In EarthBeat, expertly performed by Greg Morrow on drums and Eric Darken on percussion, DD gives us 16 different grooves, all of which share a common genesis: They have a hybrid worldbeat vibe. They’re not “authentic” in the way that you’d expect a collection of ethnic percussion to be. Instead, they provide the kind of blending of ethnic and Western grooves that the majority of musicians go for when they graft genres using live musicians, as opposed to samples.
The evocatively named “Carlos” groove, one of the 16 mentioned, takes a straight-eighth rock beat and lays Latin percussion on top of it, somewhat reminiscent of Santana’s early hits (“Black Magic Woman”) and Steely Dan’s “Do it Again.” The thing about DD’s approach is that they give you much more than a basic beat. They give you versions labeled “Verse,” “Chorus,” “Bridge,” and a couple other variations involving a heavier snare, a busier ride cymbal, cross-sticking, or some other very musical twist. Drum solos, too. Each of these variations in turn has additional variations; in the case of “Carlos,” you have 24 variations, many of which could easily form the rhythm bed of very different songs. In addition, you get intro, solo, and fill variations, too. In short, a whole buncha stuff.
Each of these variations comes broken out as mentioned earlier. The sonic quality is excellent, and the sample editing is uniformly flawless. I reviewed the version that consists of WAV files with Live sessions, so I could easily switch between them while keeping the loops going. I heard no glitches, nor any beats even slightly out of alignment. Speeding the loops up in Live produced excellent results, but I found slowing them down more than 10 bpm produced artifacts. No biggie; having the Live sets made using these loops as convenient as having them in a software plug-in. Just ReWire these session files with your host sequencer. The Pro Tools version comes with the loops inserted on individual tracks, all panned and ready to rock. You also get individual drum samples, 16-bit versions of all the loops, and an audio CD to make it easy to audition the loops.
I particularly like the laid-back feel of some of the slower grooves (“Oasis”) and the 6/8 African-flavored tracks (“Into It”). But I found all of them to be inspiring, easy to use, and produced with top-notch care. And at $229 list, it’s a great value.