Radio Waves | Virtual Instruments Magazine

From the same team that brought us such titles as Hip Hop Exotica, Reggaeton, and Punk & Indie Rock comes a decidedly more mainstream collection. Comprised of 50 construction kits in 24-bit WAV (1.6 GB), Apple Loops, REX2, and RMX formats, the emphasis is on catchy instrumental and vocal hooks that are well suited for commercial pop, hip-hop, and R&B.

Under the musical direction of executive producer Josquin de Pres, Radio Waves blends his West Coast recording experience, southern French origins, and great affinity for ethnic instrumentation to create a library that has a more worldly and cutting-edge vibe than the many others circulating on the market today. While similar to Hip Hop Exotica, it has infusions of Arabic scales and Middle Eastern melodies, but instead of using authentic ethnic instruments (a la Pharrell Williams/TheNeptunes) the arrangements are made using synths that have been tweaked to provide a modern spin on old world tones.

Stylistically the mixture is just as fresh. Clearly inspired by - but not blatantly imitating - some of the greatest producers around, Radio Waves runs the gamut from sexy and happy to dark and menacing with deep synth chords, gothic organs, and the like. There are a few club bangers, but their energy's kept in check so as to remain appealing to mass CHR/Rhythmic radio.

Trying out both the Apple Loops and REX2 formats, I was pleased to discover that the samples had obviously undergone superior care during preparation. Every file looped and stretched smoothly without any complications or tell-tale skips. Users of Spectrasonics Stylus RMX will find installers for both Mac and PC that will place the RMX files in the correct directories and create the RMX suites for use in the user libraries area.

Regardless of format, each kit contains a key-labeled full mix "audition" track, a main drum loop, one or two alt beats, and typically three or four instrument loops plus vocal phrases (sometimes offered as High, Mid, and Low to create harmonies). Tempos range from 72 to 136 BPM.

A separate Drum Tracks folder gives you access to the individual parts of the mainbeat to recreate or mix and match between different parts of the drums. You could take the snare loop from one kit and match it with the drums and hi-hat from another kit, for instance. There's also a folder of single-hits per kit for augmenting beats or creating your own fills and transitions.

It might seem surprising just how sparseand breezy the drum parts are in thislibrary. There are a few real kickers hereand there but, for the most part, the rhythm tracks follow the current hip-hop trend of minimalist beat production. These are mostly 4-bar patterns.

You'll often find No-kick patterns featuring syncopated hi-hat with tuned ethnicpercussion, hand claps, and scattered tam-bourine set on the offbeat. These get reinforced in their alternate drum loops bybooming timpani, muted box kicks, stomping drumline-style bass or rubbery sub-kicks featuring a wobbly, ringing decay. This sounds similar to the old engineer's trick of bouncing a basketball off the control room window. In other words, there is some lovely and atypical stuff. While havng a little reverb burned into snare or claps can be fun on the main drum mix loops for effortless arranging in Garage Band, I would have appreciated the partedout drum loops being left dry and void of compression in order to leave those decisions for mix time.

The instrument phrases are very inspiring, going far beyond the tired pizzicato string and thinned piano hooks of other hip-hop libraries. There are several kits featuring big piano, synthetic or altered-samples of orchestral and brass hits, acoustic and electric guitars (i.e. the growingly popular rock-hip-hop format), but the hook line is almost always performed by a signature synth sound.

Whether a high-energy hollow square wave lead with lots of tasty squizzle in its modulation or the syncopated delay line of synth steel drums ringing out a beautiful melody with ethereal vocal washes in the background, the phrase loops are what make this library radio-friendly. One particularly inventive program (Touch) uses phrases of telephone-like tones and beeps alternating in time to create a highly engaging melodic and polyrhythmic bed beneath minimal 808-style drums, claps, and finger snap percussion, while tubby tubas bellow out heavily reverberated accents. Another uses what sounds like it might be physical modeling synthesis to emulate an Eastern brasswind instrument or possibly e'raqyeh oboe.

Not every kit contains vocals, but probably nine out of ten do. All parts are reported as being performed by the same female vocalist, though some takes have been pitched and formant processed to alter her timbre slightly.

About half are solo vox with the rest featuring her in completely natural sounding chorus, a la Destiny's Child. Her voice is a contemporary one: sexy and playful at times, other times haunting, soulful, and demure.

The vocals aren't overly wet, but are processed to fit the theme of each kit. These are often no longer than a bar or two in length. Their lyrical extent is kept fairly minimal with phrases such as "Call my name," "Voila, la la la, voila," "Everytime you look at me," "Get up on me," and "You keepin' it real."

There's only a minimum of vocal runs, and some hooks are catchier than others, but none are stinkers or overly cheesy. I see them being used mostly to back up rappers, as any vocalist-heavy project would likely call for customized parts that you'd make yourself.

While it doesn't necessarily bring anything totally new to the artform, this library has to be commended for not copying the overworked production styles that are out there (Timbaland, Swizz Beats, Just Blaze, Scott Storch, etc.). No top-tier producer would use essentially complete tracks from a construction library, but Radio Waves' professional sounding results might make the deed a little too hard to resist, for some.

Whether you're a DJ heading into a remix, a television or video game composer who needs contemporary sounding music, or a songwriter/artist looking to roll your own radio-ready tracks on the cheap, you'll have a killer tune built in no time. Literally, all you have to do with these tracks is add your own melody, lyric, or rhyme, and perhaps mash up vocal hooks from different kits to make things even more interesting. Up-and-coming producers should also get great mileage by using these tracks as jumping-off points for developing their own style.