Drumbeats for sale

Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer

OddGrooves, A Swedish music production company, has released a MIDI drum loop pack inspired by reggae drumming from the 1970s.

OddGrooves Reggae Drumming is the name of the product which has been available in Europe and the United States since August. The company, OddGrooves, is based in Stockholm.

Per Ulfhielm, CEO/producer at OddGrooves, said administrators went for a different feel after years of releasing progressive rock loops.

"Many of our customers have requested that we produce a set of high-quality reggae drum loops. There are plenty of audio loops in that genre out there but we saw the need for a high quality MIDI loops reggae pack that you can use with your own drum sampler and select the sound sources that work best in your music," Ulfhielm said in a statement.

The 'Reggae Drumming' kit has the following features:

247 reggae drum loops, predominantly roots-reggae, but also reggae pop, such as The Police;

recorded using 10 tempos;

all drum loops are played live by a professional session drummer;

all grooves are in song format to make things easier for composers and producers.

The OddGrooves statement did not give titles of the songs whose loops are available.

The Jamaican musician came to prominence during the 1970s when roots-reggae caught the attention of high-profile stars like the Rolling Stones, Roberta Flack and Paul Simon who all recorded albums and songs here.

Drummers, led by Carlton Barrett of The Wailers, and Sly Dunbar of The Revolutionaries, defined the militant reggae sound.

Dunbar held the drum seat with The Revolutionaries at the famed Channel One studio and toured with Peter Tosh's Word, Sound and Power band. He credits drummers for helping to break reggae in the 1970s.

"You could know the sound of a studio from the drum sound. You could tell Studio One different from Channel One because drummers played from the soul," he said.

Michael 'Mikey Boo' Richards of the Now Generation band, Carlton 'Santa' Davis of the Soul Syndicate and Leroy 'Horsemouth' Wallace were some of the drummers who defined the reggae sound of the 1970s.

American drummer Stewart Copeland of British band, The Police, incorporated many of the patterns from 1970s reggae into their songs. That sound can be heard on some of the trio's big hits including Roxanne and Don't Stand So Close to Me.

Looping (extracting riffs, patterns or vocals from other songs) has been popular with musicians and producers since the 1990s when sampling took off.