It was early on in his drumming career that Andy Gangadeen embraced new technology, fusing acoustic and electronic drums, percussion and programmed sounds.
A truly innovative and contemporary player, his wide ranging credits include Jeff Beck, Lisa Stansfield, Duran Duran and Massive attack. As he continues to develop his technique and style, Andy had also created the 'Gangascope', a gyroscopic futuristic drum frame to house his kit and centre his live presence for the popular electronic music pioneers Chase and Status.
In 2011 Andy established his own company 101 Artists to facilitate the increasing demand for his services as a musical director and to help break new acts including ‘Rudimental,’ ‘Clean Bandit’ and 'Years and Years'.
To say The Grange is an embarrassment of riches is an understatement. Each drummer has kindly gifted us a deeply multi sampled kit with every note played by each legend. They have also provided us with an epic anthology of literally thousands of loops. From simple straight up grooves to 'signature' beats that only these guys could provide. It is Spitfire Audio's mission to provide music makers with tools that offer an enhancement to our working lives. So this award winning group of composers, producers, engineers and technicians didn't set out to re-invent the wheel. But simply to make it work better.
The goal was singular. Make it spring out the box, make it sound like a Grammy winning, Brit garnering, Ivor Novello awarded recording. Make it work without fiddling, and make it load up and play without having to turn the f***ing hi hats down. Nick Taylor our engineer who tracked these historic recordings from conception to completion has done us so proud. The finest rarified selection of mics were enlisted to trustfully capture the magic. He used a bespoke selection of Neve and API pre-amps and, in what is a drum-sampling one-off, used the finest 2" Studer tape machine in the UK today. This matters. If you're using a drum library that isn't recorded to tape, it won't sound as good. It is rare for us to state such a fact so arrogantly. But after A-B-ing the two signals we have to agree with Roger Taylor; "It just sounds better". There is a huge number of mix options on The Grange from Nick Taylor's fabulous 3 mixes (Tight, Mid, Epic) which just spring out of the box.
Our brief to him was "we want a natural sound, don't give us something that sounds mastered, we want you to imagine that point in tracking an album where having got a great drum take down and you're so happy with the sound you're kind of dreading having to add guitars and vocals, give us something that you can't wait to slam a compressor onto, something that people can work with".
And he did us proud, not a single plug in was armed in providing these mixes, he instead enlisted the fine and pristinely maintained Cadac desk and awesome selection of vintage and modern outboard of Air-Edel studios, London. Alongside his mixes are numerous different tweakable perspectives to give you the chance to "easy tweak" all the way to creating complex multi tracks of your own. Mixes and perspectives that are largely reflected in the loop library. So grab one of Andy's awesome hi hat grooves, then load his kit to work up the beat that you want.
Kickstart engine
This interface is built especially for our percussive libraries to make it easy to map sounds to any connected MIDI interface. It also includes the microphone mixer and available feature controllers.
Loop browser
Click on the little loop lamps (the little dots) to load up an array of groove wonder spread across your keyboard. In the "general" tab you can then hit "sync to tempo" and the groove will match that of your sequence.
What's Included
Instruments
- Easy Tweaks- Mixed stems that allow you instantly tweak the sound.
- Kit Mics - These are your close mics, use these to create your finely tweaked multi tracks.
- Mixes - These are your sublime, spring-out-of-the-box mixes prepared for you by Nick Taylor.
- Stereos - These are different ambient signals that you should use in conjunction with your kit mics to create your next award winning recording.
Perspectives, mixes & mics
Mixes
- T - Tight
- M - Mid
- E - Epic
- St - Super Tight (Andy's kit only)
Kit mics
- K - Kick
- Sn - Snare
- HH - Hi Hat
- To - Toms
Stereo perspectives
Use these in conjunction with your kit mics
- T - Tight ambient mics
- G - Ground floor ambient mics
- E - 1st Floor ambient mics
- E - 2nd Floor ambient mics
