About Us

Welcome to DIY Punk Rock

My name is John Harcus. I’m a drummer, guitarist and mix engineer from the UK, specialising in punk rock audio production. I’ve played in the Scottish skate punk band Pmx for 30 years, and that experience shapes the sounds and tools I make for DIY Punk Rock.  I started DIY Punk Rock to create high-quality MIDI groove packs, presets and audio production tools that help with songwriting, creativity and sound design.

Our MIDI packs are designed for ease of use. They provide the beats, grooves and fills you need to create pro-sounding drum tracks, and help if you don’t want to spend hours programming MIDI from scratch. The packs cover sounds from Skate Punk and Melodic Hardcore to Pop Punk, Alt Rock and Post Hardcore.

Our Superior Drummer 3 presets are faithful recreations of some of my all-time favourite punk rock drum productions. I make them by A/B’ing against the original recordings to get close to the punch, EQ and tone of those drums. Superior Drummer 3’s onboard mixer lets me deliver each sound as a single file you can open in the software. These presets are a lot of fun to make!

Our Mix-FX pack is a collection of .wav samples for adding suspense and excitement to a mix, including cymbal swells, sub drops, guitar feedback, reverse snare hits, snare reverb hits and guitar swells.

I’m looking forward to adding more MIDI packs, presets and mix tools in the future. If you have any questions or need a hand, feel free to email me at info@diypunkrock.com.

Many thanks,
John, DIY Punk Rock