Whale Drum

The Whale Drum is a modern example of one of the world’s oldest known instrument families: the tongue or slit drum. These progenitors of the “idiophone” family were originally developed in Africa thousands of years ago. They were originally carved from hollow logs or wooden blocks and struck to produce percussive musical tones. It is one of the few instruments considered to possibly predate language itself. Over the ages, slit drums have been substantially refined to allow more accurate intonation and wider key ranges. We selected our whaledrum for its marimba-like warmth, dreamy tone, gentle softly-rounded attack and subtly undulating decay. The lower notes have an especially deep richness to them.

We recorded our 14” 8-tongued vermilion tongue drum in a dry studio environment with mallets, wooden sticks and brushes. We recorded each mallet struck note at both tongue center and edge positions, with an average of 10 dynamic velocity layers and 10 round-robin variations per note. The stick and brush articulations were played over various edges and surfaces around the drum. We then recorded a second session with the instrument in a large reverberant tile and stone hall from a slight distance with mallets and sticks. This “wet” hall sound is ideal for orchestral arrangements and more atmospheric songwriting.

As a bonus, we also recorded a smaller 3-note slit drum and a wooden toy xylophone. There is also a great bonus selection of delicate atmospheric pads and evolving ambiences sculpted from the original acoustic source material. All of these articulations and sound sets offer independent articulation layering, blending and switching right at your fingertips.

Contents

The UI comes packed with lots of great sound-shaping controls like swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. The Advanced Control window adds additional options like an LFO with shape, target, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in control. You can also choose from 12 low-pass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, key position and step-sequencer table control. The ARP system features a velocity sequencer and controls for arp direction, note timing, swing, randomization and duration. The new key and scale lock system allows for easy melodic composition and live performance. It's all rounded out by our modular FX rack window, 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 phase, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more.

• Full 10x10 Round Robin
• Expressive dynamic layering
• Dry Whale Drum Mallets, Sticks, Brushes and Effects
• Wet Hall Whale Drum Mallets and Sticks
• Baby Whale Drum
• Toy Xylophone
• Sound-designed ambiences and atmospheric synth pads
• Stick and Brush Percussion Effects

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. Check out screenshots of our custom graphical user interface for Kontakt. They provide 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 do not fully support it and can only run it in a time-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, or import it into the Kontakt database and Quickload tools for easy navigation, loading and organization.

Product Specs

• 2 master NKI instrument banks in open Kontakt format
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
• Multi-sampled acoustic articulations and designed atmospheric sounds
• 3173 stereo samples
• 1.14 GB Installed
• 24-bit, 48 kHz Stereo PCM Wav Format
• 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.
• Mac OSX 10.9 or higher.
• Dual Core CPU, 2 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.

Important Note: The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.5+ 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.