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!
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.
Features
- Beautiful and Elegant UI
Easily swap kit pieces, volume, tuning, and submixes from the main page, with more advanced features a click away.
- Powerful Console Mixer and FX Rack
Mix every mic channel individually with separate outputs available. Up to 8 effects per channel, plus master & sends, with over 30 FX modules available (analog EQs, compressors, tape and more.)
- Submixer and Bleeds
Control how much of each kit piece type (kick, snare, toms, cymbals) goes into every mic channel, including bleed mics (such as kick into snare mic, snare into tom mics, etc.)
- Completely Customizable Mapping
Assign drums and articulations to any MIDI note, with per-key volume & tuning adjustments. Common drum mapping presets available.
- Three Playback Modes
Lookahead offers best quality with super-realistic preroll and drum attacks. Standard is a balance between preroll and snappiness. Zero Latency reacts instantly.
- Extra Tweaking Options for Power Users
Adjust round robin type, velocity curve, vel -> volume amount, sample offsets, and AHD envelopes.
Impact Soundworks Japanese Partners
Impact Soundworks partnered 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.
Three Distinct Mixes
Whether you want an instant, production-ready out-of-the-box sound, OR maximum mixing flexibility, Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits includes every possible option you could want.
In the Full Mix, each kit piece includes up to 3 spot mics (e.g. snare top 1, top 2, bottom), along with overheads and three ambient positions. But you ALSO have access to bleeds for every other mic. So, if you want your snare to include some natural resonance off the tom mics, you have full control! Sixteen (16) mics are available for mixing and bleeds.
The Aizawa Mix is a completely different sample set with the same performances, processed offline and mixed by Aizawa himself through his ‘secret sauce’ hardware. Twelve (12) mics are available for further mixing and bleed control.
Finally, the Board Mix patch gives you the most polished and immediate sound possible, with low RAM and CPU usage, letting you focus on writing rather than mixing. Each channel can still be mixed independently: only sub-mixes and bleed control is not available.
Drum Content
Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits includes five exhaustively-sampled drum kits, each with a unique sound ideal for different styles of music like rock, pop, metal, etc. Each piece is recorded in extensive detail with up to 10x dynamics and 10x round robins, and naturally, you can mix and match components of these kits to create your ideal tone.
The drum ensemble (a sixth kit) features three kits played simultaneously and instantly delivers an epic sound.
Individual Drum Kit Pieces:
- 8 crashes
- 4 hi-hats (max articulations: closed, closed tip, half open, open, pedal, semi-open)
- 5 kicks
- 3 ride cymbals (max articulations: cup, smash, tip)
- 5 snares (max articulations: center, center rim, flam, rimshot, roll)
- 16 toms
- 1 china
Drum Kit Ensemble:
- Crash left & right (hit)
- Hi-hat (closed, half open, open, pedal)
- Ride cymbal (tip)
- Snare (center, flam, rimshot, roll)
- Toms (stick, hand hits, rimshots)
Console: Modular FX Rack and Mixer
Console is a fully-featured mixer, modular effects rack, and pedal board, designed to give you full control over your mix. Effects include multiple EQs (digital and analog-style), compressors, spatial FX, modulation FX, amps, distortion pedals, reverbs, and more.
Each mic channel can be loaded with up to 8 FX in any order, plus another 8 slots on the master channel, with support for send routing as well. The new “Galois Reverb” added in Kontakt 6 Player sounds fantastic as an alternative to our included custom IRs.
WATCH WALKTHROUGH
Content:
- Five Acoustic Drum Kits and One Ensemble
Custom kits assembled and performed by top session drummer Ken Higeshiro, recorded by legendary engineer Mitsunori Aizawa.
- Three 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
Three drum kits played simultaneously: includes kick, snare, three toms (hand, stick, and rimshot), hihat, two crashes, and ride.
- Extensive Articulations and Techniques
Up to: five snare articulations (center rim, center, flam, rimshot, roll), seven hihat articulations (pedal, closed, closed tip, half open, semi-open, open, open tip), and four 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.
Listen To All The Demos
Sarah Mancuso Atrium
Andrew Aversa Sound City DNB
Andrew Aversa Find Your Way
Andrew Aversa Epic Ensembles
Sarah Mancuso Ziggurat
mikeHEARTu what if I never see the sun again
Andrew Aversa Acoustic Pop
Michael Lee Joyful Outskirt
Andreas Wimmer Marching Against the Storm
Tremendouz Chilled Jam
Christian Yoder Toast Jam
Matias Dapena Flaming Flam
Andrew Aversa Epic Ensembles (Drums Only)
Andrew Aversa Find Your Way (Drums Only)
Andrew Aversa Sound City DNB (Drums Only)
Andrew Aversa Acoustic Pop (Drums Only)
Andreas Wimmer Marching Against the Storm (Drums Only)
Christian Yoder Toast Jam (Drums Only)
Matias Dapena Flaming Flam __
Michael Lee Joyful Outskirt (Drums Only)
Tonio Karou (Drums Only)
Tremendouz Chilled Jam (Drums Only)
