Groove Criminals - Arabian Nights Volume 2 [24Bit WAV]_Sin

All the percussion loops were a mixture of live recordings and programmed samples.
We have a huge collection of hand percussion here in the Groove Criminals headquarters,
so the majority of the single hits used either came from our collection of previously
recorded samples or were quickly recorded in the simplest way – normally quite
simple with a carefully placed condenser mic.

The udu and dumbek – traditional percussive instruments to fit the theme – were recorded
live using a small-diaphragm condenser that needed a bit of placement juggling to get a
nice balance of tone and depth, as well as that higher frequency slap and tickle.

To help with the percussion duties elsewhere, we also grabbed our trusty Korg Wavedrum,
which is notorious for being a bit of a pig to program, so we generally kept to the
preset sounds (both the natural and more exotic ones). We then got creative and used a
combination of hands, mallets and sticks to play it.

The Wavedrum was also externally processed using hardware (including a spring reverb
and various Eurorack modules) and software plugins. We had a bit of a ‘road to
Damascus moment’ when we discovered that the Wavedrum’s a much more a traditional
instrument than may first appear. This is both a great and not so great thing, depending
on your hand-drumming skills!

All the metallics and gong samples were created using a mixture of synthesised and
sampled sources. We used a lot of down-pitching of real cymbals (crashes and rides) to
get some of the gong textures going, as we unfortunately lack a four-foot orchestral gong
here in the Groove Criminals studio!

Loops were created using a mixture of samples, software instruments and hardware.
The flute, vox, bowls, thumb piano and tribal drum bass were all taken from one
or more of the above sources and then heavily processed.