CONCEPT

Last summer I found myself with a little extra time on my hands and a big idea. Coming on the heels of an original Boom Box Library offering, “Magic Chimes,” which I recorded back in 2021, I wanted to expand on the idea of an all encompassing percussion library. I received classical training as a percussionist at the Indiana University School of Music (now the Jacobs School). We would spend hours in master classes focused on one instrument, perfecting for example, the ideal triangle performance. Hours. On the triangle. Needless to say, I felt qualified for the task. Here’s my chance to revisit those roots and put together something really special.

The term percussion is very broad. It was my hope to put together a collection of the most useful small instruments, with the highest variety possible. The sheer volume of recordings led to a logical splitting into three distinct libraries: Cymbals & Gongs, Hand Drums, and Auxiliary Percussion.

As the basis for my design in the Recreating Classic Cartoon Sound Effects blog post, these libraries are perfect for sound designers. But composers and picture editors will certainly find them useful. As with all Boom Box Library offerings, all sounds are organized with evenly spaced sounds, clearly labeled and embedded with rich metadata. This allows for great integration with database software like Soundminer as well as easy importing into your favorite software sampler.

EXECUTION

The first step was gathering all these instruments to record. Being a percussionist, I had a lot already and filled in most of the gaps with instruments from Nate Finan, Co-Owner of Boom Box Post Kate Finan’s husband, a composer and collector. When it came to the gong, I needed some help. I went back to Cal Perc LA, the same place I had sourced the magic chimes and had my pick of multiple gongs (how fantastic to live in a city with so many resources at my fingertips!). My collection complete, it was time to record.

Sennheiser Pro Audio Condenser Microphone (MKH 8050),Black

Over the course of multiple days, I put in the hours recording in the quiet solitude of our mix stage. The recordings were captured with our Sennheiser MKH 8050 Pro Condenser microphone, at close range for smaller percussion and a bit farther out for the cymbals and gongs. For each instrument, I recorded multiple types of performances (hits, trills, rolls, sustains, scales, etc), and for each performance, multiple takes. Needless to say, there was a LOT of material.

The final step was to bring everything into Pro Tools to master and edit. This process took months… pretty grueling. But as I heard the quality of each new recording, it gave me the energy to finish what I knew was going to be a pretty spectacular set of libraries.

FINAL THOUGHTS

With the benefit of hindsight, I can say that the scope of this project grew well beyond my initial intention. And for good reason! There’s so much fun to be had with percussion instruments. Cymbals and Gongs contains over 480 sounds, Hand Drums, over 1,100 and Auxiliary Percussion over 6,400! That’s almost 8,000 sounds and over 5GB of material (I don’t even want to think about how much there was before editing!). All three of these new libraries as well as Magic Chimes are available for individual sale, or bundled as “The Percussion Collection” for those that want it all at a discounted price. I’m extremely proud of this collection and can’t wait for you to start using them in your own work.