Orchestral Tools: Tom Holkenborg's Percussion

[Guy Rowland]

Looks like this is Tom's private collection, recorded all over the place but used in his movies. Details here:
https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/c ... percussion

299 euros, 199 intro discount.

[riffwraith]

Hey - what happened to the response that was here yesterday?

(yes I saw it)

[Guy Rowland]

Don't know riff - I saw it too.

[tack]

Hey - what happened to the response that was here yesterday?

Don't know riff - I saw it too.

The user deleted their own post. It wasn't an act of moderation. (I saw it too, and didn't entirely disagree with it either, even if it could have been a bit more tactfully worded.)

[riffwraith]

I figured it might be user-deleted, and not moderation.

[Yasin Yavuz]

Yeah, I deleted it. Next morning I read it again and thought it's unnecessary. Percussion is like a passion for me, his opinions made me a bit angry I guess. Sorry.

[Pablo Crespo]

Sometimes all these sound stuff gets the best of us (I think I also agree with what you typed in anger)

[FriFlo]

I agreed with the original post as well and have a similar view on the brass. And I wonder why it should be necessary to delete/censor these thoughts. Opinions regarding pieces of art and audio products should not be held back due to not wanting to hurt someone in a forum like this, even if the criticism may be harsh. That doesn't mean one should be particularly harsh towards a beginner asking for help - which is what tact would tell me. But this is not the case here, is it? We are talking about a professional who is making considerable money with his work, products and also the media facade. Harsh attacks should IMHO only be avoided (unless being called for) directed to a person, but not the work.

Sometimes, of course, that may be hard to distinguish! This is especially apparent with people who put their persona as much in the spotlight and JXL is certainly trying that very hard. However, I think that everyone who puts himself out so much also has to bare the consequences of becoming associated personally with his work or products so much - I think similarly about a certain former sample library developer and now influencer from Spitfire audio ...

Otherwise, this recent trend of so many people feeling the call to become public personas via Youtube etc can only result in condemning criticism as hate speech, which it is clearly not! I can already hear some people mutter: "haters will hate ..."

[Yasin Yavuz]

To explain myself nicely, I'll give you an example. Here is how my custom davul (tupan) library sound:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c85vbfkpb25l7 ... l.wav?dl=0

It has 6 articulations there each one mapped to two white neighbour keys with multi velocity layers and round robins. You hit it with a beater on one side and with a thin stick on the other traditionally. Tom says he played them with a stick. But compare the sounds (it starts at 9:40 in the video) and imagine how hard it would get to program something like I did with short demo.

[Jack Weaver]

To explain myself nicely, I'll give you an example. Here is how my custom davul (tupan) library sound:
etc.

You certainly have a valid point - but there's a good chance Holkenborg wasn't going for a traditional tupan sound - but instead wanted one aspect of the tupan (the main strike) to integrate into his Hollywood cinematic drum style. I don't think he was doing an ethnomusicological study.

.

[Yasin Yavuz]

To explain myself nicely, I'll give you an example. Here is how my custom davul (tupan) library sound:
etc.

You certainly have a valid point - but there's a good chance Holkenborg wasn't going for a traditional tupan sound - but instead wanted one aspect of the tupan (the main strike) to integrate into his Hollywood cinematic drum style. I don't think he was doing an ethnomusicological study.

.

I know he wasn't going for a traditional sound. But It's common for developers to hide behind the word "cinematic" for percussion and I'm tired of it. They are like "We have a lot of exotic/ethnic percussion in our catalog. We didn't know how to play them so we hit the center of the drum with a stick a few times. We recorded in a large room and processed the sound. They are cinematic now, we decided."
Sample library market is filled with this kind of libraries.
People think there are way too many percussion libraries in the market, I don't. There is a difference between playing musical instruments and hitting objects in my opinion. I expect developers to learn what they're sampling or find someone who knows. I think that would be "professional".

[Jack Weaver]

I know he wasn't going for a traditional sound. But It's common for developers to hide behind the word "cinematic" for percussion and I'm tired of it. They are like "We have a lot of exotic/ethnic percussion in our catalog. We didn't know how to play them so we hit the center of the drum with a stick a few times. We recorded in a large room and processed the sound. They are cinematic now, we decided."
Sample library market is filled with this kind of libraries.
People think there are way too many percussion libraries in the market, I don't. There is a difference between playing musical instruments and hitting objects in my opinion. I expect developers to learn what they're sampling or find someone who knows. I think that would be "professional".

Yes, all good points. It would be nice if this library had a bit more stylistic width.

I bought it anyway, knowing what I was in for. It's certainly not the end-all-be-all perc lib.

It's a one-trick pony that some people have ridden all the way to the bank.

.

[Scoredog]

This is not being marketed as ethnic drum library, it is a working library for media composers and it succeeds in what it does and in a different way than similarly focused libraries. For what it is it is the best I have heard, low to medium cinematic playable drums. That is all it does but it is excellent at that.

[Lawrence]

IMO, there’s nothing wrong with it and it’s not a bad price, but it doesn’t do anything for me that Soundiron’s APE doesn’t (along with a few ancillary pounding drum libraries.)

[Guy Rowland]

Yeah... I feel very boring for saying it, but it's such a crowded market, most of us are not lacking in this sort of thing. I quite like the different velocity layout, that would probably get you round the round robin problem okay too. But in the end, that's just a UI tweak. The sounds themselves work great for what they are, but again I didn't hear anything significantly different. Plenty of hyped big percussion out there. But like Larry said the price is good, if that's your area and you don't have all that much, I'm sure it would be a perfectly good buy.

Incidentally, is Tom no longer Junkie XL?

[ComposerGuy]

Junkie has bad connotations. I’m sure in today’s world where a lot of things offend folks it was determined to ‘move away’ from the word? Of course I could be completely wrong and be suffering from momentary insanity as well. (I’ve been known to do that)

[Tobias Escher]

My guess is simply that he wants Junkie XL to be for his EDM work, and his "real" name Tom Holkenborg for his film scoring stuff.
There's precious few composers operating under a pseudonym, though I guess there's a good figure not actually using their real name.

EDIT:
I'm a musicologist by trade and if that taught me one thing, it is that things are usually much less complicated than people make them to be. I am absolutely convinced, that 99.9% of the "awesome chords that are carefully crafted to represent the Holy Trinity in its primordial relationship to the heavenly constallations" (and similar musicologist bullshit), are simply what the composer felt like at that moment. Or the result of a good glass of wine. Or both.

[Yasin Yavuz]

This is why I deleted my first post in this thread. I got a bit angry and forgot that you can't write negative things about products in forums. You must be silent if you don't like something. I'm not capable of understanding what he was doing with this library, right? Explaining what an ethnic instrument is actually must be a musicologist bullshit. Obviously he is a glorious hollywood composer and I'm nobody. Why do I even bother?
Yeah, it's the best cinematic epic percussion library ever.

[Lawrence]

This is why I deleted my first post in this thread. I got a bit angry and forgot that you can't write negative things about products in forums. You must be silent if you don't like something. I'm not capable of understanding what he was doing with this library, right? Explaining what an ethnic instrument is actually must be a musicologist bullshit. Obviously he is a glorious hollywood composer and I'm nobody. Why do I even bother?
Yeah, it's the best cinematic epic percussion library ever.

Umm..Yasin-isn't that overstating things a bit? I don't think most people in here hold back much when they feel a product isn't up to snuff.

There are those who go by the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" rule but they are easily identifiable because they're constantly posting positive experiences and seem never to have met a sample library or plug in they didn't like. Once you figure that out, you just take their comments with a grain of salt.

[tack]

I got a bit angry and forgot that you can't write negative things about products in forums. You must be silent if you don't like something.

Not here. Just don't be a jerk, anything else goes, including criticisms. All I can tell you is your since-deleted post would not have come close to raising a moderation eyebrow here. And other members are free to push back on those opinions. We are particularly sensitive about the ability to be critical about commercial products, but it's possible to do that while also being respectful to the people who put the effort into making them.

[Tobias Escher]

This is why I deleted my first post in this thread. I got a bit angry and forgot that you can't write negative things about products in forums. You must be silent if you don't like something. I'm not capable of understanding what he was doing with this library, right? Explaining what an ethnic instrument is actually must be a musicologist bullshit. Obviously he is a glorious hollywood composer and I'm nobody. Why do I even bother?
Yeah, it's the best cinematic epic percussion library ever.

You are WAY out of line.
My post did not even reference your post at all - it was about the question why Tom chose to emphasize his name, rather than the pseudonym.
How you would construe out of that that I consider what you wrote "musicologist bullshit", I do not know, especially given that I do not even know your first post.
My comment was not about your posts at all, and certainly not about your first one, which I have not even had a chance to read because you deleted it. Thus depriving anyone of any chance to actually address it.
In no way, shape or form did my post even refer to the actual product. For obvious reasons I am neutral when it comes to it.

EDIT:
Just in case anyone wants to have an actual, civil discussion on choices in the samples market, I will be happy to contribute. I would have liked to read the original topic, might have been a good place to clear up some misunderstanding about how these products are conceptualized.

EDIT2:
Removed some stuff.

[FriFlo]

This is why I deleted my first post in this thread. I got a bit angry and forgot that you can't write negative things about products in forums. You must be silent if you don't like something. I'm not capable of understanding what he was doing with this library, right? Explaining what an ethnic instrument is actually must be a musicologist bullshit. Obviously he is a glorious hollywood composer and I'm nobody. Why do I even bother?
Yeah, it's the best cinematic epic percussion library ever.

You are WAY out of line.
My post did not even reference your post at all - it was about the question why Tom chose to emphasize his name, rather than the pseudonym.
How you would construe out of that that I consider what you wrote "musicologist bullshit", I do not know, especially given that I do not even know your scientific background. Let me know your professional credentials, history of publication, etc, and I will be happy to let you know my opinion of your work, given that you seem so keen on having people evaluate it.
My comment was not about your posts at all, and certainly about your first one, which I have not even had a chance to read because you deleted it. Thus depriving anyone of any chance to actually address it.
In no way, shape or form did my post even refer to the actual product. For obvious reasons I am neutral when it comes to it. So I have no idea why you act as a triggered snowflake and need to attack me.

EDIT:
Just in case anyone wants to have an actual, civil discussion on choices in the samples market, I will be happy to contribute. I would have liked to read the original topic, might have been a good place to clear up some misunderstanding about how these products are conceptualized.

I am not sure, Tobias, but I haven’t read Yanins comment as a reply to yours, either. Maybe, you are over-reacting … He posted examples of authentic Tupan recordings and got the reply that JXL Percussion is not trying to sound like authentic ethnic instruments, although the instruments are used. I completely referred his ironic comment that his desire for authentic instruments might seem as “musicologist bullshit” to some people as a reply towards that and in no way out of line as a response to your comment. I might be wrong, but words can be interpreted quite differently as this example clearly proves once more! :-) So, everyone chill please! There is no drama here. ;-)

[Tobias Escher]

I am quite sure he meant it as a reply to me, since I mention the phrase "musicologist bullshit" in my post.
In any case - still would like to see that original post and still think all this is a terrific topic to discuss. too many assumptions on all sides, apparently, myself included.

[FriFlo]

I am quite sure he meant it as a reply to me, since I mention the phrase "musicologist bullshit" in my post.
In any case - still would like to see that original post and still think all this is a terrific topic to discuss. too many assumptions on all sides, apparently, myself included.

Tobias, you may have missed Jack Weavers post before who was also using the word "ethnomusicological". I think Yasin's post was in response to that. And even if he was also addressing your post I am not sure what was out of line with his post ... maybe I am missing some inside-jokes used as attacks between musicologists? Not sure what it was, but it didn't read like an attack to me.

[Yasin Yavuz]

My post was directed to general response. It wasn't a personal attack. I think FriFlo understood me well. Anyway I know this is a nice forum. My only intention was commenting on the product.