Tool Shed Percussion | Electronic Musician

SOUND ADVICE - 6/04

Big Fish Audio's Tool Shed Percussion ($99.95) isn't your average sample library. It's a unique collection of drum-kit loops that feature fake-leather luggage, metal buckets, circular-saw blades, a propane tank, and dozens of other found instruments, in addition to traditional drums and cymbals. Odd sound sources include a metal bolt in a water-filled mixing bowl and a leaf rake scraping across a wood floor. Even some of the less radical instruments, such as African goat hoofs, bowed cymbals, and a marching bass drum played with brushes, are a little unusual. The documentation is quite complete and sometimes rather amusing; for example, an instrument called Gut Drums is described as "hand slaps on a large, round human belly."

Tool Shed Percussion comes on four discs: two audio CDs and two CD-ROMs containing Acidized WAV and REX2 files. Each pair of discs contains 49 construction kits, each with a percussion-loop mix and its individual loop elements, for a total of more than 600 loops. Disc 2 also supplies a large assortment of individual hits ranking from kick drums and cowbells to pitchforks, tape measures, and T-squares.