Free Percussion Vst Best

26.12.2020by
Free Percussion Vst Best Rating: 4,2/5 1400 votes

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Best Orchestral Percussion?

Are you looking for cinematic orchestral percussion for your music compositions?

Percussion is the essence of action and rhythm, of power and energy.

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Anything from low majestic booms, to hard hitting and punchy drums, to driving high percussion.

In this quick guide I have compiled a list of great orchestral percussion VST libraries:

Orchestral Percussion VST libraries – Top List

  1. Damage (Heavyocity)
  2. CinePerc (Cinesamples)
  3. HZ Percussion (Spitfire Audio)
  4. Berlin Percussion (Orchestral Tools)
  5. StrikeForce (Laboratory Audio)
  6. Action Strikes (Native Instruments)
  7. Spitfire Percussion (Spitfire Audio)
  8. SAGA – Acoustic Trailer Percussion (Red Room Audio)
  9. Symphony Series Percussion (Native Instruments)
  10. Taiko Creator (In Session Audio)
  11. Cerberus (Audio Imperia)

Hello Composers! =)

My name is Mike, founder of professionalcomposers.com, music composer and sound designer since 1998, old school nerd, and coffee addict. So grab a cup of coffee, and let’s check out some Orchestral Percussion VST Libraries! =)

A very dark and processed overall sound, including 700+ loops, 500+ one-shots and 58 kits. Damage is not about natural orchestral percussion. The focus is rather on epic, loud and hard impacts.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Instant Trailer type Epic Percussion
  • The Punish Knob for even more “Heat”
  • Powerful User Interface
  • The Room Placement Mixer

CinePerc was recorded at the SONY Scoring Stage in Los Angeles, and mixed by master engineer Dennis Sands. This is the great “all-in-one” orchestral percussion package, with that instant “Hollywood Sound”.

My Favorite Highlights

  • 4 libraries in one (Core, Pro, Epic, Aux)
  • Great Hollywood Sound
  • The Microphone Mix Controls
  • Includes a Full Ensemble Patch (great for quick mockups)

Recorded at Air Studios via an impressive signal chain: 96 rarefied microphones into Neve Montserrat preamps, into the world’s biggest Neve 88R desk. And the selection of percussion included is extensive.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Great Selection of Percussion (especially in the low-range)
  • Many Powerful Soundshaping Features
  • Includes Ensembles and Solo Patches
  • The Interface is very Straightforward

Gigantic percussion library (150GB sample set) recorded at the Teldex Scoring Stage in Germany. All instruments were recorded in their natural positions, which gives you a natural percussion mix.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Build your own percussion ensembles
  • True Damping Feature
  • Uniform mapping structure
  • Different Mallets for respective instruments

StrikeForce was recorded at 192k in many various recording studios, halls, tunnels, rooms in Los Angeles. The focus is on a modern cinematic sound, compared to a natural orchestral sound. This library will give you big ensembles, anvils, sub boom, and “ticktocks” that simply works great for that big and modern sound.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Modern Cinematic Sound
  • The Sound Categories
  • 5 Different Drum Tunings
  • Lots of Round Robins

Action strikes includes 12 full ensembles plus 65 single instruments and 12 carefully-compiled Hit Sets. Even though the main focus is on building percussion from phrases that you trigger with key switches, you can use the individual patches to play the sounds manually.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Great for Writing Percussion Parts fast (Ex: Mockups)
  • The Categorization of Low, Mid and High Parts
  • Adjust accent strength with the pitch wheel
  • Change Dynamics with the MOD-wheel

An orchestral percussion library with a great variation of low and high percussion instruments, as well as a set of mallet instruments. A very natural orchestral percussion sound, with amazing dynamics, recorded in the Hall at Air Lyndhurst.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Great true recorded dynamic range
  • Quick and Easy mapping
  • Great Sound Shaping Controls

SAGA, which has the subtitle “Acoustic Trailer Percussion” is of course focusing on trailer type percussion based on recorded sounds. It gives you a range of drum ensembles, dynamic metals, and even world instruments. Recorded in a fairly dry hall with 2 microphone positions. There are over 110 instruments in total, including special sounds like giant silos, metal doors, machinery etc.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Up to 7 dynamic layers and 10 round robin
  • Multiple articulations (rolls, rims, edges.)
  • Simple & Straightforward GUI
  • The Extra Field Recordings (Machinery, Tools etc.)

55 orchestral percussion instruments, recorded at Studio 22, Budapest. It features a wide range of both classic and exotic percussive instruments, diverse articulations and powerful drum head resonance simulation.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Huge range (55 recorded instruments)
  • Tremolo, Crescendo Roll, Flam, Edge variations and FX articulations
  • 5 microphone mixes including spot microphone
  • Drum Head Resonance Simulation
  • Inspiring and simple interface

This library is based on one of the most used percussion instruments in cinematic music, the Japanese Taiko drums. Taiko Creator allows you to create, control and generate multiple solo and ensemble groups of your own, all playable from a single interface. From mega big, and low booming Taikos…to sharp stick hits.

My Favorite Highlights

  • The Mapping system is brilliant
  • The Presets give you instant access to different ensembles
  • Custom creation of percussion groups
  • Extremely playable out of the box (all in one patch if you wish)

Based on a hard-hitting drummer trio, thus the name “Cerberus”, this library has a very modern cinematic sound. It is also very customizable, including for example 7 microphone positions and a very nice user interface with sound shaping controls.

My Favorite Highlights

  • Modern Hard Hitting Cinematic Sound
  • Includes a Recorded Drum Kit
  • 7 microphone positions for the regular patches
  • True Stacking Engine, with additional round robin samples
  • True Strike (Project Sam)
    Classic and highly celebrated, and still very much usable today.
  • LADD (Audiobro)
    LA Drama Drums (LADD), had many interesting features, and blends traditional and modern percussion.
  • StormDrum (EastWest)
    Another classic, which comes in 3 versions. All are based on high quality recordings in a great space, by professional percussionists.
  • Ensemble Drums Collection (Heavyocity)
    Great for that big ensemble sound, on several different types of orchestral percussion.
  • Rhapsody (Impact Soundworks)
    Covers a nice range (50+ instruments) of traditional orchestral percussion instruments.
  • Apocalypse Percussion (Soundiron)
    Amazing for big epic toms, hard hits and trailer type percussion.

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The marimba is a pitched keyboard percussion instrument(similar to a xylophone) that resides in symphonies, percussion ensembles, orchestras, commercial music, and more.

Finding an excellent-sounding marimba VST isn’t a walk in the park — many sound cheap. Not to worry, as I have discovered five exceptional libraries that I will share with you today.

Table of Contents

  • Things to Consider When Looking for Marimba VSTs

1) Vital Series: Mallets (Paid)

I’ve already mentioned Mallets in a previous post (xylophone VSTs), but it happens to fit perfectly with marimba VSTs.

Vital Series: Mallets is an excellent pitched-percussion plugin from Big Fish Audio, the creators of Electri6ity, Mojo 2, and Apollo: Cinematic Guitars.

The plugin includes patches for marimba, xylophone, bells, chimes, vibraphone, and others.

The sample quality is incredible — when I listened back to my studio monitors, I felt like I was listening to real performers.

Vital Series: Mallets comes with multiple mallet types allowing for more flexibility and better dynamic emulation.

Mallet types included are as follows:

  • Soft
  • Medium Soft
  • Medium Hard
  • Hard
  • Rods
  • Bow

Vital Series: Mallets is available at Plugin Boutique.

2) Marimbaphonic (Free)

For all the composers and producers looking for a free option — rejoice. Marimbaphone is a surprisingly decent-sounding free marimba plugin.

The instrument contains 122 samples from the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios public domain library.

The most disappointing flaw in this marimba VST is the limiting two velocity layers(hey, what can you expect, it’s free?).

Here are Marimbaphone’s main features:

  • 122 mono 24-bit samples
  • Two velocity layers
  • Release time control
  • Amplitude dynamic range control
  • Basic reverb

3) Short Marimba VST/AU from Flintpope (Free)

Here’s an interesting (and free) marimba VST from a website called Flintpope.net.

The Short Marimba is a cool-sounding free instrument that won’t stand up to significant orchestral recordings but does work for many styles like pop and hip hop.

Have a listen below:

4) Soniccouture Grand Marimba (Paid)

I have a hard time distinguishing between Grand Marimba and Vital Series: Mallets’ marimba. They both sound so unbelievably realistic.

Grand Marimba is a fantastic marimba VST that features a 5-octave Yamaha 6100, designed with the legendary Keiko Abe.

Best Free Percussion Vst

The 6100 is a flagship instrument with precision tuning, Honduran Rosewood bars, and welded resonators (rattle-free).

Grand Marimba is a Kontakt Player instrument, meaning you do not need the full version of Kontakt to use it in your DAW.

5) Marimba by Frontline Producer (Paid)

Marimba by Frontline Producer is a great-sounding, and very affordable, marimba VST from Producer Loops.

The significant difference from the others on the list: it includes loops. Frontline Producer includes 343 marimba loops at tempos between 100 and 127 (which can be warped to your liking).

In addition to loops is a software sampler patch, which you can use to create your parts and melodies.

Marimba by Frontline Producer is available at Plugin Boutique.

6) Fine Mallets Bundle from Cinematique Instruments (Paid)

Fine Mallets is an armory of seven mallet percussion instruments including marimba, vibraphone, metallophone, glockenspiel, kalimba, and more.

The marimba patch sounds much dryer than others I have previously listed in this article.

There is also much less sustain, but I think it still sounds excellent and has commercial production potential.

The articulations included for the marimba patch include hard mallet, felt mallet, and big-soft mallet.

Percussion Vst Instruments

Note: the full version of Kontakt is required to use Fine Mallets.

Free moog vst plugin. Fine Mallets is available at Plugin Boutique.

Things to Consider When Looking for Marimba VSTs

Depending on your production, you may pick a different plugin. Some digital audio workstations even have marimbas and other percussion instruments included with the software.

Using Marimba VSTs in Pop and Hip Hop Music

Because you’re working in pop or hip hop music, you may not need the highest quality samples. A free option may work just fine.

I use Cubase, and it comes standard with Halion Sonic SE 3 — a VST sampler and sound creation system.

Halion Sonic SE 3 isn’t the full version of Halion, but it does come with some decent marimba patches. The included presets work fine for pop and hip hop music.

Check if your DAW includes some free virtual instruments and see if they’re any good!

Using Marimba VSTs For Orchestral and TV/Film Composition

Percussion

Composition for film, TV, and video games requires next-level libraries — your competition will be using them.

Blowing away music supervisors right from the get-go is imperative, as you may only get one chance.

Using high-quality instrument samples is, unfortunately, a must when working in the TV and film industry.

For orchestral music, quality is also crucial. Unless you plan to hire out an entire orchestra to play your piece and record it, you may want to save up for the best virtual libraries you can afford.

Compatibility of Marimba Virtual Instrument Plugins

Most digital audio workstations today support VST (virtual studio technology) — VST is the most common format today.

However, if you use a DAW like Pro Tools, you may have to use a format known as AAX or RTAS. There are workarounds, but they are obnoxious, requiring you to use Reaper inside Pro Tools to host VST plugins — a total headache.

Fortunately, most plugins today come in different formats.

  • VST (Virtual Studio Technology)
  • AU (AudioUnits)
  • AAX (Avid Audio eXtension)
  • RTAS (Real-Time Audio Suite)
  • TDM (Time-division Multiplexing)

Read your DAWs manual to see which format it supports.

Conclusion

Vital Series: Mallets remains to be my favorite mallet VST plugin bundle, though I have to say, Grand Marimba is coming in at a close second.

My best piece of advise when working with any plugins and instruments is to keep amassing them until you have an extensive library — like a painter’s color palette.

The “best-sounding” marimba VST may not always be the best application for a given style of music, like hip-hop, lo-fi, or pop.

If you’re interested in recording and production, specifically relating to drums and percussion, check out some of my other roundups:

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Have you tried out any of the marimba VST plugins I’ve listed here? What do you think? I’d love to hear from you in the comments down below.

Please share this article with your producer friends if you found it helpful.

Vst Percussion Plugin

Thanks for reading.

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