Sultan Drums

Middle Eastern Percussion

From the Rhythms of the Nile to the Bosporus

Sonokinetic 2012

Sultan Drums
Without a doubt, touching one of these instruments is magical. There is energy in
these drums that will instantly make you move. The individual & ensemble sounds
instantly teleport you to a Nomadic desert setting, or to the heart of cities on the banks
of the Nile or Bosporus.
This is a collection we have been craving for and it completes a palette of Ethnic
sounds to seamlessly integrate with our other instruments. Extending the Sonokinetic
Ethnic sampling portfolio with a brand new instrument of Middle Eastern Percussion
Ensembles.
This collection spans a wide variety of Middle Eastern drums and percussion
instruments. With a focus on a balanced collection we decided to offer as many
performance elements as we could with multi-articulated, round robin, multi-dynamic
layered sampled instruments. Each instrument that can be found in 1 of the 10 styles
are extensively multi-sampled to provide you with a complete composing tool.
Theres much to explore in this collection. Get yourself some inspiration from the
top-notch performed percussion ensemble or build your own pallet of playable drums
and percussion.
Sultan Drums ships with a user friendly and dedicated interface. Its designed to work
intuitively and give you quick access to this large collection of samples. As a
composer you know what you need and we strive to bring it to you fast. With the
philosophy of investing our resources in unique and authentic musical culture, we
believe that we managed to create another one-of-a-kind with Sultan Drums
All performances are recorded on location in the Middle East with highly schooled,
dedicated and talented percussionists. Beating any MIDI performance, a musician will
always bring an extra feel to the music that just isnt possible to recreate with a
computer. Therefore Sonokinetic continue to believe in loops of dedicated
performance sampling combined with multi-articulated instrument sampling.
We are very proud to have been working with some of the kindest and professional
people in the business on this project. And we would like to dedicate this release to
them.
Sticking to our awarded multi-sampling / performance capturing concepts and
teaming up with the worlds greatest musicians, recording artist, programmers,
designers and scripters we are proud to present to you:
Sultan Drums
We wish you the best inspiration and creativity.
Stick around theres much more to come.
With warm regards,
The Sonokinetic Sultan Drums Production Team

CONTENT
1.3+ GB sample pool, 1100+ samples
Instruments: Asma Davul, Bass Darbuka, Bendir, Darbuka, Def, Erbane, Hollo,
Kabuk, Kup, Parmak Zili, Shaker, Cymbals, Seadrums, rainmaker, rattle, goat bells,
chimes, TamTam
Performance styles: Arap, Azari, Ciftetelli, Deve,Halay, Misket, Roman, Sufi, Turker,
Wahde
Main Sultan Drums .nki with custom-built interface for layering and combining
bespoke combinations of instruments within loops.
Bonus Sultan Drums Instruments .nki containing individual playable percussion
samples with multi-sampled, round-robin hits.
FX: 100+ unique and cinematic percussion sound effects
Temposynced & ITM based grouping and mapping for all melodic performance
elements. Available for Kontakt 4 Time Machine 2 and Kontakt 5 with Time
Machine Pro
Automatic end hit function
with multi-sampled, round-robin hits.
Fully controllable pitch, volume and pan for each instrument element within the
interfaces
3 band EQ adjustment
Custom Impulse Response reverb setting with adjustable size and wetness
Sonokinetic Sultan Drums designed interface and artwork
Programmed by Son Thomsen
Open Kontakt format for complete user customization
End Users License Agreement (EULA)
Sultan Drums Reference document (PDF)
Artwork: Sultan Drums DVD cover. Designed by Pavel Fuksa
Files: Performance samples 44.1kHz, 16 BIT, Multi Samples 44.1 kHz, 24 Bit AIFF format
Programmed for Kontakt 4.2.4 and Kontakt 5
Created, performed and produced by Sonokinetic

THE MAIN INTERFACE

The main UI for Sultan Drums consists of a virtual keyboard at the top with 10
assignable sets of percussion loops. The individual instruments are pictured below
that with their controls for pan, tune and volume.
Each set of loops (WAHDE, CIFTETELLI etc) can be assigned its own octave of the
keyboard. To do this first click an octave of the keyboard at the top of the interface

then click a set of loops on the scroll below to assign from the 10 available

To reassign simply click a different set. To deactivate the loop / octave click again the
set that is assigned. To demonstrate; in the example above you would click
CIFTETELLI which would deactivate the selection completely.

The 4 instruments which are available for playback in the activated loop are pictured
with their control sliders and dials (only ARAP loops have 5 instruments):

Each instrument can be retuned or panned

individually using the TUNE and PAN
dials. The VOL slider will adjust the
volume of the instrument.

An instrument can be muted by

clicking its graphic.
Alternatively keyswitches C1 G1
can mute / unmute instruments.

NB:
The active mapped style is
underlined in YELLOW in the GUI
keyboard mapper:

Keyswitches
Sultan Drums provides several colored key switches for easy recognition and control:
BLUE and GREEN keys trigger the sample loops. BLUE keys depict the playable
range for the current set of loops and GREEN keys display the entire playable
keyboard range of loops.

The 5 lower keyswitches indicate if an instrument is muted or not and can be pressed
to mute / unmute individual instruments. Keys C-G correspond to instruments 1-5.
RED indicates the instrument will play and YELLOW will mute.

Sliding panels
By default, the EQ and Reverb controls on the interface are
hidden behind two sliding panels to provide more space in the
main interface. Click on the decorative rim of the panels to open
/ close them.

EQ
Click on the left-hand panel to access the EQ section:
Use the three dials to adjust LOW, MID & HIGH dials to taste.
Default frequencies are 250Hz, 1.4kHz & 7.5kHz. These can be
easily adjusted by opening the Kontakt instrument editor and
changing the frequencies in the Insert Effects panel (pictured
below).

Impulse Response (IR)

Click on the right-hand panel to access to REVERB section:
Sultan Drums comes with a bespoke reverb to simulate a
realistic playing environment. Turn this on/off with the IR
button. Adjust the start point of the reverb tail with the size
dial and the wetness of the reverb with the amount dial. You
can further customize or replace the IR within the Kontakt
instrument editor Insert Effects panel (pictured below).

End Hits
Sultan Drums has an option to end a loop
with a single percussion hit sample when
the key is lifted. These samples vary on the
performance that is playing. The hits will
always play in time and are quantized to
16th notes. Use the END HIT button to turn
this function on / off.

Intelligent Time Machine (ITM)

All the loops within Sultan Drums will sync within
Kontakt to your host DAW tempo, however fast or slow.
The ITM function syncs loops to half-time or double-time when extreme tempo
values are used. It is turned ON by default but you may prefer to have this function
turned OFF so that the samples do not suddenly switch to half/double-time when
manipulating large tempo changes.
Jump in Phrase
You can jump between loops on-the-fly without restarting
each phrase by using the JUMP PHRASE button. Click the
button ON to activate this. Most loops within Sultan Drums
are 8 bars long. So for example: Trigger cue A which will start at bar 1. Release cue
A after 2 bars and trigger cue B and you will hear that sample playback begins not at
bar 1, but instead at bar 3, continuing the natural flow of the loop.
FX samples
Thanks to the generosity of our
performers we came away with more
percussion samples than we needed.
Instead of deleting these samples we have
included them as bonus content. These
samples consist of a variety of
instrumentation and are useful for special
effects and augmenting your percussion
sections.
120 exclusive samples can be found in
the directory:
1.Base / Samples / FX /

INSTRUMENTS PATCH MAIN INTERFACE

In addition to the hundreds of authentic loop recordings available within the main
instrument, Sultan Drums is supplied with a secondary .nki instrument allowing you
to play multi-sampled single hits.
The instrument features identical volume, tuning, pan, EQ and IR options as the main
Sultan Drums instrument and they are accessed in the same way.
5 instrument slots are available to load a combination of 10 possible instruments.
Click within a slot to choose it. Then click a percussion instrument graphic to assign
that to the slot.
Keyboard layout
The 5 instrument slots are grouped across the keyboard in octaves as shown below.
Each octave contains the same samples mapped twice to trigger keys, firstly
beginning at C and secondly beginning at F#. The trigger key arrangement is repeated
for each instrument on different octaves. This enables fast playing with two fingers on
different notes. BLUE keys are trigger keys and RED keys indicate the currently
selected instrument.

1st set: keys C - E

2nd set: keys F# - A#

Credits:
Turker Colak:
We like to give praise to this incredible
Musician who made Sultan Drums
A dream come true
For more insight on Turker please check:
https://twitter.com/#!/turkercolak
http://www.facebook.com/turkercolak86

and a very special thanks to Ceyda Pirali

For more information check our website:

www.sonokinetic.net
Join us on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/sonokinetic.sampling
Follow us on twitter:
http://twitter.com/sonotweet

All the creative best,

Sonokinetic