Majetone 'Dream Kit: Zenith': A Drum-Based Synthesizer for VST3 & AU that Turns Every Drum Part into a Musical Instrument
Majetone, a London-based developer known for unique and creative sound design and plug-ins, has recently announced the release of Dream Kit: Zenith — A groundbreaking virtual instrument that reimagines the drum kit as a fully chromatic, synth-style sound source. Designed and built by drummer, producer, and engineer James Yates, Dream Kit: Zenith blends meticulous multi-sampling with analog synth sensibilities to create a uniquely tactile and expressive instrument. Unlike conventional drum plug-ins, Dream Kit: Zenith dives deep into the full anatomy of the drum kit — not just the drums themselves, but every part: lugs, shells, hoops, pedals, snares, cymbals, buzz rolls, thumb rolls, cymbal scrapes, and more. Each element is sampled, tuned, and stretched across five octaves, transforming a traditionally percussive instrument into a richly playable sonic palette.
With 120 custom waveforms and over 1,000 presets, Dream Kit: Zenith offers an inspiring world of lush textures, rhythmic pulses, cinematic tones, and melodic expressions. "The goal was to treat evert part of a drum kit like a musical note, not just a percussive hit," says Yates. "I wanted to explore what would happen if I treated those sounds as waveforms in a synth — tuning, re-amping, and transforming them into something both real and surreal." The result is a deeply personal instrument that blurs the line between rhythm and melody, order and chaos. Culminating from a decade of sound exploration and four years of focused development, Dream Kit: Zenith redefines what a drum kit can be.
Dream Kit: Zenith began as a personal experiment in 2015, when creator James Yates was refinishing his early '80s Gretsch drum kit. Inspired by the marimba-like resonance of the shells, he imagined a radically different kind of drum instrument: what if every part of the kit — shells, lugs, heads, hardware — could be chromatically tuned and played like a synthesizer? The result is Dream Kit: Zenith, a virtual instrument that redefines drum sampling, blurring the line between percussion and synthesis. Rather than aiming for hyper-realism, Zenith embraces the abstract — delivering expressive, melodic, and often unidentifiable textures that makes listeners wonder, "What is that sound?"
Dream Kit: Zenith combines an extensive range of playing and sound design techniques—thumb rolls, feedback, sticks, mallets, shells, heads, nuts & bolts, hardware, lugs, and more—with chromatically tuned drum sources presented as a synth across five octaves. Built around a powerful 3-oscillator architecture (2 waveforms plus a sub oscillator), it offers a fully featured interface with filter and volume envelopes, LFOs, EQ, analog-modeled delay, arpeggiator, and deep modulation options. It also includes 22 custom reverbs, an intuitive preset browser, and custom-made percussion textures, all captured with multi mic realism at Otterhead Studios. Dream Kit: Zenith invites musicians, producers, and sound designers into a sonic world where rhythm and tone seamlessly converge.
Features
120 Waveforms: 120 original waveforms from acoustic and processed drum sounds
1000+ custom presets across kits, synths, FX, and experimental textures
Nuts and bolts, Lugs, Tuning Rods, Floor Tom Legs, Shells, Heads, Drums, Toms, Snares, Cymbals, Pedals and Stands, Percussion, Rims, Conceptual ideas/granular processing
Deeply multi-sampled with up to 38 velocity layers, multiple round robins to interesting one shots and everything in between
Stretched and tuned across 5 octaves
Multi-mic Reamping: Close, Overhead, and Room mics recorded and re-amped at Otterhead Studios
3 Oscillator Architecture: 2 waveforms + sub oscillator
Fully featured interface with filter & volume envelopes, LFOs, EQ, delay, arpeggiator, and more
22 Custom Impulse Reverbs: from bunkers to vintage plates and lug springs
42,000+ Audio Files curated into an intuitive 21.7 GB library
Designed for Intuition: Hardware feel, minimal menu-diving, fast sound shaping
System Requirements
Windows: VST3
macOS: VST3 / AU
16.7 GB on download (handled by pulse downloader)
Expands to 21.7 GB space required (SSD recommended)
* Dream Kit: Zenith is compatible with VST3 & AU for macOS and VST3 for Windows, with Rosetta support for Apple Silicon and a download footprint of 16.1 GB (expanding to 21.7 GB).
Price
£89.00 GBP
* This is an introductory price valid until 25th June (regular price: £148.00 GBP, save 40%).
Majetone is James Yates—drummer, drum builder, recording engineer. Having built custom one off instruments (both physical and digital) for many fine engineers, musicians and producers, James wanted to make these custom one offs available to a wider audience and shifted into plug-in development. Dream Kit: Zenith is just the beginning of unique, usable instruments and plug-ins that will be coming from Majetone in 2025.
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