# Has anyone tried the Toontrack Indie Folk expansion?



## Drew (Feb 14, 2017)

I'm working on what's kind of a folk/roots rock project with my dad and my uncle, and have been using S2.3 and the Avatar kit, and just relying more on the overheads than spot mics and bringing in some more room mic bleed and slamming it with a comnpressor to get more of a raw, in-the-room sounding kit, but this isn't really ideal; it's still a pretty contemporary drum sound. So, I was poking around the Sweetwater site last night, listening to the kits they had demo videos available for. 

I actually kind of dug this one - it might work for the project (think recent Dylan, I've been listening to "Time out of Mind" and the "Tell-Tale Signs" Bootleg Series album, which incidentally is excellent if you're into this kind of stuff, as inspiration while mixing), and I suspect it's a kit I'll still get at least occasional use out of elsewhere. 

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/EZXIndieFolk



Has anyone worked with this one much? I'd say I'm chasing a feel that ranges between the Dylan albums mentioned above to early John Prine to maybe Howlin Wolf London Sessions - anything else I should be looking at? If I happened to be in the middle of one of Toontrack's periodic sales where these are like $15 I'd just grab it on a whim, but at $80 I'd rather get a second opinion before buying.


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## Rachmaninoff (Feb 14, 2017)

I'm not really into recording anything on that particular music styles, but the kit sounds great nonetheless.

Please post a review if you buy it.


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## Drew (Feb 14, 2017)

Rachmaninoff said:


> I'm not really into recording anything on that particular music styles, but the kit sounds great nonetheless.
> 
> Please post a review if you buy it.



Yeah, the stuff I'm doing doesn't sound much like the sample material, or at ALL like the bands they name drop, but it's a very warm, room-y, dynamic sounding kit in this clip, so I'm curious to hear what it's like in real life. 

I may just grab it as a valentine's day present to myself tonight, after the first scotch.


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## tedtan (Feb 16, 2017)

I don't have any experience with the TT Folk kit, but the Native Instruments Abbey Road 60's Drummer will do the types of sounds you're going for. Check it out if you didn't buy the TT expansion.


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## Drew (Feb 16, 2017)

Can you load that in Superior, at least without setting it all up as X-drums?


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## tedtan (Feb 17, 2017)

I haven't used Superior, so I'm not sure of it's capabilities. The Abbey Road Drums line is formatted for Kontakt (and work with the free Kontakt Player), so if Superior can load Kontakt files it should work. Otherwise, it may best to stick with the TT pack if you need it to work in Superior.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Feb 23, 2017)

Damn I wanna get this and use it for the hardcore tracks I'm writing.


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## Rachmaninoff (Feb 24, 2017)

Drew said:


> Can you load that in Superior, at least without setting it all up as X-drums?



Very likely. I have a couple EZX expansions and I don't even have EZDrummer installed, just Superior 2.


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## Winspear (Feb 26, 2017)

I am wondering if Drews question was directed to Tedtan, in which case the answer is no, Toontrack will not load 3rd party samples. 

Yes Superior can load any expansion. However you must select your 'base' kit. The kit/expansion selected loads up with however many drum slots it has (Metal Foundry being one of the biggest). Those slots can then only load select samples from that expansion pack. So Metal Foundry has an option of cymbals for the far left slot, represented by their panning in the stereo field.
If you want to use part of another expansion, or duplicate slot options from one expansion, those must be xdrums.
But yes, Superior represents the base loader for any SDX kit, Superiors own kit being the 'Avatar' kit.

This expansion seems really nice. I got Music City which is fantastic for a small, great sounding general use kit. I use the Snare for metal stuff too. Might have to pick this up next time I go on a spree, along with some of their other newer kits


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## Drew (Mar 6, 2017)

It was, at that. 

So, update here - I ended up buying the "indiependent" Superior pack, which is Indie Folk but in a dedicated Superior format, with the added bells and whistles that come with it. A couple initial thoughts 


This is a very warm, live-sounding, kinda funky/organic/a little rough around the edges in a good way sounding drum kit. 
I want to spend some time playing with it, but it's probably not a good kit for a hard rock or metal production - the focus on the "range" of articulation is definitely on the softer/medium intensity hits, and even the hardest hits, IMO, don't sound THAT hard.
Cymbals and toms in particular are quite good, probably because of the combined focus on somewhat softer articulations and thhe vibe-y "room" sound. 
Right out of the box, the raw kits sound like, well, a raw and unprocessed kit. Way more so than Avatar - it actually (IMO) sounds kinda like shyte if you pull up one of the basic kits without any loaded presets and drop it into a mix. This is actually kind of cool, though, for two reasons - one, that gives you a lot of flexibility to shape how the final kit sounds like (whereas Avatar always sounds kinda like avatar, because it's such a clean and well recorded kit that I always find myself not wanting to do much to it), and two, it's actually been a lot of fun to start with these really big, loose-sounding drum sounds and kinda whip them into shape with compression and EQ, and in turn has encouraged me to get a bit more heavy-handed attacking the rest of the mix with equalizers, which IMO hasn't been bad for me.

For kicks one day I think I WILL try to demo something more hard-rock oriented from this kit, just to see how it holds together. But, for the kind of loose, vibe-y, acoustic-guitar and piano-driven folk/blues-rock/country type stuff I've been using this on, I've been pretty happy with it. It's not a plug-and-play solution by any means (though some of the Toontrack presets aren't half bad), but it's got a lot of potential to shape into something pretty decent. I kicked an early mix to a few metalhead buddies, and while it wasn't their sort of music at ALL, the consensus was the drums sounded great and had translated into a pretty good mix.

I'll keep posting updates as I work with them - it's a drumkit set that will have limited appeal here, I suspect, but I'm enjoying them, and they're great for a (rare) area where (IMO) Avatar is a little weak. If you ever record acoustic music and want something with a looser, grittier, and room-ier vibe than Avatar, this is a great kit, especially for what Toontrack puts these on sale for over the holidays. The $19 or whatever you can grab the Indie Folk version on their periodic sales is a no brainer if it fits a style you play.


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## Rachmaninoff (Mar 6, 2017)

Great review.

Feel free to share any demos.


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## Drew (Mar 9, 2017)

I'm not going to subject anyone to the stuff I'm working on right now. Maybe I'll throw something together though, with the intent of sharing... It'll be a while yet, though. 

I'll keep updating this as I keep working with the kit.


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