Unsurprisingly, Big Fish Audio’s Pure Rock Hits 2 is a follow-up to their earlier Pure Rock Hits library (reviewed by Mike Senior back in the October 2012 issue of SOS). As before, what you get here is a series of song construction kits — 20 in this case — that allow you to take the supplied loops and build your own mix from them. All of the kits include parts for multiple song sections and plenty of instrument variations, so the task of creating your own arrangement — admittedly within the confines of the chord progressions you are supplied with — is very straightforward. If you want to hone your own drum mix, the additional multitrack drum files, with separate kick, snare, overhead, room and tom loops, allows you to do just that. In total the library represents over 4GB of WAV or AIFF samples in the construction kits and in excess of 2GB within the additional multitrack drum loops.
As you might expect given the ‘rock’ flavour, things are dominated by acoustic and electric guitars (including lots of nice arpeggiated electric parts) with a suitable complement of bass, drums, organs and piano, plus the occasional strings, effects, percussion or vocal loops thrown in for good measure. All of these have been well recorded, well played and suitably edited for ease of use. Tempos range from a modest 80bpm up to a more vigorous 156bpm, but, within obvious limits, your DAW software will allow you some flexibility in terms of tempo adjustment.
Now ‘rock’ means different things to different people. If you are after something to scare children and grandparents, then Pure Rock Hits 2 is perhaps not what you need. However, if you are looking for a collection of super-safe, middle-of-the-road, chart-friendly, adult-orientated rock, then look no further. Pure Rock Hits 2 is Train or Coldplay rather than Motörhead or Metallica; the only way this will get offensive is if you do a Lily Allen and top it off with some lyrical content that belies the music bed.
That said, for a busy media composer on a tight deadline, just as with the original Pure Rock Hits title, this is a slice of nice, polite rock ready to roll and I can easily imagine hearing these tracks in ads, non-scary drama and documentary TV either with or without a suitable vocal. Polite but very professional, Pure Rock Hits 2 does exactly what it sets out to and is suitably priced. If you liked the original title, this ought to be a welcome companion to go with it. John Walden
£58.95
$99.95