Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars
Conjure an image of Cinematic Drums and you’ll probably be thinking about a battery of percussionists. In the case of Drumbada that means up to 15 Bombos Legüeros, which is a rare form of Andean bass drum that has apparently remained unsampled. At least until now!
Traditionally, the Bombos Legüeros is played with a stick and can reputedly be heard, in its native setting, from a distance of up to six miles away! It has an exceedingly deep and reverberant tone, and it can be muted and struck in different locations around the drum to provide other timbral colours, such as the familiar rim‑clicking sound — useful for those upper rhythmic constructs.
Upon loading, the interface initialises to a slightly unnerving picture of some native drummers, albeit represented by computer imagery. From here, you can access a number of presets and settings from the upper menus, or tweak the patch settings from the row of parameters at the bottom of the window. You can also take full advantage of the macro settings, which can be assigned so that playing behaviour varies as you drag your mouse across the aforementioned graphic.
Polyrhythmic Patterns
The Edit page is where the sequencer settings reside. One of Drumbada’s unique features relates to its ability to create polyrhythmic patterns. With five rows of sequencer layers available, each can be engineered to perform cycled loops from one to 16 steps, while the tempo is handled globally or synchronised to your DAW. There is a speed pot, located on the right of every sequencer layer, which allows the note value of each sequencer step to be altered. I might be inclined to label this as ‘note value’, although smaller note values will obviously result in a faster pace, just not a change in tempo, as suggested.
The resulting polyrhythmic performance can be further exaggerated by the use of the Crew button, which creates the effect of having five players performing the sequenced layer. Increase the Spread amount, and those five players become even more authentic, with a slight relaxing in the tightness of performance. The Crew function also works in tandem with the Accent pot, which becomes an indispensable parameter for heightening the polyrhythmic effect and tension.
...as a standalone plug‑in it more than holds its own, sounding thunderous and realistic.
Drumbada delivers a slightly different sound, which does feel reassuringly familiar. As it’s only based around the Bombos Legüeros drum, it might be worth considering this as part of a larger cinematic drum contingent, although as a standalone plug‑in it more than holds its own, sounding thunderous and realistic. The available editability at the note level is appreciated, and goes beyond many other similar plug‑ins. A large number of presets are included, with the vast majority appearing to offer a triplet feel, which isn’t always the preference for cinematic writing. There is also an onboard reverb, which only provides a rather cavernous setting, without any facility to edit the reverb tail. My tendency is to switch this off and head to a third‑party plug‑in, which would allow greater flexibility.
$59
$59