Synchron Drums III

Solo Instruments

Field Drums are snare drums with an especially long corpus and a deeper sound. Their sound resembles that of the Basle drums which were already in use in the 16th century. The Aural Field Drum used here was played with three different beaters (sticks, hot rods, mallets), all of them with and without snares.

Marching Snares are mainly used in American marching bands. While its shell is normally deeper than that of normal snare drums, its batter heads are made of Kevlar-based fabric, allowing for very high tension. This makes the sound of marching snares (which are also called pipe drums) particularly high, very short, and especially acute.

Piccolo Snares have a shallower shell than normal snares, which also makes their timbre higher. The instrument included in Synchron Drums III also has a metal shell to give it extra punch.

The Snare Drum Aural Nut is made of beautiful nutwood and has a wooden frame instead of the more common metal one. For a snare, it sounds surprisingly warm and full.

Boobams are narrow tube drums with a definite pitch, so that a set of them can be used to play tunes. The word Boobam is derived from bamboo, the material the instrument was originally made of. It was developed by the composer Harry Partch in the middle of the 20th century.

Ensembles

Synchron Drums III includes these powerful ensembles of up to six musicians each:

Monster Drums (odaiko, big taiko, big bass drum, small bass drum, big surdo, small surdo)
Bass Drums (big taiko, medium taiko, big bass drum, small bass drum, big concert tom, medium concert tom)
Thunder Toms (2 small, 2 medium, 2 big concert toms)
Special Drums (big surdo, medium taiko, big temple block, mridangam, log drum, small surdo)
Snare Ensemble (2 snare drums, 1 field drum)
Drums & Pianos (Bösendorfer Imperial, Steinway D-274, Yamaha CFX, big taiko, timpani, bass drum)
Drum Riffs (main riffs, low riffs, high riffs in several tempos that can be adjusted using the Synchron Player’s time-stretch feature)

Articulations

Articulations are comprised of single hits on various areas of the drum, rolls, upbeats, coperto (covered with a blanket), played with three different mallets (soft, medium, hard). In addition, there are effect articulations such as brushes, sizzle (attaching a sizzle chain to the skin results in a noisy reverberation), and super ball, which is a rubber ball on a stick that is drawn across the skin, creating a kind of humming tone.

12 Microphones

Every instrument was recorded using 12 microphones. You may select from four microphone positions (Standard Library) or seven different microphone positions (Full Library) and mix them to your liking, directly in the Vienna Synchron Player. Use the included and perfectly fine-tuned presets as a starting point for your own sonic creations. The performances in Stage A were captured in stereo using a Decca tree, and additional microphone arrays were utilized for 5.1 surround and Auro 3D 9.1.