Review: Drumstruck 4 by The Unfinished

The Unfinished’s Drumstruck 4 is a great instrument with some dark and crunchy percussive sounds perfect for modern epic compositions. From forboding, ominous pieces to action thrillers, Drumstruck 4 can add that extra pace and tension.

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Review: Drumstruck 4 by The Unfinished

Drumstruck 4 from Unfinished is an electronic, cinematic drum loop library that plays as an instrument through Kontakt. This library is a collection of hardware and software synths that have been processed to create these looping atmospheric percussive sequences. It has a very simple GUI, so it’s very easy to load up patches and get working with the loops. The loops have been saturated quite a bit so that they fit within the hybrid cinematic genre.

Drumstruck 4 sells for £24.99 from The Unfinished

Thoughts

Drumstruck is a very easy to use and navigate sample instrument. You simply drag one of the NKI patches into the Kontakt player, and then the sampled processed beats are mapped across the keyboard and you can play one or layer up with multiple played notes to create and enormous destructive sonic environment. I found that this is where the instrument came into its own, when you found multiple processed betas you like the sound of and then played them unison to create a wall-of-beats- sound.

So, the instrument is broken down into 3 patches, the Betamax Beats is more digital sounding. The Broken Beats patch is a selection of broken beat drum patterns which are more distorted and harsh. So it’s less synthetic sounds, and more a combination or real processed drum beats, and processed drum machine beats and then the Darker Drums is moodier and organic. This is a combination of sampled analog hardware or analog modelling software, which has been processed quite heavily. So I’d use the Betamax Beats on an action composition, where I’d use the Darker Drums more on an ominous thriller piece. The library does have a lot of dynamics even though it’s just a drum looping instrument.

Then there is a Bonus section with some extra smaller patches. Eclectic Effects has some bass drops and transition sounds. Filtered Funk is more high register filtered drum loops. Sub Slams has some awesome low sub hits, and Vox Vortex is a collection processed looping percussive vocal patches. These Vocal loops have a bit of a beatboxing vibe to them, but quite different with the heavy processing applied. So there is quite a selection of loops in the three patches and the bonus patches. Especially if you’re working in the modern scoring scene where hybrid electronic productions are needed. This will definitely be a go to instrument for you.

I found it was also quite helpful to jump for the WAV files for some of these patches. Especially the ones with build ups in them. I could find the WAV file in the associated folder and drag it straight into my DAW to line up the crescendo point of the sample with my grid. It’s nice to have this flexibility as well with having the WAV sample folders.

All the loops are in 4/4. It would have been nice if there was some way to set different meters and the loops would adjust to them.

The Unfinished Drumstruck instrument is a great instrument with some dark and crunchy percussive sounds that would fit well in any template if you’re creating modern epic sounding compositions. It works great with dark, ominous pieces through to action thriller compositions, giving that extra pace and tension you may need. So definitely an instrument for Epic, Compositions to give that filtered percussive rhythm and pace to your compositions.

Facts

This is a 700MB library for Kontakt with 7 NKI files. It requires the full version of Kontakt 5.5.1 or later, and also contains the WAVs of the samples. It can be purchased for 24.99 Euro + VAT from here:

Drumstruck 4 sells for £24.99 from The Unfinished

Demos of Drumstruck 4 by The Unfinished

Videos of Drumstruck 4 by The Unfinished