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Rumba Boxes is a creative assortment of large wooden bass kalimbas from the mind of master instrument inventor Bart Hopkin. This library features 2 unique handcrafted instruments with memorable shapes and mechanics. They have a richly acoustic essence that resounds brightly through each note. Soundiron included a wide spectrum of playable articulations, sound-design textures, pads, drones, and multiple microphone options to give you fresh musical inspiration.
Rumba Box is a name used in the English-speaking Caribbean for bass kalimba. Typically the player sits on the box, reaching down between his legs to pluck the tines. Most are chromatic, with tines made of spring-tempered steel rods or bars. Some tines have been reshaped to adjust the tuning of the most prominent overtone relative to the fundamental, making a more coherent tone quality. Some have rattles on the tines. The rattles bring out the re-tuned overtone and give a distinctive edge to the tone. Rumba Box includes plucks, picks, and percussion.
Arby McCone is a rumba-box/cajón/percussion-gadgetry agglomeration. Originally it was just a rumba box, but it also worked very nicely as a cajón — a wooden box made to sound good under a variety of hand-percussion strokes. Arby is aided by sympathetic resonance in the tines, which greatly enriches certain kinds of percussion strokes. Bart Hopkin then attached more percussive sound-makers, including spring-mounted metallic sounds & clave sounds, shekere-type beads, shakers, rattletines, and a couple of bells. This thing is really fun to play. Arby McCone includes plucks, mallets, percussive taps, knocks, slaps, and a variety of aux percussion.
Soundiron have faithfully sampled every interesting sound they could get out of these instruments, with two stereo mic positions. Also included is a wide selection of custom FX presets and plenty of Soundiron's signature sound-designed ambient content, crafted from the raw acoustic source to give you complete creative freedom.
The Artist - Bart Hopkin
Bart Hopkin has been active in many facets of music-making, including instrument building, performing and recording, composition, arrangement, education, and ethnomusicological research. Bart is also an established author, with ten books published on the subjects of instrument design and optimization.
Since 1974, Bart has been designing and constructing all the far-flung musical instruments he could dream up, with an emphasis on unusual and inventive acoustic art. The Hopkin Instrumentarium now has over 110 original creations and continues to grow every year. Soundiron is proud to bring you this inspiring and distinctive series of bespoke instruments not found anywhere else on earth.
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. Soundiron have also included 20 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. Soundiron's customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. Also included is a key and scale lock system 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. Soundiron have added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!
Features
- 4 Master presets and 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets.
- 2 Unique Hand-crafted Rumba Boxes each with 2 mic positions.
- Plucks, picks, hand percussion, aux percussion.
- 24-bit, 48 kHz Stereo Lossless NCW Format.
- 13,719 Stereo Samples.
- 7.13 GB Installed.
- Made for the free Kontakt Player (version 6+), Komplete Kontrol, all S-Series Keyboards and NKS software and hardware by Native Instruments.
- Works with the Kontakt "Libraries" browser and Native Access.
System Requirements
This library has been licensed for use in the free Kontakt Player virtual instrument engine. It can be used in Kontakt Player or the full retail version of Kontakt (version 5.6.8 or later) for VST, AU or AAX instrument plugin formats. You can add this product to the Kontakt “Libraries” browser. It requires online serial number registration through the Native Instruments Service Center app. This library is also fully compatible with Komplete Kontrol and all S-Series Keyboard Controllers by Native Instruments.
Any references to any brands on this site/page, including reference to brands and instruments, are provided for description purposes only. For example references to instrument brands are provided to describe the sound of the instrument and/or the instrument used in the sample. Plugin Boutique do not have (nor do they claim) any association with or endorsement by these brands. Any goodwill attached to those brands rest with the brand owner. Plugin Boutique or its Suppliers do not accept any liability in relation to the content of the product or the accuracy of the description. "RHODES" is a registered trademark of Joseph A Brandstetter.