Northern Artillery Drums (Our sampler with producer of Stratovarius!)

TL;DR = You will want our sampler.

"Why?"

Let me start from the beginning. My name is Toni Kauko, I'm a co-founder of Ugritone. We here in Ugritone create audio plugins, virtual instruments(mainly drum sample libraries) and midipacks. We are two finnish guys, me and Ron D. Rock, but Ron moved to Canada. We've been running this business for almost 3 years now.

You might know other businesses like ours, selling plugins.

What spreads us apart from them? How are we different? Are we better? Why should you be interested on our products?

I'll be honest with you (you will know once you read this that I am).

We are different in that we are just couple of guys creating plugins with a big heart. We'll focus on the core, our products, and you, our (I so much hope for hehe!) customer. We don't have huge marketing or development department nor a customer complaints department. Well we wouldn't even if we were big. We rarely get any complaints hahah! But it's actually true, and I'm also a bit surprised by it. Altho I guess I should say I'm not surprised because we're the best! We are not THE BEST. But I think we have succeeded in telling people what our products are alike, so their expectations are met and I think sometimes even exceeded.

"Ok then, if you are honest and hardworking and all, how does that make your product worthwhile for me?"

Ok bear with me. :) First I wanted you to know something about us, before our product.

While there's two of us creating these plugins, we do have our limits. Obviously, we cannot be sharply on top of the industry with new innovations. We are not. We're actually here to think differently and do our own thing, which will be beneficial for all. New innovations are super awesome, and I myself as a tech geek will enjoy them all! I love new helpful tools which will save hundreds of thousands of hours to be used for something better.

But as the tech improves, sometimes, some things get lost. Some old, very cool things, which would still be useful and wanted for many! Music producing is not a rocket science. MIDI Standard was invented in 1983 by Dave Smith, founder of Sequential Circuits. It has been updated one or two times, but nothing really groundbreaking has been added. The good old standard STILL serves today. And why not? It has plenty of control over how software or hardware should produce sounds. That's why it hasn't been changed. There's no need to re-invent the wheel. Same goes for many other things, like sampler technology. Altho RAM-hungry, sampled virtual instruments easily surpass the synthesized ones in realism. And if you're into creating realistic drum sample library, there's little idea in trying anything else than sampling a real drumkit.

You will get the most realistic result.

That's what we do. No magic tricks, or latest innovations. True drum samples ran through a software. We've heard numerous times that our drum samplers sound as if the user had jumped into the practice room with the drummer for real. Once I first plugged my freshly developed RIOT Drums onto my e-kit and started playing, it was IMMERSIVE! Suddenly I felt like playing a real drumkit. It really was pretty close! Of course the pads does not feel real but the sound was very realistic.

Well. Realism does not always mean the best sounding drums. That's why we usually have focused on the grittier sounding music genres like Black Metal (Our KVLT Drums!) or Hardcore/punk (RIOT Drums and Anarchy Drums). If you're into those styles, you should spend no further here but JUMP HERE to check them out! Anarchy Drums is even free by joining our newsletter! There's no real subtitute for these kits! But read on. There'll be better!

A collaboration with Matias Kupiainen (Stratovarius)

So as you might've noticed, I talked how we focused on gritty sounding stuff. It has lots of uses, but there's a clear flaw in there. Not everyone like gritty punk. Of course we knew that! We thought we don't need to serve everyone, and even if it's partially true, there is NO denying that lots of people do rather want Hi-Fi sounding instruments!

We worked hard for a solution. And the results, are now here!

We knew we lacked a proper recording hardware. Costly huge mixing consoles and the best mics. We lacked the huge studio spaces and perfectly tuned recording and monitoring rooms. We also are not professional experienced sound recording engineers, even if we're enthusiasts in that field.

But then we got a message from Matias Kupiainen. He wanted us to create a drum sample library with him!!! We were, and still are SO EXCITED! Stratovarius has always been one of the biggest bands for me affecting my whole musical growth, and now one of their guys wants to do a project with us!? That felt unreal!

You can hear Matias's work on lot of places but of course, latest Stratovarius Albums are of his engineering proficiency! He's a superb guitarist, composer and engineer creating that modern finnish heavy metal tone right now, in the highest level!

Of course we started working with Matias to create the best finnish heavy metal drum sample library available!! There wasn't a question about it! It surpassed the mere labour need to get the income. It was all about unrealized dreams coming true!

And on top of that, we got Rolf Pilve, drummer of Stratovarius, to perform the actual drumming. He's a beast when it comes to technical metal!

It took around 1,5 years of work to fine-tune all the settings, user interface, features, refining ideas and experimenting and developing... And finally I can say with a proud voice...

The drum samples are pristine! They are so different from all the other drum sample libraries that we're playing on a different field than almost everybody else! They fit many styles, but the engineering decisions are geared towards punchy and fast heavy metal, with even the fastest blast beats are delivered through impeccaple clarity and accuracy!

And I'm being humble here. I'm not the one who created these incredible samples, which are the heart of this! I'm just a simple guy who got to work with the best in the field and deliver the final package to you! I'm sincerely so excited about this. I've used the sampler myself and I think it's the best sampler I've made, but that I've ever used for the purpose!

The samples include loads of different drums, but the oneshots are something that will break the bank! With all these features, you will get those legendary tones from the past that still are recent. If you're into bands like Children of Bodom, Stratovarius, Amorphis, Sonata Arctica, Nightwish, Diablo... And dozens of other... This will be IT for you!

If you're into producing any kind of heavy metal, you will want to check these out! There's all the technical riffraff on the product page, I'm not going em through here, but just saying there's many useful features, that are made for good user experience, ease of use, and of course, excellent sound quality. And our plugins work for almost any audio editor software!

We even have 180-days refund policy if something goes wrong, no questions asked. No risk for you! You don't need a user account to buy from us (but you can creat one if you want). We accept Paypal and Stripe. You'll get the product instantly upon purchase via download link on a receipt e-mail and the purchase page.

That's about it. There's not much else than may I ask you.. Please, check them out here! :)