Bamboo Stick Ensemble

Bamboo Stick Ensemble is a classic scoring percussion library for Kontakt, which captures the tight, powerful clack of long, heavy raw bamboo poles, played more as a weapon than as an instrument. Soundiron struck, clashed, bent, dragged, scraped, shattered, and pounded them into splinters, with solo and ensemble articulations. Beyond just pure epic war percussion, the Bamboo Stick ensemble features haunting drones, screeches, roars and nightmarish horn-like wails that were produced by brutally grinding the resonant bamboo against stone.

Soundiron's Bamboo Stick Ensemble has been featured in a number of major motion picture soundtracks such as Avatar and Tron Legacy. It serves as a powerful display of just how far you can take a simple non-traditional object like a bamboo pole. To get just the right mix of power and edge, Soundiron took a number of high quality 8-foot x 2-inch diameter bamboo poles and sampled them meticulously in their natural state, as mighty epic percussion instruments. When striking and scraping a stone floor with them, the result is an interesting blend of aggressive slaps, clacks, screeches, drones and even howls. This library was recorded in one of Soundiron's favourite lush tile and stone recording halls, with the specific goal of achieving the most massive and powerful epic percussion hall sound they could get. True epic percussion can only be done in a natural hall. It simply can't be faked.

Contents

The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. Also included are 22 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.

This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. The customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. A key and scale lock system is included to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.

The interface is rounded-out by Soundiron's modular FX rack panel, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes Soundiron's favourite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. A great bank of FX rack chain factory presets has been added to get you started!

Kontakt Format

This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument software platform. You can view screenshots of this library's custom graphical user interface in the image gallery above. This library is packed with features to provide you a wide range of sound shaping parameter controls, each one totally automation-ready in your host environment or Kontakt's stand-alone mode.

This is a standard Kontakt open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player does not fully support it and can only run it in a limited "demo mode". However, the sample directories are unlocked so you can use them in other wav-compatible software, sampler and synth formats. The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab and import this library into the Kontakt Quickload window for easy loading and navigation.

Product Specs

• One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format
• 456 Stereo Samples
• 592 MB installed
• 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
• Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization
• High and low stabs, FX, single-shot sustains, tremolos, and looping sustains
• 3 Instrument categories (Percussion, Tonal Effects & Special FX)
• Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
• Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments

System Requirements

Windows

• 7 or higher.
• Dual-Core CPU, 2 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.

Mac

• OSX 10.9 or higher.
• Dual-Core CPU, 2 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.

The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.5 (or later) is required to use .nki instrument presets included in this library. The free Kontakt "Player" and "Add Library" import process do not support this standard open-format Kontakt library.