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Free Linn Drum Machine from Wave Alchemy


While there are countless sounds that come stock with Logic Pro and sound great, I've found out quite quickly (or at least for me anyways) that certain recorded sounds that have been sampled meticulously and professionally can come across just that little bit better, integrating more naturally with your other instruments and tracks.

I love the '80s drum sounds so I've looked at various 808 packs and others but in my searches I came across the Linn Drum. Designed by Roger Linn, the various models spanned from about 1980 to 1985 and cost between $3000-$5000 USD. It's been used by countless artists and producers making appearances in songs from Madonna, Tears for Fears and Prince. These drum machine designs would serve as the inspiration and development in the eventual release of the MPC drum machines made by Akai with Roger Linn as the lead creative director.


Free sound packs are always nice and to celebrate their 8th birthday (this was back in September 2016 so congrats on now being almost 12!!) Wave Alchemy, a sound design studio based in Nottingham, England, gave away a free Linndrum Tape sound pack.

It has 115 samples from an LM-2 drum machine that was "recorded to 1/2 inch analog tape via an Ampex ATR-102 vintage tape machine at multiple saturation levels" (info directly from their post).

You can download it by clicking on their Facebook post via the link below:


They also have a superb and extensive set of sound packs that you can check out on their website. They even have a few more (eight of them!!) free packs like the 'MS-20 mini drums' and '808 Tapes'. Follow the link below for that page:


Now, I initially thought I'd get some sort of crazy user interface looking like the picture above or had to load it into a program like Kontakt but I've found the most simple way of using these sounds is to just load the .wav files right into Drum Machine Designer from your Macs folder. From there you can use the step sequencer, a midi controller or whatever your preferred method is for playing and recording drums. This is what my setup looks like for anyone that needs a bit of a reference:


If you're unfamiliar with how to use the Drum Machine Designer with .wav files, I speak a bit about it in my article last week detailing how to change the pitch on your kick drums. You can find that post by clicking here.

What drum machine sounds do you enjoy using? Have you come across any cool drum sound packs that are free or worth the money you spent? Let me know below in the comments or on twitter!

Have a good one!

BPM :)


*Blog post cover photo courtesy of Forat Electronics
*Prince photo courtesy of DJ Johnson
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