サウンド・クオリティ： ７点

セレクション： ９点

お買得度： ８点

「ファンが一晩中踊り明かすようなクールなミュージック。そんなキミの夢をかなえるための、これはマスト・アイテム!! 極上のサウンド、最高のプログラミング、豊富なバラエティ、不純物一切なし、時代を選ばない万能スタイル・・・さあ、さっそく曲作りに取りかかろう! 」 SOUND QUALITY : 7

SELECTION : 9

BANG FOR THE BUCK: 8



If your chief goal in life is to see your fans dance the night away, Total House is the soundware for you. You get two audio CDs packed with great material - plenty of variety, and no filler. The third disc is a CD-ROM that contains everything on the first two in WAV file format.



The first CD is a feast of clean, punchy, multilayered beats. Each sample is four bars long, and just about every one has a heavy four-on-the-floor kick. There are no construction kit breakouts with individual instrument tracks, but you'll generally find three or more closely related beats, making it easy to build an arrangement.



The variations run mostly to added spice tracks - shakers, hats flanged stuff, extra snare energy, Latin percussion, whatever. "The hi-hat programming is awesome," Mark Vail commented. "And I loved the little elements - processed handclaps, fuzzed-out bass tones, fast snare rolls, and super-fedback delay- processed hits - that swirl across the stereo field." A few of the beats are exclusively hand percussion, but most are full kits, with chugging hats, laid- back snares, and miscellaneous noise bursts marching along (or more likely jumping) above the kick.



The tracks, 50 in all, have ten beats per track, all at the same tempo. Tempos range from 120 to 140 in 5 bpm increments, with the biggest chunks of material at 125 and 130. With only two or three exceptions, the beats are strictly percussion: It's up to you to add the bass line, stabs, chord arpeggios, and so on. In far too many of the samples, the differences between bars, or between two-bar phrases, are subliminal or nonexistent. I always think this is a waste of disc space: If I want to grab one bar and loop it, I know how to do that. Give me the variety! To be fair, the CD does include numerous four-bar samples with changes and hooks that will be quite catchy when looped - a handclap fill at the very end, an extra kick, a snare run, a swirling sound effect, or even a sound that drops out for one note in bar 4.



Disc 2 contains everything else you'll need to sample up a storm: funky synth chord patterns, bass riffs on both synth and bass guitar, swirling pads, choppy little chord stabs, wah-wah guitar rhythms, vocal licks and shouts, outer space swoops and other weirdness, single bass synth notes, a few multisampled single notes on other synths (including the M1 piano, which apparently has achieved vintage status), and a good assortment of kicks, snares, hats, claps, and other percussion. "The filter-swept and fuzzed-out synth bass kicks serious butt," Mark noted. He was less enthusiastic about the vocal phrases. "It's too bad so many of these samples were overly processed with reverb, delay, and the like. I'd rather add my own effects."



Both tempo and key signature information is given for the tonal riffs, but the keys are often incorrect, so let your ear be your guide. I'm a little suspicious of the tempo indications on disc 2 as well: I spotted guitar riffs that were obviously at different tempos grouped together on a track where the samples are all listed at 140 bpm. On the plus side, every sample is sub-indexed, so if your CD player supports sub-indexing, finding stuff will be dead easy.



There's nothing groundbreaking or cutting-edge about Total House, it's more classic or timeless in style. But it's great value for the money, and having all of the samples in both audio and WAV file format makes the package even more attractive. Grab it and work up a sweat.