Archetypes and Mandolins? A New OMD Album? – Sounds and Presets
A unique cello sample library in the form of Archetypes from Sonixinema, and a ‘Dark Mandolin’ from Edu Prado in this week’s Sounds and Presets.
Sounds and Presets
Archetypes by Sonixinema
String sample libraries are two-a-penny these days. Big ones, little ones, some as big as y’house! Full orchestras, chamber orchestras, string quartets, solos… the list goes on. So to stand out and offer something new and exciting is pretty much key to any sample library developer these days.
And it seems the folks at Sonixinema (pronounced Sonic Cinema) are doing just that with Archetypes, their latest release. Billed as “Bold and rebellious cello textures” this is a collection of interesting performance techniques, performed by Joe Zeitlin.
Archetypes is not your typical solo cello library, and that’s a good thing. It contains 75 different articulations, 84 presets, all grouped into 4 categories called Movements, Gestures, Suspensions and Statements.
Each of these categories features a range of techniques that are full of movement, articulation and the out of the ordinary! Everything in Archetypes can be processed through effects and EQ, with an ADSR to boot. There are global features such as the Warp Control function, which adds curated effects based on Joe Zeitlin’s own unique FX chains.
Archetypes is a very unique cello library, and if you’re looking for something different, expressive and new, it really ought to be top of your shopping list. For a limited time, Archetypes is on sale with 20% off, meaning you can grab it for just £92 instead of £115. Be aware that it requires the full version of Kontakt, starting at version 8.1.
While you’re there, make sure you check out their ScoreHub page where you can currently pickup five free libraries that are really very good!
Dark Mandolin by Edu Prado Sounds
Ah, il Mandolino! I have vivid memories of hearing many a cheesy Italian tune played on one as I tried to get to sleep above my Dad’s restaurant in the 1970s. Along with the wonderful aromas of an Italian kitchen, it reminds me of home and of my youth.
But the Mandolin prevails to this day, not simply because of the soundtrack to a million lasagnes or my Nonna’s unique bolognese sauce recipe. It is still used to imbue a sense of folksiness, or simply to add its unique sonic flavour to many a pop song.
Dark Mandolin, however, plays to its emotive depths. The result of a collaboration between Edu Prado and Jan Pfitzer, this small Kontakt library, which also works in the free Kontakt Player, looks to exploit the more cinematic use of this classic instrument.
There are five instruments included, namely Natural, Tape, Room, Duo and Swarm. Each of these takes a contact-mic’d Mandolin and treats it in different ways. Natural, as you may expect, is relatively untreated. Tape features the samples captured on analogue cassette tape. Room adds some space and stereo imaging, and Duo is a stereo-doubled instrument. Finally, Swarm is where things get dreamy and arpeggiated.
It’s surprising how much one can get from such a small instrument, but EPS have captured this beautifully, with a nice, clean interface and small footprint, coming in at a tad over 1GB. There’s also a step sequencer and arpeggiator with a simple and intuitive interface. A nice collection of effects rounds this package off nicely.
Dark Mandolin is currently on sale for just £23.14, down from its full price of £34.50. A small price for a small instrument that you may just find yourself using more than you might imagine!
Spectral Oscillators Toolkit Vol.2 by Ocean Swift
Our friends at Ocean Swift have come up with another interesting package that will be of interest to a wide range of people, given that it is compatible with any instrument capable of loading and looping WAV files.
Billed very accurately as a toolkit, this package comes with 519 oscillator-style samples, all in 16-bit/44.1kHz format and sampled at C3. These samples have been designed to work with any instrument that can load that format, but particularly instruments that can process them granularly, as well as use them as sample-based oscillators.
Or you can just have endless fun and creativity by layering samples up for big, thick, rich evolving textures. Ocean Swift claims that they’ve also greatly improved the naming and organised the collection for speedier use, so that you can spend more time creating and less time searching.
Spectral Oscillators Vol. 2 is a fantastic collection of raw materials and should appeal to anyone who uses samples to craft sounds. You can pick it up for the next two weeks for just €25, down from €37.
Sonic Quintet – Free Patches for AX73 by Martinic
Something small and sweet to round things up this week. Ahead of a full launch in October, and in celebration of last week’s Bandcamp Friday, Martinic have released a little free taster of their upcoming AX73 library, ‘Colorful’ entitled ‘Sonic Quintet.
This, as the name suggests, is a pack containing five teasers from ‘Colorful’, created by German sound designer SM&P. If you pre-order ‘Colorful’ now, you will get 60% off! But if you’re looking for a handful of new sounds to sample the larger collection, simply download Sonic Quintet and chuck ’em in your AX-73 plugin.
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