Big Fish Audio | Sound On Sound Magazine Chris Mayes-Wright | Reggaeton: Hot Latin Hip Hop Product Review
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Reggaeton: Hot Latin Hip Hop | Sound On Sound Magazine

Reviewer: Chris Mayes-Wright | Rating: 4 Stars Back to Reggaeton: Hot Latin Hip Hop product details

When the reggaeton boat reached the UK shores from Puerto Rico in mid 2005, it was raining, as usual. Daddy yankee hopped off the boat and delivered a single "gasolina" to the British masses, then left, mumbling (it's rumoured) "I hate this rain, man". The ship sailed in search of warmer climates. And that's all the UK got of reggaeton, at least in the
mainstream. Underground, however, club ceilings were dripping with sweat, as reggaeton revellers shook their booties into the early hours and shouted "duro!" at the appropriate times.

Overseas the craze was, and still is, even bigger. You'll hear reggaeton bangers blasting out of beach huts on the Costas, and in its homeland of Latin America its bread and butter stuff for 'the youth'. Put simply, reggaeton is raw - the beats are undistorted and lyrics - delivered in a similar way to rap and hip hop are at best promiscuous; at worst, near illegal. As a result, its one of the most energetic and fired up genres I've heard.

But programming reggaeton rhythms and phrases in software is quite different to sequencing other genres of music, and to succeed you have to take on a different attitude. As a result, many people find it difficult, and this is where Big Fish Audio's reggaeton sample library can come to the rescue.

On the libraries single DVD there are 40 construction kits which have been written and recorded by songwriter and producer Josquin des Pres. Each kit typically contains three or four different drum loops, as well as bass, guitar, synth and other instrument samples. There are individual hits for each drum instrument, plus loops of the solo instruments. The file ordering and naming conventions are sensible, with construction kit number, tempo and key in the folder title, and logically tested files.

In terms of sound, I found the samples on Reggaeton to be a little tame, they don't leap out at you and shout in your face or wave their arms around, as Reggaeton samples should. Therefore, to get the required energy into their tracks, users will have to do some serious processing. But this isn't necessarily a negative point. The loops and hits in the library are clean enough to enable you to compress, distort and excite to taste. OF course, a lot of energy will come from the rapper, so you'll need to bear that in mind when planning your next Spanish chart topper. To conclude, Reggaeton will give you the required rhythms, bass lines and quirky sounds to form a good foundation on which to build a Reggaeton track, plus some ideas on where to go from there. The rest is up to you......

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