Do you ever find yourself tired of using the same old drum samples, or concerned that you're using the same ones everyone else might be working with? A new plugin from Audialab could be the solution.
Emergent Drums is a drum machine plugin that's capable of generating infinite amount of unique drum samples. Using an AI-based system that's been trained on a wide variety of existing sounds, Emergent Drums creates new, royalty-free and totally original samples from scratch.
The plugin's interface is based around 12 drum pads, that include the usual suspects - kick, snares, claps and hi-hats - along with slots for toms and for glitchy, noise-based percussive sounds. Each slot contains an AI-generated drum sample, that can be re-generated by hitting the Generate button.
Using the slider above the button, the user can determine how similar the new sample will be to the previous one, creating a slight alternative or an entirely dissimilar, randomly generated new sample. Each sample can be shaped using an individual envelope, along with an onboard filter, and controls for pitch and panning. We've spent a little time with the plugin, and managed to generate some pretty cool drum patterns with relative ease. Emergent Drums excels at producing punchy claps and rimshots, along with glitchy percs, noise samples and gritty hi-hats.
Though the idea behind Emergent Drums is an impressive one, the majority of the samples we've heard it generate (especially the kicks) tend to lean towards the crunchy, digitally lo-fi sound typical of AI-powered tools. That's not necessarily a bad thing - they would fit nicely inside a glitch/IDM track - but it does suggest that, at present, Emergent Drums isn't a wholesale replacement for your sample library. It would, however, make a great companion to it.
Emergent Drums is currently only available on an invite-only basis, and no official release date has been announced.
Find out more on Audialab's website.
