Aston Martin Music Expansion Review

Once upon a time the words “Aston” and “Martin” would immediately be associated with a very luxurious car that James Bond would be seen driving. Then with one smooth hook from Chrisette Michelle and our favorite wheelchair kid (Too soon?) that changed. The song quickly reached number one on US Rap Billboard charts, and you couldn’t go to any club without a crowd singing that Drake hook off key. I think we can all admit the elements to that song were great. Hard drums, melodic hook, smooth chords and the occasional UGH from Rozay. Thanks to the guys at TheMaschineWarehouse.com (Twitter @1goodknob); you can create your own Aston Martin Music with their new Maschine expansion bearing the same name. Delivered to you with over 400 drum samples and 120 .MSND sound files, you’ll find yourself in a groove in no time.

The drums in this expansion are some nasty ones. Not only do the kicks get your woofers punching, but they easily will set the tone to whatever style of track you’re making. The claps in this are dope as well, though I must say they all would go much better if they were to be stacked on top of one another or layered with a snare. Speaking of snares, the snares in here are in fact good sounding snares with a few exceptions. The problem I have is they all have a reverb attached to them, with the exception of all of the snares labeled “Girth.” These snares are all dry, but for the most part unusable due to the amount of hum in the sample and in some cases the sample itself. I’m finding some of the girth labeled snares some distortion or maybe a bit too much compression. The best part about the drum section of this expansion are without question the hi hats and cymbals. One can easily make up a hi hat section and have sounding damn close to a drummer getting down when you utilize the choke group feature on your Maschine. I will soon find myself incorporating these drums into my productions without a doubt.

Now this is what I’m talking about! 120 sounds to expand your library ranging from bass, to brass, to strings and synths. One of my favorite things about some of these sounds is that they are layered by velocity. Meaning this, depending on how hard you hit the keys on your MIDI controller or hit the pads on your Maschine will determine the type of sound that you get. I think this is VERY cool because you can add so much dynamic to your production with literally one instrument. Just like the Synthplosion Expansion, many of the sounds were affected using the stock Maschine effects, allowing you to morph these already awesome sounds even more. Like the case in any Maschine expansion we get, whether it’s right from NI themselves, or from a 3rd party vendor there going to be some sounds we don’t like, or care for, and with Aston Martin Music that rule is no exception. I will say that there is for sure a lot more good here than mediocre, and not much on the wrong side of that.

Aston Martin Music is an outstanding expansion that will give you so much more sounds and effects to play with. The Maschine Warehouse has once again impressed me with another Maschine expansion that I see many people will be flocking to have. If you have this or any of the expansions from them, tell a friend to tell a friend, to post on Facebook that’s linked to their Twitter, that need these expansions in their libraries.

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James Jaxin
Forum Moderator MaschineMasters.com
Product Review Specialist MaschineMasters.com