Rhythms of the World

Embark on a rhythmic journey across continents with Synchron World Percussion. This intoxicating Collection not only offers the vibrant sounds of percussion instruments from West Africa, the Middle East, and Brazil, but also invites you to delve deeper into each region’s traditional rhythms with its comprehensive selection of over 500 MIDI loops.

Instruments

All drums and percussion instruments were recorded in the large hall of Synchron Stage Vienna and therefore blend seamlessly with all the other sampled instruments captured in this magnificent scoring stage. Choose between mixer presets “Close”, “Classic”, and “Ambience”. What’s more, the “Ensemble” mixer presets give the listener the feeling of standing in the middle of the percussion ensemble.

The musicians who played on Synchron World Percussion are themselves world-class, being highly sought both regionally and globally: Ibou Ba from Senegal, Hamidreza Ojaghi from the Kurdish region of Iran, and Luis Ribeiro from Brazil.

Authentic Grooves as MIDI Loops

Our percussion experts not only recorded a wide variety of single hit samples for this Collection, but also invited each musician to perform many typical rhythms from their part of the world. The loops can be played and pre-auditioned in the Synchron Player’s MIDI Loop Player, and from there dragged into your DAW, thus affording you a measure of freedom regarding tempo, dynamics, length, and arrangement. Of course, the loops can be edited as you see fit.

All the grooves share the common trait of being used originally for celebrations, be it in a spiritual way or for dancing. All of them come from long cultural traditions and are handed down from one generation to the next. They rarely get transcribed. And many are quite complex. For example, less than half of the Persian grooves are in 2/4 or 4/4. There’s even a traditional celebratory groove in 22/8, which was masterfully played by the outstanding Hamidreza Ojaghi.

The MIDI loops are not only available for each individual instrument, but also for entire ensembles, e.g., djembe, sabar, talking drums, doum doums, shekere, etc., all performing together a Senegalese festive groove. The ensembles are pre-configured groups in Vienna Ensemble projects and correspond to the MIDI loops that you can drag into your DAW. (Vienna Ensemble is the free mixing host that comes included with every Synchron Collection.)

Microphone Positions

In order to capture the performances in the large Stage A, our recording engineers used multiple high-end microphone arrays, affording an abundance of options for creating your individual sound. The Full Library features three different sets of close microphones with condenser, tube and dynamic mic options, a pair of mid mics, as well as the Decca tree with additional surround and high surround outriggers.

Microphone Setup - Standard & Full Library

The Standard Library and the Full Library of Synchron World Percussion both include the same set of articulations. The difference lies in the number of provided microphone positions:

The main surround microphone settings may also be used instead of the main stereo room mics in order to achieve a wider and more ambient mix. Blending surround signals with the other microphone signals creates a denser, more lush overall sound, even in stereo applications.
 
Room Mix Presets feature an excellent mix-down to stereo from the Decca tree and surround mic positions for a CPU and RAM-saving sound that’s perfectly balanced right out-of-the-box. A host of Mixer Presets is available in the categories of “Decca Tree Multi-Mic”, “Surround to Stereo Downmix”, and “Surround”.
 
The Standard Library and the upgrade to the Full Library are separate downloads.