Police/Stewart Copeland Sample Library

[Ed Lima]

Hey everybody. I was wondering if there was any sort of demand or interest in a drum lib that simulated the type of drum sounds and rock-reggae grooves that Stewart Copeland played with The Police. It\'d be in a DFH/SmartLoops type of format, with groups of looped .wavs packaged alongside a multiformat instrument.

Please post any thoughts.
Thanks,

[Nick Batzdorf]

I think there was a Yamaha drum machine wtih those sounds in the late \'80s. What was the model number...I\'ll have to think about it.

[Marsdy]

I\'d go for that.

[Scott Cairns]

Besides the crisp snares that I associate with Stewart Copeland, I think the next biggest factor in his sound are the hi-hats. I don\'t know how well you could re-produce that via a sample lib.

In fact the Peter Gabriel song Red Rain, off the album So, features Stewart playing live hats over sampled drums.

I guess loops could reproduce it to a certain extent.

[Ed Lima]

Originally posted by Scott Cairns:
Besides the crisp snares that I associate with Stewart Copeland, I think the next biggest factor in his sound are the hi-hats. I don\'t know how well you could re-produce that via a sample lib.

In fact the Peter Gabriel song Red Rain, off the album So, features Stewart playing live hats over sampled drums.

I guess loops could reproduce it to a certain extent. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">All true..

Well, I\'m just thinking out loud here.. I\'ve always wanted a sample lib that let me recreate Stewart\'s thing. I\'ve had some luck in the past with certain piccolo snare samples, super-tight kicks, and some close attention to programming, but like you say the hihats are really action-packed and complex and interesting and probably just a little beyond the current state of the art.

So now I find myself with a drummer who can pull off the Stewart thing performancewise and he\'s really into doing a lib. So I\'m looking for a way to defray some of the costs here, gauging interest from you all, my fellow sample consumers. I might just do it for myself, but going commercial would certainly make the intended scope and budget a bit more palatable.

[Scott Cairns]

Hi Ed, I hope my comments didn\'t appear negative, it\'s just that Stewarts playing was so detailed...

But if you think you could pull it off, add me to the list, I would be interested in buying a lib like that. images/icons/wink.gif

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Who are you working with, Ed?

[Ed Lima]

Originally posted by Scott Cairns:
Hi Ed, I hope my comments didn\'t appear negative.. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Not at all Scott. I agree with you entirely that his playing is complex, detailed and in my opinion one-of-a-kind. My desire to take this on is coming from my love and respect of his work. So in that sense I think we\'re both coming at this from the same place images/icons/smile.gif

[Ed Lima]

Originally posted by Bruce A. Richardson:
Who are you working with, Ed? <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">A local drummer, a UNT cat in his 30s. We\'ve been working together lately in this GB/party cover band, and we got to talking about this just last weekend. He can really cop Stewart\'s style, thus the scheme at hand.

[Nick Batzdorf]

I think it was the Yamaha RX-5. In any case, it was a high-end unit when it came out, and it had that piccolo sd rim shot, etc.

[Nick Batzdorf]

I\'d love it if that style came back, where the drums play with the music instead of repeating the same loop over and over, and not every hit is as hard as possible.

They Police were also very reggae at first, by the way, and that had an influence on the way he played. But I think it\'s the feel much more than the samples that would create that sound. (Although the high, tight tunings are important, because that makes the groove feel faster.)

[kbaccki]

Don\'t forget the Octobans!!! \'Member those? Copeland used those on occasion, from what I remember. I think that\'s the tubey sound you hear on \"Material World\". I liked his stuff with Animal Logic, too, but I don\'t think that project was a huge critical success, unfortunately. Funny thing about his playing... definately made a HUGE impact in the pop world, and he certainly had a LOT to do with that Police sound. At the same time his \"backward\" playing and off-tempo stuff drove Sting nuts and was one of the major factors in their less-than-friendly working relationship. I seem to remember articles about Sting complaining about wanting his tunes played straight up, and Copeland kept forcing all this wierd stuff on it. And 15 years later Sting had to go out and find a really high-end session drummer like Vinnie Colaiuta just to be able to cover a few Police tunes on tour without sounding like something\'s obviously missing...

[Scott Cairns]

Don\'t forget the Octobans!!! <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Wow, I havent heard that name for a while!!

As a child, I started out as a drummer and I was dying for a set of those. images/icons/smile.gif

And just for memory lane;

http://www1.musikmachen.net/basics/drm_perc/gfx_drum/octoban.jpg

[cmrick]

Originally posted by kbaccki:
And 15 years later Sting had to go out and find a really high-end session drummer like Vinnie Colaiuta just to be able to cover a few Police tunes on tour without sounding like something\'s obviously missing... <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Sting ended up firing him too mid Brand New Day tour. Too bad cause that 7/8 jam at the end of Fill Her Up rocked!!!!

[Chadwick]

Guys, don\'t forget to look at the hi hat sampling and mapping in Scarbee\'s new S.I.D. Drum kit. The detail is pretty outrageous, and it looks fairly straightforward to access all the samples from a couple of keys, the mod wheel and the sustain pedal. Tere is more than one set of hi hat samples too. From the manual:

\"In order to be able to control up to 2712 samples on just two keys, some ingenious programming was required. The Emperor HH 14 SUS XL program includes ‘edge’, ‘mid’ and ‘bell’ played hats on the same key, with incrementally more open samples for the ‘mid’ and ‘edge’ cymbal sounds.

Play HH with Mod Wheel...
Result... ‘edge’-played HH opens gradually

Play HH with Mod Wheel + Sus Pedal...
Result...‘mid’-played HH opens gradually

Play HH with Mod Wheel@127 + Sus Pedal
Result...‘bell’ sound is triggered

You can play Hi Hat on the ‘edge’ dynamically (with 14 unique velocity layers) on G#1 (Left) and A#1 (Right). You open the Hat by riding the Mod Wheel, which also has 14 degrees of ‘openness’ available.
By depressing the Sustain Pedal (Midi CC#064) you switch to the ‘mid’-played Hat sound with the same spectrum of ‘openings’.
If you raise the Mod Wheel to its maximum level (127) while the Sustain Pedal is depressed, you’ll trigger the ‘bell’ sound.\"

That\'s not bad for a bunch of samples!