Tokyo Scoring Drums
The premier collection of acoustic drum kits (and kit ensemble), recorded and mixed by Japan’s top recording engineer Mitsunori Aizawa at the legendary Sound City Studio. Performed by drum master Ken Higeshiro, these unique and versatile drum sounds can be heard across countless anime openings, battle themes, jazz fusion tracks, and everything in between. With Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits, you can finally add this unmistakable percussive energy to your own music — and it’s punchy and flexible enough to become your drum library of choice in other contexts as well!
Note: This product requires Kontakt Player to operate. Please contact your Sweetwater Sales Engineer with any questions.
Related Videos: Tokyo Scoring Drums Virtual Instrument
Add some punch to your orchestral compositions
Japanese soundtracks are known for blending elements of rock music with orchestral tracks, often through incorporating a drum kit alongside more traditional orchestration. This is an essential feature of the Tokyo Scoring sound we seek to bring to composers around the world, and it’s a particular area of expertise for our mixing engineer partner Mitsunori Aizawa. That’s why we selected acoustic drum kits for the second entry in the Tokyo Scoring Series!
Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits was recorded in the same space and by the same engineer as Tokyo Scoring Strings, ensuring that it can be easily mixed with that library. Besides plenty of detailed close micing and overheads, the library includes three ambient positions, delivering superb flexibility to dial in as much (or as little) of SOUND CITY’s unique room sound as you’d like.
With five unique kits, a drum kit ensemble, and so much mix flexibility, Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits delivers not only ideal sounds for Japanese-style soundtrack scoring, but also rock, metal, pop, funk, and epic music.
Our Japanese partners
We are once again honored to partner with an incredible team of musicians and collaborators in Japan:
- Ken Higeshiro, one of Japan’s top session drummers, whose work can be heard on over 200 projects and who is a frequent collaborator of composers such as Hiroyuki Sawano, Yuki Hayashi, and our Tokyo Scoring series partner Masaru Yokoyama.
- Mitsunori Aizawa, Japan’s top engineer, responsible for mixing and recording hundreds of world-famous scores. He is a specialist in recording & mixing drums.
- Sound City, an incredible recording space with over 60 years of history. This choice of studio allows for blending with other Tokyo Scoring Series libraries, and a wide range of close to spacious mix options.
- Renowned anime & film composer Masaru Yokoyama, who brought his experience recording scores around the world through his companies Plugnote and MiracleBus.
- Crypton Future Media and SonicWire, our Japanese distributors who have helped with the Tokyo Scoring Series from the very beginning.
Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits proudly features a drum kit custom-made by riddim.
Impact Soundworks Tokyo Scoring Drums Features:
- 5 acoustic drum kits and 1 ensemble
- Custom kits assembled and performed by top session drummer Ken Higeshiro, recorded by legendary engineer Mitsunori Aizawa
- 3 unique sample sets
- Separate patches featuring: Aizawa Signature mix (12 adjustable mic channels with bleeds), Full mix (16 adjustable channels with bleeds), and Board mix (12 channels, no bleeds)
- Powerful drum kit ensemble
- 3 drum kits played simultaneously, including kick, snare, 3 toms (hand, stick, and rimshot), hi-hat, 2 crashes, and ride
- Extensive articulations and techniques: up to 5 snare articulations (center rim, center, flam, rimshot, roll), 7 hi-hat articulations (pedal, closed, closed tip, half open, semi-open, open, open tip), and 4 ride articulations (tip soft, tip hard, cup, smash)
- Exhaustive sampling depth: up to 10x dynamic levels and 10x round robins per drum
- Over 170,000 samples included
- Dozens of snapshots — each of the 10 included patches has at least 3 snapshots with carefully-adjusted mixes and FX for many styles.
