Handy Drums- MALLETS v2

Give yourself more time to focus on the creative aspects of your song by having an awesome drum sound right out of the box.

Even the most highly skilled and experienced engineers will spend a lot of time achieving a great drum sound even when you have the best drum recording, to begin with.

We invested many hours skilfully editing and carefully mixing Handy Drum Mallets from multitrack recordings, so you don’t have to.

With just the right blend of close mics, overheads, and room mics, expertly sculpted for a robust, punchy, natural-sounding drum set, it will sit right into your mix!

Every kit and percussion setup has a very balanced sound–not too hyped and not too dry.
– RECORDING MAGAZINE

Brilliantly recorded, mix-ready kits.
– COMPUTER MUSIC

Without exception, the kits sound really good; this is mix‑ready stuff with a minimum of fuss.
– SOUND ON SOUND

To achieve larger-than-life yet completely natural-sounding drums, every step of the sampling process is just as important. Starting with choosing the right drum for the job, tuning them, placing them and the microphones in the right place, every aspect of the process was carefully thought out before even a single note was played. 

The instrument and room are then captured using the highest-quality mics, preamps, and converters to preserve every fine detail. These mallet sample pack components ensure pristine quality for your production.

If you ever dealt with sound packs and 3rd party samplers you’ll know how tricky it can get with compatibility especially when either manufacturer makes updates.

We understand the importance of simplicity which is why the Handy Drums range doesn’t need any additional samplers to load!

They are self-contained and come with multiple powerful samplers built-in. Load them like any regular VST/AU/AAX plugin or a stand-alone app.

You’ll be producing music in minutes with the best mallet vst experience.

Sound so natural; you can almost touch them.

Handy Drums sound like an actual drumset being played right in front of you in a room instead of a bunch of individual drums sounding in their own separate spaces. 

We achieved this realism by recording the full breadth of acoustic drums and their natural ambiance, then meticulously editing and mixing them in post-production.

The sound is very much like you are listening to the drums within a beautifully treated, compact studio room.
– SOUND ON SOUND

Map Handy Drums Mallets just the way you like, quickly and effortlessly, then use the Preset Manager to save your mapping for future use.

Select a note for any available instrument, or start with a blank slate and use our “strike-to-learn-note” mapping to assign any key on your MIDI controller to an instrument.

NEW IN V2.0: Take advantage of the additional “blank” mapping to assign several keys to a single instrument sound, which is great for keyboardists looking to play drum rolls.

Read more about drum mapping in Handy Drums.

An acoustic hi-hat is a complex instrument in its own right. Handy Drums’s variable hi-hats utilize the full range of sampled hats from tightly closed to closed, 25% open, 50% open, 75% open, and 100% open, for both tip and edge sounds. 

Despite these 12 types of articulations, multiple dynamic ranges, and round robins, you can seamlessly switch from one to another using only TWO notes and a CC4 controller.

We made major improvements to our variable hats in v2.0 so they play, feel, and sound as close to the real thing as possible making it one of the best mallet vst tools on the market.

NEW IN V2.0: Play variable hats with any regular GM drum loop.

NEW IN V2.0: For e-drummers, play variable hats with either dual-zone or single-zone pad, as long as your foot controller sends CC4 messages. Play hat foot splashes as you would on an acoustic kit.

This approach streamlines something that was previously more of a time sink of assigning notes to each articulation.
– COMPUTER MUSIC

…the hi‑hat mapping is nicely done, providing plenty of control over the degree of closed/open status of the cymbals.
– SOUND ON SOUND

Find out more about our variable hats.

While we initially focused on non-drummers when creating Handy Drums, much of our focus for v2.0 has been dedicated to features relevant to drummers playing electronic kits.

With a simple switch, Handy Drums will be specifically tailored to e-drummers:

• The snare drum is split into head-on D1 and rimshot on E1
• You can trigger hi-hat foot splashes in the same way you would on an acoustic kit
• You can use either a dual-zone or single-zone hi-hat pad to play the variable hats as long as your hat foot controller sends CC4 messages.
• Our variable hats respond like the real thing with natural hi-hat chokes, producing different sounds depending on whether you close the pedal slowly or quickly.
• Choose between a dual zone (default) ride cymbal pad or a single zone pad to play both bow and bell sounds separated by velocity threshold.

Learn more about the e-drummer mode.

Save and recall the entire plugin’s state at any point by using the Preset Manager.

This is especially useful for creating custom drum maps by saving mallet samples to your preferred midi notes. Preset Manager ensures you can easily access your preferred setups anytime.

Learn more about the preset manager.

The mixer takes center stage in Handy Drums and gives you immediate access to essential controls.

Quickly preview included components to make sure everything is in working order using the audition buttons on top of each instrument group.

NEW in V2.0:

View mute, solo, and panning states of all channels at a glance. Unmute and un-solo all channels at once.

Pan instruments, swap left and right channels, or turn them mono with a simple switch.

Additional popup mixers give you access to individual components of complex instruments, such as hi-hats.

Get all the details on the mixer here.

Up to 10 samples per dynamic level

Our ear instantly knows when a computer plays the same sample repeatedly (such as a drum roll). This is because when a real human hits a drum, each stroke that follows is always slightly different from the previous one, regardless of how great a drummer they are.

Each Handy Drum Mallets drum and cymbal has been sampled numerous times at every dynamic level. During playback, a different sample is triggered each time, ensuring that no sample is repeated sequentially.

Depending on the instrument, some internal samplers will play the available samples at random, while others will be played in a “round robin” fashion.

Every instrument has a round/random robin independent from other instruments.

This culminates in the impression of a drummer hitting each drum with minor variations each time. Something many other ‘realistic’ VIs never quite nail.
– COMPUTER MUSIC

Assign any MIDI CC controller to a number of relevant controls on Handy Drums, such as volume faders, panners, mute buttons, and more.

It is as simple as right-clicking, selecting “Learn MIDI CC,” and then moving a fader or a knob on your hardware MIDI controller for instant pairing. Save your settings in the Preset Manager for future use.

With mallets vst options like these, customization is effortless.

Learn more about the assign/ learn MIDI CC functionality.

Handy Drums have an exceptionally small CPU and memory footprint. Because we have gotten away from unnecessary effects, your computer will run hundreds of mallet samples without breaking a sweat.

Go ahead and load several Handy Drums plugins with no problem.