BRUTE

Smells like Mean Drumming

For Rock, Grunge, Punk, and Cross-Over Styles | From the Nineties to Noughties

Contemporary hard-and-heavy music genres are driven by a very specific drumming style: loud, wild, edgy and cutting through the mix. Both drum sounds and playing are rooted in aesthetics invented about two decades ago. Virtual Drummer BRUTE features the essential sounds and styles from Grunge to NuMetal.

In a nutshell: BRUTE is the Virtual Drummer for you, if HEAVY 2 is too Metal-ish and SOLID 2 not rocking hard enough.

What’s in it for me?

• 5 Genre-Specific Drum Kits
• 6 Mix Presets
• 31 Playing Styles, each with 23 Phrases
• Approved by the International Rock Association 
• From Seattle with  ̶L̶o̶v̶e̶  Attitude

In the early 1990s, a guitar-heavy new musical category set out to conquer the hearts and ears of the audience. A new generation of artists would unleash distorted guitars, angry drums, and bucketloads of attitude onto an audience that was suddenly keen to rock out again. Influenced by classic rock of the 1960s and ‘70s, and in opposition to the synthetic aesthetics of the prior decade, bands like Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains popularized the next incarnation of Rock music. Its playbook is still today the go-to for guitar-heavy hard rocking styles.

Punchy, Crisp Character

What makes BRUTE special? First and foremost it has been designed, recorded and processed to do one thing really well: Compete with layered walls of distorted guitars while maintaining character and detail. This was a tricky challenge… The solution was to record with three different sets of microphones that emphasize different aspects of the drum sound.

Each of the three microphone sets has a specific sonic purpose: 

• Click / Smack - The vintage Sennheiser MD21 from the 1960s emphasizes the attack transients. The source signal was processed with a Manley Voxbox.
• Grit / Dirt - Vintage tube and ribbon overhead mics. This is where the character is captured. All the organic noise and resonances give a warm, coarse and natural quality.
• Clean / Nice - Modern high-spec Schoeps microphones that capture the sound ‘as is’. With as little colourization and distortion as possible. For an expensive and glossy character.

Using the Smack and Grit controls, you can adjust and blend these different characteristics seamlessly to find the perfect mix:

• Smack - Turns up the clicky microphone to make the sound cut through the mix.
• Grit - Blends between 2) and 3): Basically adjusting how clean or dirty your signal sounds.  

Kit Rock

The five drum kits in BRUTE have been composed with specific styles in mind.

• DARK - The Stoner: Fat, wide, lower tuning. Slow-roll with this!
• DIRTY - The Punk: short and punchy for aggressive double-time fun.
• TIGHT - The Crossover: More expression and detail, using e.g. a high-tuned piccolo snare.
• NOBLE - The Radio Rocker: Full-bodied, refined and punchy, for alternative anthems.
• PRIME - The Mainstreamer: Superb and well balanced for sold-out stadiums and rock royalty.

Drumming in the Name of

Programming realistic drum tracks can be daunting. With BRUTE it’s fast and easy, so you can focus on your music!

NOFX? Well, there are at least a few...

Mix Presets shape the overall sound by swapping out an entire multi-bus effect chain for every channel under the hood. Saves you time and nerves wrestling with the bus system of your DAW.

Mix Presets: 

• Gentle - Polishing and pleasant, use this for ballads or power pop.
• Slam - For that garage sound, too much compression. Pumping & cranked.
• Bite - Less bass, more lower mids, aggressive. Superfast punk anthem anyone?
• Crush - Distortion and saturation, think tape machine and valve distortion. Fast FOO’d, if you know what I mean.
• Bounce - More warmth, modern, Hip-hop-inspired, Rick Rubin might enjoy this one if he’d ever touch a plug-in. Sound-designed by Richie Beretta in NYC.
• Wide - Stadium-Rock, big and expensive, more subtleties, less punch.

Features

• 5 Drum Kits
• 6 Mix Presets
• 31 Styles with 23 ready-made phrases each, for a total of 713 phrases.
• Smack - Make your drums stand out! Smack adds purpose-recorded and processed mic signals that focus attacks and transients while retaining the warm, organic qualities of the kit.  
• Grit - Crossfades between two sets of mics: basically from nice and clean to dirty and mean. 
• Made for you and your stupid mom! - Fight for your right to keep rocking! Try BRUTE 30 days for free before buying.

System Requirements

Operating Systems

• Windows 10 or later (64-bit only)
• macOS 10.14 - macOS 14 (64-bit only)
• You may have success on earlier versions but UJAM doesn’t support and fully qualify them.

For up-to-date info on UJAM products support for VST3, AAX, and Apple Silicon, please refer to the UJAM website.

Minimum Requirements

• 4 GB of RAM
• 3.1 GB of free Disk Space
• 1280 x 768px Display 
• Internet Connection

Plugin Formats:

• VST, AU 2 
• Please Note: The AU 2 version is only compatible with Logic Pro X and newer.

Supported Standards

• MIDI

Additional Information

• Comes as downloadable installer files.
• Authorize by email address and password for ujam.com within the plugin.
• If you want to move your .blob files to an external drive, UJAM recommends the use of an SSD to prevent dropouts.