"Today it's 8 24-bit samples of a panel of gridwall being hit with a drum stick. If you're not familiar with it, gridwall is, quite literally, a wall made of a grid of thin, round metal that retailers use to display clothes and other items. I was just putting away the gridwall that my band takes on tour with us to display merch when it struck me that it would probably make some cool metal percussion sounds.

The result is this set of 8 different hits of varying strengths. Most of the differences between hits are rather subtle, so used as a set, or put into round robin mode or velocity mapped on a single key if your sampler allows it, could lead to very expressive and convincing metal percussion lines. Try throwing them into a granular synth such as Absynth, Alchemy, or Kontakt and they'd handily melt into melodic instruments too. Or use them as attack transients to layer with other synths to add some interest. Hell, if you hacked off the hard attack portion of these, I think the ringing sustains on these might work well as ride cymbal like sounds.

By the way, these are the first recordings I've made with the Zoom H2 recorder I just picked up. I'll let you know my initial impressions on that next week. Until then, enjoy!"

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