Reply To: 🍊🔥 Orange Tree Samples Group Buy 60% Off, ENDS TODAY, July 12, 2025.

[gregjazz]

I haven’t looked too deeply into what’s out there right now for jazz brushes, so maybe there have already been some innovations I’m unaware of.

On the snare, there’s just so many ways you can articulate the hits and sweeps–it’s so expressive. Speed, pressure, and where on the drum you play makes such a huge difference.

Often it seems like libraries just give you some taps, hits, and press stroke type accents, and then a menu of random sweeps. I often find myself layering together multiple taps and sweeps to try to approximate the sound I’m after.

Hope it’s okay to mention another developer’s product, but a plugin that takes a novel approach to brushed drums/percussion is Klevgrand’s Borsta. The way you can have dynamic curves separate from the initial attack of every notes ends up giving you a really realistic, expressive sound. It might be tough to get it to fit in when using another library for the rest of the drums/cymbals, though, but I think an approach like this in a sample library might be the key to getting more realistic sounding brushes.

Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples
https://www.orangetreesamples.com

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