A Xylophone, Free Cinematic Acoustic Guitar, and More! – Sounds and Presets
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Some lovely acoustic sample-based instruments this week, including a nearly 100-year-old xylophone, plus SEQTRAK packs and more sounds for Pigments 7!
This Week’s Sounds and Presets
Lumo – Acoustic Guitars for Decent Sampler by Joonas Ylänne
Who doesn’t like free stuff? I know I do, and Decent Sampler is a veritable treasure trove of amazing free instruments. I love how it is customisable in so many ways, and it even comes with its own synth now! It’s a really great way to get some brilliant sounds into your compositions.
Well, I stumbled across this free instrument the other day and was amazed by its simplicity and how it actually delivers quite a variety of sounds, all of which are derived from nylon and steel strung acoustic guitars.
It’s dead simple. You have two guitars to choose from: nylon and steel. Each of these delivers three variations, namely Evolving, Natural and Particles. You pick the variation and then you can mess around with the attack and release of each guitar.
You can then put the sounds through reverb and delay, which you can fine-tune to your taste. You can also control the mix between the two guitars as well as the overall volume. It’s brilliantly simple yet extraordinarily fun to play with and hugely atmospheric.
It’s simple, free and fun. What more could you want? Grab it now, right here! The latest version of Decent Sampler can be downloaded from their website.
Xylophone for Kontakt by Soniccouture
Ah, the Xylophone. Scourge of primary school music rooms the world over! I think a whole generation of kids from the 1970s and 80s were put off music for life by being forced to play xylophones. But, they’re simple, they’re percussive and, if played right, can sound amazing.
So you’ll forgive me for not getting hugely excited about a deeply sampled one by the wonderful Soniccouture. That’s not to cast aspersions on Soniccouture at all, for they are purveyors of fine instruments. But something about this one caught my eye and ear.
The source for this Kontakt instrument is a xylophone that is not only nearly a century old, but was owned by the celebrated British/Canadian jazz percussionist, Peter Appleyard. Peter sadly passed 13 years ago, but this instrument remains as a testament to his legacy.
Built in the 1920s and 30s, the Leedy Xylophone originated in Indianapolis, Indiana and was made using Honduran Rosewood, not the synthetic materials found in modern Xylophones these days. So it oozes class and character.
It’s been captured here in all of its glory, with 50 velocity layers, multiple mics and positions as well as three different mallet types. SC have built in a host of customisation features and performance tools to make this a really deep instrument to play.
Sampled at 24/48 and clocking in at 1.3GB of compressed sample data, SC have delivered 35 presets and 6,690 individual samples, and all of this is fully NKS and Kontakt Player compatible, as well as the full version of Kontakt.
Xylophone is currently £80 GBP until March 3rd, 2026, after which it will go up to £119 GBP.
Dasero Artist Series pack for Yamaha SEQTRAK by Dani Dasero
Yamaha’s SEQTRAK has been an incredible success, not least because it packs so much into a small box with two great engines and a host of great features. One of those features is the ability to connect to an app that gives you access to new sounds.
Just released is this new pack from Dani Dasero as part of the SEQTRAK’s Artist Series. The sample pack contains 60 exclusive sounds, several DX synth patches along with a full project with six sequences to play with.
It includes a bunch of modular sounds, drums, effects, field recordings and acoustic instruments such as singing bowls and a kalimba. Judging by the video demo, it sounds great. Users can grab it via the SEQTRAK app right now!
Echoes of the Night for Arturia Pigments/Analog Lab V/AstroLab by Daytona Carter
Rounding things off this week is another excellent bunch of sounds for Arturia’s fantastic Pigments 7. This incredible workhorse of a synth is given a proper workout with this bank of rhythmic presets that conjure up images of dystopin futurescapes.
Featuring mostly rhythmic and sequenced patches, of which there are 17 and 29, respectively, the package is rounded up by a further 4 arpeggiated patterns. Plenty here for you to flesh out your IDM, techno, industrial and synthwave compositions.
Each patch makes good use of the performance controls, including all 4 macros. And don’t forget that these will be compatible with Analog Lab V and Arturia’s brilliant range of AstroLab keyboards. You can grab these now from the Anton Anru store for $19.95.
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