I've mentioned this before in my column, and I hope you'll forgive me for repeating myself, but it really goes to the heart of this month's topic. You might remember the movie "City Slickers" when Curly (Jack Palance) reveals to Mitch (Billy Crystal) the secret to success and happiness. That secret is the "one thing." By the end of the movie Billy's character figures out that this means focusing your energies on the "one thing" that you do best and then everything else will fall into place.

This idea or concept — whatever you want to call it — has worked well for me as a Soundware Engineer, as I don't yearn to write or perform the ultimate song, soundtrack or album. This allows me the time and energy needed to tweak every single VAST parameter of our sounds as far as possible.

One of our most popular CD-ROMs, Total Stereo Session Drums for the K2000 / K2500 ($329), was also conceived around "one thing." And its goal was to be the most responsive and realistic stereo acoustic drum kit simulations that have ever existed for a keyboard. There are no "processed" drums, no loops, no TR-anythings, and nothing plays backwards. These are 30 full acoustic kits (plus tons of additional single samples for you to use where or when you need them) with every single drum in each kit recorded in "true stereo" which adds a level of realism and fullness that simply cannot be matched with mono samples.

Some of these kits were recorded in a fairly dry room and close mic'd while others were sampled in live rooms with the mics pulled back just a bit to emphasize the ambience. And each drum and cymbal was recorded with many different velocity levels.

This is maximized by the use of Sweetwater's exclusively designed "8 Velocity Layer Keymaps." These specially created Keymaps contain 8 elements within each Layer which are triggered by velocities from ppp through fff. And even though these Keymaps offer 8 different samples per note they still only need one Program Layer! These exclusive Keymaps are truly the heart of the Total Stereo Session Drums CD-ROM.

All of the Drum Kits that are available on the Total Stereo Session Drums CD-ROM are in one of two Drum Layouts: The Kurzweil Standard Drum Layout or the General MIDI Layout. Each has its own advantages.

The Kurzweil versions make it simple to use these new stereo drums with patterns that have already been composed on most of the factory drum kits as well as making it easy to audition all of the various stereo kits.

The GM Drum Kits were created while carefully comparing each note's volume and responsiveness to a Roland Super Sound Canvas (SC-88) for flawless GM compatibility. This resulted in 5 GM Kits that are out of this world including a killer Jazz Brush Kit. These GM Kits are great for third party drum pattern disks like DrumTrax, BeatBoy and Cool Shoes.

Or better yet, try our Sweetwater exclusive SweetBeats Drum Patterns (only $39.95). This disk contains two sets of 75 drum patterns recorded live on a Trap Kat that are designed for any GM Drum Layout as well as the Kurzweil Standard Drum Layout. This floppy works on a Mac, PC, Kurzweil, or any workstation that reads Standard MIDI Files.

Jim Miller (our sampling expert), Gary Phillips (percussionist and programmer) and I, Daniel Fisher (VAST guy) have all contributed our "one thing" to this project so that you can concentrate on your "one thing" — great music.

We're particularly excited about our recent review in the June '99 issue of Electronic Musician where they wrote: "The programming on Total Stereo Session Drums, by VAST gurus Daniel Fisher and Gary Phillips, is superb. Extensive tweaking and some clever tricks (including eight-layer keymaps) have been used to make all of the samples, especially those grouped into kits, sound natural together . . . Total Stereo Session Drums delivers lots of great acoustic drum sounds, from delicate to punchy to raucous . . . Total Stereo Session Drums incorporates both stellar raw samples and immaculate programming into a useful library that no K2000 / K2500 owner should be without."

We've also received quite a few positive comments over the Internet like this one that we found on the K2000 User's Group:

"To me, virtually all pop music begins with the drums. If the drums aren't right, you might as well forget about it. For most of us, there would be perhaps two-three kits that we like the best on any particular CD-ROM and I am no exception in this regard. But man, the ability to dial up a virtually dead-ringer stereo drum set for virtually any style of popular music . . . well, IMHO that's worth $329. In fact, I deeply regret that I did not purchase this set when it first came out.

"In the MIDI work I've done over the past few years I've typically labored for days and even weeks trying to get the drums to sound right. I used various sample sets; I tried various programming and processing tricks . . . you name it. At best, the results were 'passable' but not really what I wanted. In recent months, I have procrastinated on some relatively important MIDI projects simply because I dreaded putting so much effort into the drums, only to achieve marginally satisfactory results. With this new set, I can't wait to get to work. What a relief to find a set of drum samples that sounds 'right' to me. For years I have looked for a decent set of drum samples. At last I've found it. I'm happy now."

We couldn't agree more. And we couldn't be more appreciative of the positive reactions we've gotten from everyone who has purchased this superb CD-ROM — after all, a lot of time and effort and yes, our "one thing" has gone into putting this set together. Call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer today to get your copy of what truly are the finest real drums ever captured on a CD-ROM. You can also find out more about our Total Stereo Session Drums at: " http://www.sweetwater.com/catalogs/k2/cd-rom/ ". If you're on a tight budget you can also purchase two of the drum kits separately via our Online SoundWare Store at: "http://www.sweetwater.com/soundware.tpl ". Here you can download just the Stereo 70's Drum Kit for only $99 and or our delicious Jazz Brush Kit for only $75. Now there's no excuse for giving your music the best stereo drums ever recorded.

Daniel Fisher is the Director of Soundware Engineering