A forgotten Classic

KPR-77 Drums serves up over 280 free drum samples (recorded directly to 1/4″ analogue tape) from the Korg KPR-77 drum machine.

The KPR-77 was originally manufactured by Korg in the early 1980’s and was seen as a cheaper alternative to the popular TR-606 drum machine. Surprisingly this quirky little analogue machine is capable of producing quite powerful drum sounds, we are especially fond of the toms, snares and claps!

KPR-77 Drums contains three pre-mapped drum kit patches for use with Kontakt (and above) Battery. Each kit makes use of extensive velocity layering, round robin sample playback and choke groups which in turn capture the quirkiness and expressiveness of the original unit.

Round Robin

Due to the KPR-77’s analogue nature, subtle differences in tone are heard in the sound each time a drum is triggered. This means that no two hits coming from the KPR-77 will sound exactly the same, which in turn makes the overall sound a lot less static and instead, more vibrant and real.

Becuase of this we felt it necessary to record up to 5 ’round robin’ samples and 3 velocity layers per sound – to help capture the ‘movement’ created by random analogue behaviour!

The kits

Tape Clean

127 KPR-77 drum samples which have been recorded directly to 1/4″ tape via a Studer A80 Mk1 analogue tape machine at a clean / neutral level. This kit includes 5 round robin samples per sound as well as 3 velocity layers per hit.

Tape Saturated

127 KPR-77 drum samples which have been recorded at a hot level (providing obvious tape saturation) to 1/4″ tape via a Studer A80 Mk1 analogue tape machine. This kit includes 5 round robin samples per sound as well as 3 velocity layers per hit.

Driven Kit

27 KPR-77 drum samples which have been recorded and processed through a variety of our outboard studio gear.