While home in Austin on break from the Black Pumas tour early in 2022, Stephen Bidwell took a car full of drums to Electric Deluxe Recorders, home base of producer and Pumas guitarist Adrian Quesada, and filled up a few reels of 1-inch tape with house engineer Aaron Glemboski (aka Redbeard). Bidwell brought his unique collection of snare and kick drums, some of them one-of-a-kind and some uniquely treated studio staples; and Redbeard utilized the studio’s collection of classic and left-field microphones with old-school techniques. Midway through working on this pack, the studio traded in an MCI JH-416 console for a Collins all-tube broadcast board and Neve 5060, so you’re getting a bit of both boards. All sounds were captured on a 1-inch MCI JH-110 tape machine. 

The result is a wealth of one-shots rich with analog vibe and earthy character, ready for your sampler or DAW. Bidwell gets a lot of compliments on his palette of snare sounds, and this pack has over 200 of them. Redbeard also experimented with tape speeds to create some super slow, huge sounds and compiled a few dozen choice loops from the sessions with unique mixes applied to each one. The sounds lend themselves to reproducing classic soul breakbeats, adding a bit of seasoning to any average snare drum sound, and contain enough raw booms and baps to build a hip-hop break from any past or future era. 

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Product Specs:
Number of Files: 572
File Formats: WAV Loops & Samples
File Size: 1.48 GB

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Stephen Bidwell was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in the Virginia suburbs. Since first being handed drumsticks in the late 80s he has studied and lived in West Virginia, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and New York but has called Austin, Texas home since 2005. Somewhere in those travels, he earned a Bachelors’s degree in classical percussion (two of them actually) and a Master’s degree in Jazz studies. Amid a very long list of teachers, Stephen counts studies with Johnny Vidacovich and Wayne Krantz as massively influential. 

Since early 2018 Stephen has been the drummer for Grammy-nominated Black Pumas, a psychedelic soul group known for incendiary live shows. When not on tour with Black Pumas, Stephen plays in several diverse projects; afrobeat with Hard Proof, epic rock with The Calm Blue Sea, avant-lounge with the Mood Illusion, and as a sideman for an endless list of Austin artists. Aside from teaching privately and recording both from his home and East Austin studios, if you search “Bidwell” at Modern Drummer’s website you’ll find years worth of his interviews and invaluable drum journalism.