Native Instruments Session Percussionist: the Synth and Software Review

Attention, desktop congueros – your library and sequencer has arrived

Back in the mid-’80s we had the Yamaha RX21L “digital rhythm programmer” (my first percussion kit). By today’s standards, it had a modest number of sounds, limited timing resolution unless you used an external MIDI sequencer, and it needed playing from an external MIDI keyboard for more than two velocity levels.

Of course, the technology has advanced, but it hasn’t always been this easy to meld different sound sources into a unified ensemble. It also took a while before we got slaps, taps, ghosts, and other subtle articulations in sample libraries.

It’s in that context that one has to marvel at the likes Native Instruments’ Session Percussionist (SP). We now have drums and percussion of practically every stripe, and lots of different ways to play them. SP is a recent entry, with several ways to create convincing percussive grooves.

Like a drum machine

SP is a collection of sounds with a built-in sequencer. In that respect it’s just like any other drum machine. There is no user sampling, but Native Instruments has done a reasonable job of providing percussion instruments and their respective articulations. 

SP’s main screen is uncluttered and elegant, with an impressionistic set of images representing a group of percussion instruments. Simple as it appears, there’s a lot behind these images to keep you occupied.

A general gripe: there’s a growing trend among developers to provide all their documentation on the Internet, rather than just having it online as, say, a PDF file. The information and search engine are thorough, but I’d prefer not to go online and open a browser every time I have a question.

SP loads its 6.31 GB of samples into Kontakt as an NKI patch – the whole shebang rather than one patch at a time. An SP patch (“Snapshot”) comprises a performance with as many as five “Players,” each with its own instrument, patterns, and variations.

In the Instrument Browser, you choose the instrument for each player, and select additional playing conditions. A djembe Player might offer hand, stick or brush techniques, and a choice of high- or low-tuned instruments.

Under the Instrument column, you have a choice of a number of tonal varieties and ambiences for the Player’s instrument. The choices vary for each instrument, as do the types of articulations. For instance, a Cajon has knuckle, heel, and toe strikes, open and muted slaps, and muted or open palm hits, while woodblock only has open tip, and open edge.

In the Articulation page Pattern Editor, each instrument’s articulations are arrayed vertically with their own sequencer lane running from left to right. Only one articulation per instrument can play at a given time, which helps avoid the infamous “8-handed drummer syndrome.” Naturally, you can also play the sounds manually for as much percussive mayhem as you wish.

You arrange the dynamics of each articulation on the Velocity page, in which each hit has a bar graph. Click on a bar and drag up or down to increase/decrease its velocity level.

You can perform a batch of convenient velocity tricks. The Shift tool adds or decreases velocities by a fixed amount. I really like using the shift key in conjunction with the Shift tool, as it scales the velocities rather than simply increasing them, so for example already-accented hits stand out more.

The Tilt tool is great for crescendos and decrescendos. It does its best to maintain some differences in velocities between hits, avoiding a mechanistic-sounding increase. There’s also great real-time way to accomplish this, which we’ll get to in a few paragraphs.

In due time

If you’re obsessive enough, the Editor section’s Timing page lets you edit the placement of each note. Clicking and dragging upward on an event in the grid will cause it to lag; downward tugs tighten, and eventually rush events (below).

As with the Velocity page, the tools to the right of the grid alter the timing of the pattern as a whole. Shift will cause the pattern to push or lag; Loosen/Tighten emphasizes or attenuates distance between events; Velocity-based Shift alters timing based on note velocity. Notes with high or low velocities will be more affected than notes with middle velocities.

Moving the slider upward brings high-velocity notes forward and delays low-velocity notes, whereas moving the slider downward has the opposite effect. In short, this enables real-time, humanizing control of the feel.

Ways to play

And now we get to that real-time crescendo and decrescendo control. While a pattern plays, move the pitchbend wheel back: the velocities decrease, and the pattern is softer; gradually moving the wheel upward will make the pattern louder. Subtle variations will add life and dynamic realism (Listen to Clip 1).

In fact, SP provides plenty of ways to add life and variety to your rhythms. At first glance the keyboard layout suggests playing one of the five composite grooves located at the bottom of the keyboard; these require only a single keystroke to trigger.

Don’t shy away from investigating the rest of the keyboard map, as higher ranges address the individual players composite grooves, enabling recombinant variations. You can also add your own hits, flams, and rolls to each player.

For interesting results, try substituting a different instrument – for example, on some patterns, replacing a cajon with Djembes. There is no initial snapshot, so you will have to deconstruct one of the extant patterns and save them as user snapshots.  You can also play and record your own patterns for each player (instrument) and build your own snapshots.

It’s easy to remap your existing patterns by dragging them and dropping to a new location on the keyboard to organize what you need in a more convenient arrangement. It’s unfortunate that drag-and-drop doesn’t extend to the MIDI tracks in your DAW.

Groofy?

There’s an awful lot to like about Native Instruments’ Session Percussion. First and foremost, the sounds are rich and expressive, and the sampling expertise is evident. Still, an expansion with more instruments would be nice. Berimbau, table, darbuka, and agogo are a few that I would like to see in the collection.

The segmentation of the Editor interface into Articulation, Velocity, Timing, and Flams provides a deep dive into fashioning the grooves. At the same time, the richness of detail can be distracting and daunting. It would be better to condense this into fewer pages so that (for instance) Articulation and Velocity could be viewed side by side.

The grooves are natural-feeling and agile. If you need to, you can quickly dial in the amount of swing and humanizing you need. On the debit side, beyond a couple of ternary grooves, there are no odd meters. Changing meters by adding or subtracting pattern cells is a bit abstract, and may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It would be easier to select a time signature and work from there. The patterns provided seem to weigh in toward pop, and more “folkloric” grooves are scarce. Authentic Son, Guaguanco, and other styles would be welcome. 

For all that, Native Instruments Session Percussionist is a rich and powerful tool for creating compelling percussion grooves. It’s hard to think of a more comprehensive tool for doing that.