Apple has released a brand new Sound Library pack for GarageBand and Logic Pro called Drill Yard, bringing more than 400 new Apple Loops alongside new drum kits, instrument patches and Live Loops content.
As the name suggests, Drill Yard is built around the sounds of UK and New York Drill, combining dark, atmospheric melodic elements with heavy drums and bass.
Apple describes the pack as capturing the sound that “crossed the Atlantic”, bringing together the sliding 808s associated with UK Drill and the harder-hitting drums of New York Drill.
What’s Included in Drill Yard?
Drill Yard includes a mixture of sounds designed specifically around modern Drill production, including:
- Sliding 808 basses
- Hard-hitting drums and percussion
- Eerie lo-fi melodies
- Reversed pianos
- Atmospheric pads
- Heavy bass sounds
- Melodic vocal chops
There’s a distinctly dark and cinematic sound to much of the pack, with plenty of material for building atmospheric hip-hop tracks even if Drill itself isn’t necessarily the type of music you make.
Exactly what you get, however, depends on whether you’re using GarageBand or Logic Pro.
GarageBand users get the more streamlined version of Drill Yard, consisting of more than 400 royalty-free Apple Loops.
There’s plenty of drum and percussion material, but Apple has also included a substantial collection of melodic loops.
You’ll find dark piano parts, synths, basses, vocal chops and atmospheric textures alongside the sliding 808 basslines closely associated with UK Drill.
As with Apple’s other Sound Library packs, these loops can be dragged directly into a GarageBand project, combined with your own recordings and instruments, or chopped and rearranged to create something completely different.
For anyone who prefers building tracks using loops, there’s quite a lot of new material to work with here.
Logic Pro Gets a Much Bigger Version
Logic Pro users on Mac and iPad get all of the Apple Loops included with the GarageBand version, plus considerably more.
The full Logic Pro version of Drill Yard contains:
- More than 400 Apple Loops
- 4 Drum Machine Designer kits
- 26 instrument patches
- 2 Live Loops Grids
The complete pack is around 431 MB.
The Drum Machine Designer kits give you access to individual drum sounds from the collection, making it possible to program your own beats rather than relying solely on Apple’s pre-recorded loops.
The 26 instrument patches expand things further, with basses, melodic sounds and atmospheric textures that fit the darker character of the pack.
Logic Pro also gets two dedicated Live Loops Grids.
These are one of the easiest ways to explore Apple’s larger Sound Library packs, with different elements from the collection arranged into cells that can be triggered and combined in real time.
They’re also useful if you’re not particularly familiar with Drill production, as they demonstrate how Apple intended the different drums, basses and melodic elements in the pack to work together.
What About GarageBand for Mac?
At the time of writing, Drill Yard doesn’t appear to be available through the Sound Library in GarageBand for Mac.
That’s becoming a noticeable difference between the Mac and mobile versions of GarageBand, with some of Apple’s newer Sound Library releases appearing on GarageBand for iPhone and iPad alongside Logic Pro without making their way to GarageBand on the Mac.
Hopefully that changes, but for now you’ll need GarageBand on iPhone or iPad, or Logic Pro, to access Drill Yard.
Drill obviously won’t appeal to everyone, but Apple has done a good job of capturing some of the sounds most strongly associated with the genre.
The sliding basses, dark melodies, reversed pianos and aggressive drums give the collection a distinctive identity, and there’s enough atmospheric material here that plenty of the sounds could work outside Drill too.
And, as with Apple’s other Sound Library packs, Drill Yard is available as a free download for compatible GarageBand and Logic Pro users.
You can find it now in the Sound Library in GarageBand for iPhone and iPad and Logic Pro for Mac and iPad.