POCKET
DRUMS 3
A NEW FIVE-MIC LIBRARY — NEW CONSOLE / MIXER SECTION — AN ALL-NEW LIBRARY, PRINTED TO REAL TAPE — THREE ROOMS BUILT FOR DRUMS — LONDON, BERLIN A & B — CHOP ANYTHING WITH THE POCKET SAMPLER — OVER 500 FACTORY BEATS BUILT IN
MIX THE KIT LIKE A SESSION
Every drum in the new library was recorded through five microphones — close mics on kick and snare, an overhead, a Coles ribbon at the shoulder and an RE20 for colour. The new console / mixer section gives each mic its own channel: fader, pan, EQ and transient shaping per mic, with VU metering and solo/mute on every strip.
The signal path is serial and honest — mics into the console, console into your drum's effects, out to the master or its own output. The whole desk saves with your kit.
| KICKS | Vintage Gretsch 22” · Gretsch Catalina 18” | PR99 ✓ |
| SNARES | Acrolite 14” · Pearl 12×7 · Vintage Yamaha 14” in three tunings | PR99 ✓ |
| HI-HATS | Sabian HHX 14” · HHX pencil sticks · Bosphorus New Orleans 14” | PR99 ✓ |
| TOMS | Vintage Gretsch 12” / 15” · Catalina 12” / 14” | PR99 ✓ |
| CYMBALS | Istanbul 20” · Istanbul riveted · Xist dark dry 16” | PR99 ✓ |
| PERCUSSION | Tambourines · cowbell · clave · and friends | PR99 ✓ |
RECORDED. THEN PRINTED TO TAPE.
An all-new library: vintage Gretsch and Gretsch Catalina kits, three snares, two hi-hats, two rides, a crash and percussion — every piece played from whisper to full hit, up to 16 velocity layers deep, up to 8 round robins per layer, five microphones on every strike. Not one-shots: instruments. And the whole original Pocket Drums library is still here too — three kicks, four snares and four toms, each with their variations, plus five hi-hats, three crashes, three rides, and clapstack, claps, tambourine, shaker, cabasa and wood block.
Then every instrument in the new five-mic library was printed to quarter-inch tape on a Revox PR99 and captured again. Not a tape emulation on top — a second, real version of the new kit pieces. Flip between clean and tape.
THREE ROOMS. LONDON, BERLIN A, BERLIN B.
The room reverb is a true algorithmic engine built for drums — three rooms, LONDON, BERLIN A and BERLIN B, running on two distinct algorithms with their own character: tight and present, big and dark, wide and alive. Not impulse responses: a living space you can push, stretch and position, with every mic feeding it by its own amount.
Beside it: the FX reverb — two springs and a plate, each a bespoke algorithm designed for Pocket Drums 3, not a sampled tank. Every send carries its own EQ and transient shaping, so the room can hear the snare without the attack.
CHOP ANYTHING. SEND IT TO THE KIT.
Drop any audio in: the sampler finds the hits — drums or melodic material — and lays them across 32 pads. Split it into six stems: cut the drums out of a full track and play Pocket Drums over the drumless bed, or give any pad its own stem mix. Tempo-lock a break without touching its pitch, tune pads in semitones or cents, play through or chop tight.
Then the good part: send a chop to any drum as a one-shot, or export a whole selection as a new articulation — velocity layers and round robins built automatically, levelled to sit with the factory library.
THE KNOCK UNDER THE KICK. THE SNAP OVER THE SNARE.
A dedicated synth layer for kick and snare — pitched sine drop and shaped noise, triggered with your samples, gliding and fading per hit. The trick behind modern low end, built in instead of bolted on.
Each layer has its own tone, noise, envelope and level, solos and mutes like any drum, rides the same reverb sends — and saves with the kit.
TEN LANES. TEN SHEETS. REAL FEEL.
The heart of Pocket Drums, sharper than ever: a velocity-first step sequencer with dedicated percussion lanes, per-lane divisions, and ten sheets you can chain into whole songs.
Feel is a first-class control — swing at 8ths or 16ths, wonk, drift, nudge and groove templates, so nothing you write sits flat on the grid unless you want it to.
A DRUMMER'S EIGHT BARS, ON DEMAND
The beat generator now thinks in full eight-bar phrases — grooves that develop, fills that land where a drummer would put them, conditioned by genre and feel. Over 500 factory beats to start from, every one editable in the sequencer.
And the transcriber still does the party trick: drag audio in, get the beat back as MIDI, mapped to the kit.
WATCH
POCKET DRUMS 3
LISTEN
HEAR IT IN ACTION
Every sound below is Pocket Drums — no external processing, no layering. What you hear is what you get.
POCKET BLUE SKY
POCKET SOUL
POCKET NEO
POCKET PIE
POCKET LO-FI
POCKET VOICES
BUILT FOR THE WAY YOU ACTUALLY WORK
Pocket Drums has always been about getting to the drums fast. Everything new in 3 keeps that contract.
DAW SYNC
The sequencer follows your host transport — chain sheets in play order, loop, and let the song run the drums.
LIVE CHAINS
Latch sheet triggers from a pad controller and chain patterns in the order you press them. Made for the stage.
IMPORT YOUR OWN
Drop files or folders on the main view: the Kit Builder sorts them by name, detects velocity layers and round robins from the audio, and saves the lot as a kit.
ONE SHOT LIBRARY
New in 3. Swap any articulation for a single sample while the beat plays — import folders as libraries, star the keepers, step through them from the drum selector.
MIDI IN
Drop a .mid file on the sequencer: notes remapped from the source library's layout — GM or your own map — one bar per sheet, ready to edit.
MIDI EXPORT
Drag beats out as MIDI — one file or one per lane, remapped for other drum libraries, exactly the lanes you tick. Every nudge and swing is in the notes.
MIDI OUT
Let the sequencer drive another instrument in the same session — Superior Drummer, Addictive Drums, a Kontakt kit, a synth — remapped and sample-accurate.
OUTS TO YOUR DAW
One output pair per drum, or flip MIC OUTS for one per microphone plus the reverb returns — a console print of the kit you finish in your DAW.
WATCH
POCKET DRUMS 3 — WALKTHROUGHS
A LIBRARY YOU CAN LEAN ON
Every hit recorded through five microphones at once, in velocity layers and round robins, at 24-bit / 48k — and the whole thing printed to tape for a second colour.
Own Pocket Drums Multi? Upgrade for £7.50 during launch (£15 after). New here? Take the free trial and meet the console first.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
macOS 10.15 or later — Apple Silicon recommended, Intel supported · Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit · 16 GB RAM recommended (8 GB minimum; stem separation is slow on 8 GB) · 20 GB free disk space to install, about 10 GB once installed · 64-bit AU, VST3 or AAX host · Internet connection for licence activation and library download. Stem separation runs fastest on Apple Silicon.