Let’s Go On A Road Trip?

Let’s go on a Road trip….. of sorts..

With the release of our third - count em - third library I thought it would be fun to reflect on this road trip of sorts and also on how Roadtrip Percussion came to be a library.

As a composer who loves sounds I have always had my ears open and listening when I am out and about in the world. You NEVER know when you will encounter an amazing percussion or tonal sound.

This was ever apparent on my recent trip to Italy in May 2023. Roadtrip Percussion was essentially done and back in the US Royal and the team were putting the final touches on the library.  But as I was walking around Italy I kept bumping into amazing sounds.  Literally.

For example on our way to Italy we stopped thru London to catch a connecting flight.  As we traversed the airport I came upon the most annoying escalator making the weirdest noises.  High pitched, tonal and a bit string like.  Hard to describe really so click here to listen to the sound.  This patch and patches created from this squeaky escalator have becomes some of my favorites in the library.

Always having a handy recorder, iphone, etc on your person to record is a must.

A few other gems from the library came unexpectedly. In Venice all the church bells go off at a certain time in the evening.  This was so fun and suprising! Because we were staying on the 4th floor with a large balcony, I was able to record the bells of the entire city.  These made it into the library along with the interesting tonal bells from Milan, Italy.  While the Venice bells were from multiple churches and had an air of distance, the Milan bells were from one church. The Milan bell tower played through multiple tones from a major scale in a most unique, interesting and random order. We were able to create some authentic menu patches from these as well as pads, and single note hits.

If you have read my blog posts thus far you would know that I really enjoy embracing chance and happy accidents.  The sounds I got in Italy all came from this philosophy. The pipe organ patches and pads we created came from recordings I captured in Italian churches. So the happy accidents were happening all over Italy but in fact Roadtrip Percussion is one huge happy accident that happened over the course of many years.

Starting from the beginning.

The oldest sound set in Roadtrip Percussion comes from samples I created for my score on Invader Zim.  I was visiting my parents in Saint Paul, Minnesota and they lived next to a childrens park.  The park had the coolest retro metal slide you have ever seen.  If you know anything about parks these days there are no more metal slides.  This slide was nasty and bold sounding.  I banged and banged on that thing to create some amazing sounds I couldn’t get anywhere else.

Compiling Roadtrip & how sample libraries come to be.

“We will sell no wine before it's time.” That was the slogan of a famous Paul Masson winery advertising campaign years ago and its proven true for our sample libraries.  Ghost Cello took 3 years to produce from beginning to end.  Feedback Drones was in various processes for about that long as well and now Roadtrip took over 20 years to create.  Of course I didn’t spend 20 full years on Roadtrip but the point is that these things take time.  How does this relate to our creative lives and how can any of my ramblings help you dear reader?

Consider this:

Trust your gut.

Trust your instincts.

Don’t put something out until you know its the best thing you can put out.

Don’t just do something.  Do it to the best of your ability.

Live with things before you are done with them.

Entertain different possibilities.

Entertain the fact that you might have to pivot.

Be willing and open to pivot.

Listen to your inner voice.

Ask those around you that you trust for their opinion and weigh it.

Back to Roadtrip.  The creating of the library was indeed that - a road trip of sorts.  Which is pretty fun and cool if you think of it.  How it came about and evolved and how it became a library was truly an exercise of all the things I mentioned above.

I had all these found sounds that I had been ‘collecting’ and sampling over the years and as I started my sampling library I knew that I wanted to create a special home for them.  Because all of the sounds were recorded outside of the studio and in multiple world locations I thought of the name Roadtrip Percussion.

We sampled huge Wine Vats, a massive shipping container bridge, the before mentioned metal slide, rocks and wood in a huge aqueduct tunnel, oil tanks and machinery at Californias first oil town, tunnels from the University of Minnesota and California State University, sculptures and massive wind chimes from various California locations, a peace bell from Japan located in Duluth Minnesota, a toy piano hidden in a warehouse that recently burnt to the ground, kiddie park glockenspiel and xylophones, Italian church bells and organs, garages, door slams, 2 different cars & SUV’s and a host of others. Do I win longest run on sentence? :)

To tie it all together into something cohesive was the next challenge.  We like to keep our samples nice and raw and pristine for those of you that want to process them on your own but we also love taking that next step of processing them with our own fx, creating pads, drones, braams, etc out of the source material.

One of our signature library traits is using the modulation wheel to go between our dry/generally raw original sound and a processed effect.  This allows you to instantly go between two sounds or patches and dial in the amount of fx you want on that patch.

I could go even deeper here but let’s get back to the point. 

Creating art (and sample libraries) is like going on a road trip.  One of those road trips where you just throw a bag in the car and start driving. Sometimes you have a vague idea of where you are going and other times you just start driving.  What causes you to turn left?  Or right?  Or to jump on your favorite freeway and head north?  It’s that same instinct we have as artists that cause us to make the millions of tiny decisions that result in our final artistic achievement.

So let’s live in the uncomfortable for a moment, let’s live with the “I don’t know yet”.  Let’s embrace the fact that we are figuring things out vs. always trying to have the answers.  Let’s let the art evolve into what it is meant to me.  Let’s go on a ROAD TRIP!!!!

Happy Traveling!

Best,
Kevin Manthei