A Plethora of Patches for Arturia Synths, and Much More! – Sounds and Presets
5,0 / 5,0 | After a quiet few months, it seems we’re beginning to see what the Arturia boffins in Grenoble have been up to, and it seems sound designers are picking up on this too!
More Arturia Presets Than You Can Shake a Stick At!
Arturia Patch Overload! MiniFreak, Pigments and More!
Most days, I get an email or two about newly released sound banks. I diligently go through them, check out the sounds, add them to a list and try to include as many of them here as I can. Well, just last week, my inbox took a bit of a hit from a number of sound designers, all with sounds for Arturia synths!
Rather than make an entire week’s Sounds and Presets all about one manufacturer, I thought I’d list them all here for convenience! Therefore, why not start off with three banks from Arturia themselves, one of which is free and all of which are rather bloomin’ good! Liurä’s Signature is a collection of 32 presets, making use of a healthy number of Arturia’s V Collection instruments.
As such, it is also compatible with all three versions of Analog Lab, namely Pro, Intro and Play. Described as being shaped by 90s IDM, these sounds carry the hallmark of the slightly detuned, lo-fi nature of artists from that era. Next up is Afterglow Guitars, a collection of 64 presets for Pigments 7, as well as the Analog Lab range and, by extension, all three AstroLab synths.
Making full use of the deep synthesis capabilities of Pigments, Afterglow Guitars really seeks to redefine what guitars clashing with synthesis means and delivers some eminently usable sounds across a wide range of styles and tastes. Finally, there’s The Lost Megacity, which, as its name suggests, has a distinct cinematic and dystopian feel to it. If you’re looking for ominous, huge sounds that evoke images of futuristic urbanism, this is probably nectar from the gods for you!
Sadly, there are no audio demos that I can link to here, but you can check them out on their respective product pages. Arturia, if you’re reading this, PLEASE make some demos of your sound banks that we can share! Anyway, Afterglow Guitars and The Lost Megacity are both available for €9.99, and Liurä’s Signature is completely free. Just sign in to your Arturia account, click Add and away you go!
Next up are a couple of banks for Arturia’s Pigments, courtesy of A.Kav and Ilian, respectively. Velvet Skies is a bank of 50 atmospheric arp patches for Pigments, described as being ideal for chillout, atmospheric, Lo-Fi and IDM styles, but as always, I’m sure you will find much broader uses. All presets make full use of the performance features and macros.
Ecology comes from the prolific A.Kav and is a pad junkie’s heaven, i.e. me! If you’re after evolving pads, big, dramatic atmospheres and sounds perfect for a soundtrack, then this bank is for you! There are 62 patches in this bank, and both of these Pigments banks are compatible with Analog Lab and AstroLab.
Finally, in this roundup of new banks for Arturia synths is Imaginarium Vol.2 for Arturia’s small powerhouse, the MiniFreak. Having recently received a superb version 5 firmware update, more of which you can read about here, MiniFreak is to me as powerful and useful as their big analog synths. I’ve always maintained that it sounds way bigger than its physical dimensions would suggest.
This new bank from LFO.store contains 40 presets and sequences covering a wide range of styles and tastes and is fully compatible with the MiniFreak V plugin. There are new leads, basses, pads, sequences and arps galore in this fun and imaginative sound set. So go fill your Arturia boots with some truly brilliant new sounds.
Sound Bank ’79 for Cherry Audio Eight-Voice by Polydata
I do try to be as unbiased as I possibly can when it comes to sound designers as there are so many great ones out there, but I have to say that, in recent years, Polydata has become one of my favourites by some distance. His extensive series, entitled Sound Bank ’79, has covered some great synths and now we have one for Cherry Audio’s excellent Eight-Voice.
The thing that really endears the Sound Bank ’79 range of sounds is how Polydata manages to not only make great, vintage-style patches, but also how they almost always require zero additional processing to give them that vintage shine. It’s almost as if they have literally sampled the sound from an old tape cassette, but of course that’s not how it’s done!
This bank for Cherry Audio’s Eight-Voice contains 40 new patches that all feature that amazing vintage vibe, which is a hallmark of Polydata’s work. And just like the original hardware, each patch was programmed one SEM at a time, so this really is like having a patch bank for the real thing!
Sound Bank ’79 for Cherry Audio’s Eight-Voice is available now for an introductory price of $12, and if you sign up for Polydata’s newsletter, you can claim 15% off your first order! And while you’re there, check out the extensive catalogue of other sound banks, and I can highly recommend their Bandcamp page too!
Klaus Schulze Tribute for Waldorf Protein by Nick Klimenko
Just last week, we covered Nick Klimenko’s ongoing tribute to Klaus Schulze with his bank for the KORG wavestate. With this latest tribute bank, Nick has chosen a much more appropriate synth with which to celebrate the German legend, given his connection with Tangerine Dream.
Waldorf picked up where PPG left off, and Tangerine Dream were heavily involved with the work of Wolfgang Palm and so choosing Waldorf’s superb little Protein synth is somehow fitting! For your money, you get 40 great new sounds for the Protein as well as 25 melodic sequences that pay homage to Schulze’s trademark style.
So all in all, this is a great little package for the money and makes great use of this highly affordable tabletop synth that does more than tip a nod to its illustrious heritage. You can pick this pack up for just €15 from the LFO.store now.
Finnish Forest Percussion for Decent Sampler by Joonas Ylänne
Decent Sampler has had quite the impact in recent years, allowing many people to create, share and enjoy some pretty amazing sample libraries on a free platform that boasts more features than a free plugin instrument ought to! David Hilowitz, the creator of Decent Sampler, has provided in-depth instructions and tutorials so that anyone with a collection of samples can quickly and easily assemble and distribute them.
One such developer is Joonas Ylänne from Finland, who has been creating some great little instruments for Decent Sampler, and their latest is the very cute Finnish Forest Percussion instrument. Gathering a wealth of samples created by capturing sounds made in a forest using wood and stone, this little collection ended up becoming what we hear in this instrument.
As you will hear in the demo video, these incredibly natural and organic sounds can be manipulated through numerous sound-shaping tools, such as tone, pitch, texture, force and via FX like reverb and delay. I can see these sounds fitting in a multitude of places, but the best thing is that it’s free, or at least “name your price”, as are most of their libraries.
You can check them all out, including Finnish Forest Percussion, on their Gumroad page.
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