Purple Drizzle: Millennium | Sample Library Review

Pros: An impressive collection of modern Hip Hop, Urban and RnB loops presented in a number of popular formats.

Cons: Multiple instances of each instrument required for best control of tracks and options.

If you are looking to add some modern urban flavor to your mixes, Purple Drizzle: Millennium is dripping with authentic urban influence for today’s music scene. The kits span a wide variety in styles, from dark and brooding Hip Hop themes to melodic, easy flowing RnB tracks, each with strong hooks. There’s a lot to of radio-ready potential at play here.

When VIP Loops was founded ten years ago, they hit the ground running with a catalogue of loops and an impressive list of creative forces. They’ve worked with diverse range of producers behind the sounds of such giants as Tu Pac, Bette Midler, Stevie Wonder and Leann Rimes. Since then, they’ve continued to work with some of the top producers, studios, manufacturers and distributors in the industry. For this collaboration with Big Fish Audio, VIP pulled out all the stops. Purple Drizzle Millennium has quickly become one of Big Fish Audio’s hottest sellers!

Thoughts

If you are looking to add some modern urban flavor to your mixes, Purple Drizzle: Millennium is dripping with authentic urban influence for today’s music scene. The kits span a wide variety in styles, from dark and brooding Hip Hop themes to melodic, easy flowing RnB tracks, each with strong hooks. There’s a lot to of radio-ready potential at play here so, let’s get right into it.

With 55 kits to choose from, I figured on finding something interesting right out of the gate. I was not disappointed. Starting with a single dedicated demo instrument for each kit, I was able to breeze through each of the construction kits and quickly decide which tracks I wanted to work with. Compared to working with apple loops or wav files – the KLI 3.0 version really shines at streamlining the preview process.

Note that, for navigational purposes, the first 27 kits (in part one) are accessible by instantiating the DEMO Instrument found in part one. The following 28 kits (in part two) include the demo instrument for each kit inside the folder. Optionally, experts may chose to perform a Batch Re-Save to add all 55 demos to the Demo Instrument found in part one. Before you do this, read ALL the instructions. Performing a Batch Re-Save is not required and is only recommended for experts.

There is a solid mix of construction kits included in this set. Some include more loops than others, but all accomplish the goal of what construction kits are meant to do: Inspire creativity and build a strong foundation for producers to expand from. There are some really meaty, bold, in-your-face kits, dark, hooky, airwave-worthy RnB and several laidback grooves, perfect for layering with smooth vocals. Aspiring rappers, keyboard players and remixers will find plenty to love in these kits. Because the kits lean towards mostly synth, bass and drums for instrumentation, guitarists might find this a nice set for backing tracks, too.

Play a key and the construction kit mapped to it is displayed with an easily decoded kit name. For instance, play F2 on your keyboard and the display bar in the Purple Drizzle Kontakt instrument reads 18 130 Amin Demo (F2). Decoded, 10 refers to the construction kit number, 130 means bpm and Amin obviously refers to the key signature of A minor. F2 is again the corresponding key for which the kit is mapped to for previewing. I like this concise naming and file organization and I suspect the loops are organized by folders that correspond in a similar way.

Kit 25 is a 120bpm kit in the Gbmin (located as a demo on C3 of the keyboard) and I think I’ll start here as place to play around with some of the features in the KLI interface.

[See “Purple Drizzle Millennium DEMO 1” in Video at Top ]

First, I’ll navigate back to the Purple Drizzle Part 1 folder and select the corresponding folder for the demo project I mentioned. I locate a folder named 25 120 Gbmin and opened it to the NKI file for this kit. Clicking the instrument nki file loads it into Kontakt and I’m ready to make music. But before we get too far into a groove, let’s explore the interface and see how things work. In the screenshot, you can see that there are four channels corresponding to the four elements of this particular kit.

Each of the channels is marked Drums, Bass, Sample 1 and Sample 2 so it’s easy to know what each channel controls. Below the channels are deeper controls and effects for everything from reverb and room size to process effects like chorus, delay, etc. Accessing controls for each of these parameters is done by clicking the effects button at the bottom of each channel. For the Drum loops, you can customize reverb and room size by selecting from the drop-down menu hidden in plain site with the button that reads Room: Spaces | Drum Room.

The Blue keys (located to the right) near the bottom of the screen, correspond to the individual loops in the kit. The pink or reddish keys (on the left for those of us who are colorblind) serve to pitch the loop or play effects on the fly. Power users will quickly advance past these basic functions and dive deeper into all the features the KLI interface affords. If that’s you, look for the ability to access single drum hits and rhythmic elements. You can trigger beat sliced loops through additional KLI instruments found in the corresponding folder for each construction kit.

The organization of each kit is solid making these deep features easily accessible without getting in the way of the experience for people new to the KLI interface. I should mention here, that Big Fish Audio has assembled some excellent video tutorials and demos to see these options at work and I strongly encourage you to check them out here.

Each kit has its own collection of sliced loops and additional drum hits and loops. You can see from these screenshots and demo videos, that plenty of options are built in to give you creative control over your mixes.

Facts

Millennium is a hard word for me to spell correctly. I found at least 16 variations in this review before I finally settled on the correct spelling. This has no bearing on my review, but it is a fact.

Purple Drizzle comes in three separately packaged options: A KLI 3.0 version, a traditional loop version consisting of Apple Loops, Acidized wav files, and Rex files, and finally and RMX version. Each of these 3 versions are sold separately. The KLI version is broken into to 2 files weighing in at 1.23 GB and 1.06 GB respectively. Expanded and installed, you’re looking at 4.82 GB of hard drive real estate and a whopping 867 patches!

You’ll need the full version of Kontakt 5.7.1 to utilize the KLI 3.0 loops. For Apple Loop Versions, download size is again 2 files broken up into part one at 1.12 GB and part 2 at 1.06 GB. Acidized WAV files are slightly heavier at 1.14 GB for part one and 1.07 GB for part two. Both Apple Loop and Wav file versions include 1266 files while the REX file version clocks in with just one downloadable file totaling 1.51 GB – expanded this version provides 753 files. Finally, pre-converted RMX files come as 3 downloadable files with part 1 at 902.5 MB, part 2 at 1.02 GB and part 3 at 838 MB.