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

[peter]

I’ve spent a good deal of time researching jazz brushes drum kit plugins and sample libraries. I don’t really think any developer has completely nailed it. Comparably, getting a stick, rod, or even brushes to whack a drum is simple. But there’s much more to the sounds of jazz brush drumming with sweeps (as opposed to straight hits with a brush, which, by comparison, is simple to record). Of course, as a former drummer—and I did study jazz for a short time, played some jazz gigs and met Buddy Rich, Louie Bellson (Duke Ellington, etc.), Jack DeJohnette (Miles Davis, etc.), Billy Cobham (Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra, John Ambercrombie, etc) — I would love to be able to do great recordings using MIDI from my electronic drum kit, simulating jazz brush sweeps… Suffice to say, while tendinitis stopped me from playing/performing, I never stopped loving playing drums or listening to great drummers.

From a business perspective, I think demand for a jazz drum kit is so small and the drum sample market is so fragmented with several plugin ecosystems, that I think it would almost certainly be a product that would have a negative ROI. Apart from the plugin you shared above, @gregjazz, I had a document that I cut and pasted my observations about jazz brush drum libraries from below and added some additional commentary for the community. All of my observations are based purely upon the audio demos:

BEST:
The Jazz Sessions SDX
An excellent sampled jazz drum kit with realistic jazz brush playing. I don’t know how they achieved it, but their jazz brushes demo is the most realistic I’ve heard from a sampled drum kit. This is the demo that I’m referring to:  https://hwhcs.toontrack.com/mp3/The_Jazz_Sessions_SDX_-__C_Main_-_Bop_Kit_Brushes.mp3

VERY GOOD (but using loops):
Authentic Soundware Jazz Drums
A large collection of jazz drum loops with many authentic-sounding brush patterns.
Offers isolated “stirring patterns for custom programming.
These are loops and multisampled Kontakt drum kit with a script for jazz brushes sweeps. The sample library doesn’t have anything near the detail of the SDX kit – but the audio demos sound great. I think that the combination of loops and the multisampled kit is likely a great option for most non-drummers looking for jazz brushes. The art of playing jazz brushes isn’t something that is easily figured out in minutes, nor is it easily translated to a MIDI controller.

GOOD-ish:
Abbey Road Vintage Drummer
includes brush articulations for added expressiveness. I’m not in love with the tone of the jazz brush sweeps they’ve captured, but they sound okay, and more importantly – based on some of the other sampled jazz brush kits I’m comparing them against – they don’t stand out as fake with odd, awkward sweeps, like BFD kit and Fluffy Audio kit.

OKAY – ish:
Addictive Drums 2
The Modern Jazz Brushes ADpak is a specialized expansion pack for Addictive Drums 2.
It features a specific drum kit designed for jazz with brushes and includes a unique “RealSweep” system for realistic brush sweeps and accents.
Includes production-ready presets and MIDI grooves played by professional drummers.

DON’T MAKE THE CUT:
Fluffy Audio Jazz Drums – Brushes
The sweeps don’t sound realistic or played by even a rudimentary jazz drummer by the most generous assessment. The average listener would merely say that “something doesn’t sound right,” about these, whereas a jazz fan would likely say they sound bad. Any jazz musician would find them unusable.

BFD Player Jazz Brushes / BFD Jazz Noir
The Player kit is culled from the BFD Jazz Noir expansion pack. Neither is realistic by the most generous assessment. The BFD Player version truly sounds like the person who scripted it didn’t really understand how jazz drummers use brushes to do sweeps or how to make it swing.

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