Fragments – Modern Percussion is a percussion instrument built from unusual everyday sounds, featuring randomization tools and ghost-note effects for creating unique, organic beats in a wide range of musical contexts.
Purpose and Inspiration
Fragments – Modern Percussion was designed to push the boundaries of beat creation by using unconventional sounds recorded from everyday objects. The instrument draws inspiration from street noise, household items, and even body sounds, resulting in a quirky yet organic percussion tool that stands apart from typical libraries.
The creators, Matthias Meeh and Jonas Hausotter, were motivated by a desire to break free from the sameness of standard percussion in modern music. They collected sounds like a nail clipper used as a bass drum, clock ticks from a garage full of old clocks, and the shutter sound of a camera as a snare. These recordings were captured with high-quality microphones in a sound-treated chamber to ensure clarity and consistency.
Key Capabilities
The instrument includes a comprehensive randomization system, allowing users to generate new patterns with a dedicated seed button. This feature can be locked so that patterns continuously re-randomize after each bar, providing endless rhythmic ideas without manual programming.
Each sound features up to five velocity layers and twelve round robins, with a minimum distance of 25 between repeated round robins to prevent immediate repetition. This ensures a natural, human feel in performances. Additionally, users can randomize pan, range, and layer selection to further enhance realism and variation in the playback.
Workflow and Creativity
A key workflow feature is the Density effect, which adds ghost notes to every empty step of a pattern. This effect can be tied to the mod wheel, allowing performers to dynamically bring ghost notes in and out during a performance, adding intensity without altering the original rhythmic structure.
The instrument also remembers shuffle patterns and MIDI notes, enabling users to drag and drop their last played performance directly into their DAW. This seamless integration facilitates exporting generated grooves for further editing or use with other instruments. The seed function serves as an idea generator, rearranging steps randomly to inspire new rhythmic directions.
Practical Applications
Composers and musicians can use Fragments for inspiration, generating grooves with the seed options and exporting them to their DAW for arrangement. Its versatility allows for multiple instances to be run simultaneously, adding layers of texture throughout a composition.
The instrument is well-suited for ambient, atmospheric, and cinematic music, as well as electronic and experimental genres. The presets, created by the designers, include both standard “bread and butter” patterns and more creative, experimental ones, catering to a wide range of musical tastes and production needs.
Key features
- Over 12 round robins per sound for varied playback
- Up to five velocity layers for dynamic response
- Seed randomization for generating new patterns
- Density effect adds ghost notes to empty steps
- Pan, range, and layer randomization options
- Presets curated by the instrument designers
- Remembers shuffle patterns and MIDI notes for easy DAW export
Best for
Fragments – Modern Percussion is best for composers and musicians seeking unique, organic percussion sounds for cinematic, ambient, or experimental music. It excels as an idea generator for beat creation, offering unconventional textures and randomization tools that inspire fresh rhythmic patterns and enhance compositions with distinctive percussive layers.