops have had processing applied and, while the acoustic drum origin of many of them is still clearly recognisable, this can't really be considered a 'straight' drum-loop library. I explored the 1.5GB of 24-bit WAV files using Acid Pro 6, but the same 1300-plus loops are provided in all three of the supported formats listed above.

The loops are divided into a number of groups: beats, combo, instruments, percussion, textures, distorted and SFX hits. The beats form the largest group, which is subdivided into tempo-based folders, with original tempos ranging widely from a sedate 54bpm to a manic 190bpm. While acoustic drum sounds have been used, there are also plenty of electronic elements to the loops, and a proportion of them contain some truly woofer-wobbling kick sounds. The electronic element is enhanced by the obvious - but never overdone - processing that's been applied.

Given the style and sounds of the loops (dark and, at times, aggressive) they'd certainly work with hip-hop, electronic or experimental rock and, at some of the medium to faster tempos, there's plenty here that would interest film and TV composers wanting to create 24-style cues. I found the drum loops in the highest tempos (170 and above) more than my ears could stand, but your mileage may wary! Because the collection contains small groups of similar loops, it's easy to build arrangements for a song structure, although there are no fills - so some beat-slicing will be required if you want to build your own.

The textures mostly feature synth-based sounds and, although these are definitely musical, they tend to have a rhythmic element. The same sorts of textures are combined with drum loops to form the combos group, and these wouldn't require much additional instrumentation to make a complete musical bed. The distorted group provides a small collection of further drum loops with some additional (you guessed it!) distortion added, while the SFX hits groups includes some 30-plus synth- and drum-based 'hits'. The percussion group is self explanatory, but features much lighter processing than the main drum loops. Finally, the instrument loops are based on synth sounds, and these are divided into subfolders where a particular sound is played back at a variety of pitches - so they could easily be used to build some basic sampler patches if required.

Textured Beats doesn't break any dramatic new ground and, given the predominantly dark and occasionally aggressive tone, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. However, for producers of hip-hop and some dance styles, and for media composers, it offers a fresh palette of loops for inspiration - and given the quantity of material, it also provides pretty good value for money.