This exciting new collection features all of the instruments detailed below.
31 amazing hand crafted and totally exclusive Kontakt Instruments from Michael Bietenholz.
Most of these instruments come with dynamic scripts, front panel control and deep Kontakt programming.
Darbuka Instrument:
The sample-set has separate samples for different strike-styles, with multiple-velocity and round-robin variations of each one for an expressive and varied sound. Each sample was recorded with two mics, one for the head and one for the body.
The custom Kontakt interface provides a control for mixing the head and body mic samples.
In addition to the regular drum, the instrument has a separate bass version of the sound with a tuning control. Finally, there is the choice of a long or a short convolution reverb and a control for the reverb amount.
DR Drum Instrument:
The samples are arranged so you get 8 drum kits.
So write your drum pattern, and you can instantly try it out with 8 different drum kits from standard to electronic (Just Solo the Kontakt Multi’s).
Or you can mix them, or play them all at the same time for a ridiculously huge drum sound. A great tool for roughing out your drum sounds, and it has some great non-standard sounds on it. The demo just repeats the same drum pattern with the 8 different kits.
The kit contains 75 individual samples (mono + stereo), recorded directly to computer, all normalized and trimmed
Stainless Kitchen Vibes Instrument:
This kit was born as a number of hits of a stainless steel cutlery holder.
Its a clangy but melodic and bell-like foray into the joy of inharmonic overtones.
Recorded in macro-stereo with a pair of small-diaphragm condensers and ART mic-pre.
Sampled at multiple velocity levels and with multiple hits for a very responsive, dynamic sound.
The mod-wheel controls the amount of the fundamental tone.
KPR77 Instrument:
KPR77 - what the bleep is a KPR77?
It was Korg's answer to the TR808.
We've all heard lots of 808s.
The KPR77 is for when you want that analogue drum machine sound but want something different!
Tight analogue drum sounds, a little rawer and nastier than the 808.
Potlid Instrument:
Another one from the kitchen. This is a multi-sampled pot-lid, which makes a beautiful and unique tubular-bell like melodic percussion instrument.
Recorded in macro stereo with a matched pair of condensers in an x-y pattern, played by none other than the pot-lid percussion wunderkind Jenni. There are round-robin alternating hits, multiple velocity samples, note-offs, and two different strike-styles which are keyswitched.
Wooden Frog Instrument:
This particular example, hand carved in Peru, was the very one used in "Across the Andes by Frog". Recorded in situ in the steamy jungle of my music room, in macro-stereo with a matched pair of studio condensers in an x-y pattern. A wide selection of sounds were recorded at different velocity levels, with alternate sounds triggered in round-robin fashion, for a very expressive instrument (over 40 samples), going all the way from the frog's natural range to a pitched-down bass thud.
Mondo Linn Instrument:
This started off as a sampleset of the classic Linn drum-machine. If you had $4995 in 1980, you could have got one of these!
But: you don't come to me for a straight up Linn sampleset - grab your mod-wheel and pitchbend, and the full Kontakt effects chain gets medieval on your ass, and we go off into a mondo bit-crushed, convoluted garbled sound.
Imagine a one-eyed madman, living since the early 1980ies inside a missile silo with only a Linn LM1, a jerrycan of LSD and a speaker with a ripped cone.
The DX7 Instrument:
It was my first real keyboard! I have unearthed it from beneath the layers of archeological detritus left by subsequent civilizations to bring you this massive sample set.
This is a set of wierd and wonderful percussion
sounds.
Most sounds are sampled at multiple velocity levels - the great thing about the DX7 was how organically the sounds responded to velocity. Many of these sounds are my original patches and are not avaliable anywhere else. There were so many of them I realized I would never be able to showcase them all in a demo of less than album length, so I just played each sound in succession.
Cedarbass Instrument:
This is a woody, acoustic-sounding bass.
Multi-sampled, with different velocity-levels and articulations, round-robin triggering of alternate samples, note-off noises etc.
You want dirt? I'll give you dirt! Turn the knob and the amp simulation kicks in.
Even better, there is a Kontakt script to do intelligent legato - you can simultaneously tie legato notes together and play polyphonic bass-lines (listen to the demo).
DX Fretless Instrument:
Sampled at multiple velocities to accurately capture the non-linear velocity response - the best thing about the DX7. The Kontakt interface has a wealth of controls: You can choose polyphonic or a monophonic mode with controllable glide-time. You can control the volume of the "attack" that comes in when you hit it hard. You can select whether to include a chorus and/or some dirt, i.e., characteristic DX7 aliasing: Yes, these samples were made direct from a custom-programmed sound played on my own real, vintage 12-bit DX7 with all its warts. Finally, you can also select between two sets of samples which simulate playing near the neck or near the bridge. Additional performance controls include after-touch mapped to vibrato, and the mod-wheel brings in a subtle "wow" as you let the note ring
Journeyman Bass Instrument:
You always need more bass!
Here's a journeyman's fingered electric bass sound with lots of control. Sampled at multiple velocities with round-robin alternates. It is also key-switched to allow a selection of playing styles from fretted near the nut, fretted up the neck, muted, slide up and slide down. There are also note-off samples, and controllable fret-buzz noises. There is also my custom legato script, which allows a controllable fingered legato, either full time or just for notes which are played close together. The mod-wheel cranks the amp up to 11, and you have your choice of three different cabinet simulations.
Very Large Array Instrument:
The sound of a real radio telescope at work!
All the samples in this kit are from my own unique field-recordings of the noise made as the Very Large Array radio telescopes track a distant quasar across the sky.
Jodie Foster has nothing on this: it is way beyond atmospheric! Use whenever you wish to invoke the sounds of spiral density waves sloshing around in the interstellar medium, triggering another wave of star formation.
Windy Instrument:
A pure-wave analog-style sound with controllable random pitch modulation. It goes from a sine-wave to an almost noise-like whistling sound to sample-and-hold textures. It's very controllable, designed for real-time playing. The mod wheel controls the amount of pitch modulation, and there is a dedicated control for the modulation speed. The custom Kontakt script provides a host of further controls: You can select from monophonic response with two different glide (portamento) modes or polyphonic response.
There is a control allowing a mix of pure sine and quasi-square waveshapes
Wide Beam Stun Instrument:
The final phaser solution
To achieve this big, way-stoned sound, this instrument uses multiple phasers running at three different speeds: The Kontakt Interface has a control for the phaser-speed which simultaneously changes the speed of the three different LFO's that control the swirly madness. The low end can be turned into an analogue-bass, also with controls on the interface.
The mod-wheel fades from the full phaser to a crunched, band-pass filtered sound, and pitch-bend does double duty to pitch-bend bass-notes and low-pass filter the rest.
Maxflange Instrument:
Its more than just a flanger slapped on top of a sawtooth waveform - anybody can do that - each note is individually flanged and a little overdriven, so when you play a chord everything goes at different rates and beats like mad.
Uses after-touch (key-pressure) for vibrato and the mod-wheel controls the filter.
The Kontakt script/performance view has an "attack" knob which controls the amount of attack so you can go from full-on lead to little arpeggiator blips.
Ringmod Instrument:
This ringmod is optimized for playability!
The mod-wheel controls the filter cutoff, two-octave pitch-bend, key-pressure brings in vibrato, and three dedicated controls for the modulation frequency, glide (portamento), and for the built-in delay.This patch uses devious Kontakt programming to implement a ring modulator (or at least a two-quadrant multiplier for you pedants). Which means it will respond naturally to pitch-bends, and the modulation frequency can be controlled in realtime for a very dynamic sound.
Saurus Instrument:
Here's a complex, analogue resonant-filter sound. It consists of four separate layers, the two main layers providing a nice stereo sound with just enough detuning to make it fat, a separate sine-layer to make sure that the bass-oomph is always there, and a unique "buzz" layer, which is occasionally triggered to provide just a bit of rattle and buzz.There's a Kontakt script which implements legato mode, much like most analog synths, where legato notes play without re-triggering the sample or the filter envelope. A button controls whether its polyphonic or in legato mode. The mod-wheel is routed to the filter cutoff, and the Kontakt interface has knobs to allow other fiddlings, because this is a fiddling sort of sound!
Overtone Instrument:
This is a vocal patch comprising a number of different samples of overtone singing for a deep vocal pad.
It is the sound of the subtonic monks in the cathedral caves of Cerulean 4.
Well okay, that's my theory anyway!
The goal is not an ultimately realistic patch, but rather one that is playable and expressive, hence there is fairly deep programming
Jenny’s Wineglass Instrument:
This is a slow, atmospheric, deep-crystal pad made from the sounds of a single wineglass.
The glass was played by the lovely Jenny Wren, and recorded in "macro-stereo".
The body of each note is the very dreamy sound made as Jenny slides her moistened finger round and round the glass, and playing harder brings in a bell-like sound of the wineglass being struck.
Mechanalog Instrument:
A creaky, rather detuned "mechanical" synth, which makes its sounds with a Heath-Robinson sort of mechanism involving lots of tiny little gears etc. The main samples are from my venerable Korg MS20 (not strictly speaking mechanical, but very definitely analog). To round out the sound, some grindy noises and Hammond-type keyclicks have been added. Perfect for a reese bassline, good for leads and for when you need that retro-funky but not-quite-adequately-lubricated disco sound.
Resonator Instrument:
The Resonator is a unique sound, reminiscent of pioneering, pre-1950, electronic instruments like the Ondioline and the Theremin.
It works like this:
You play a melody with the right hand, and hold down a chord with the left. As you are playing the melody, different notes of the chord will be brought out as they resonate with whatever melody notes you are holding in the left hand. All this is accomplished with a custom script for Kontakt, not available anywhere else - Its like a dedicated VST instrument.
The result is a rich texture that constantly shifts with different notes coming to the fore, all in a gorgeous space provided by the Kontakt convolution reverb.
Grainy Instrument:
A granular synthesis pad machine: a texture that can go from sonar-ping blippy to the Russian red army chorus to a desert wind howling in the night. Instead of playing a looped sound, this patch uses Kontakt scripting to implement granular synthesis, by firing thousands of tiny sound blips at your ears at random. This unique K2 script is not available anywhere else.
Shepard Instrument:
A Shepard tone, for those that don't know, is a sort of aural barber pole, a tone that never stops rising, but never actually gets higher. A Shepard tone was used on Smith & Selway's hit "Total Departure" and was also the sound of the Bat-Pod on "The Dark Knight". Reach for this when you need to give your tune that "eternally lifting" feeling of a musical log-g environment..This Kontakt-based Shepard-tone generator is fully polyphonic - each key you play produces its own independent Shepard tone, so you can build up huge sound textures by playing thick chords. The the mod-wheel controls the speed of rising or falling.
Bulbul Tarang Instruments:
The Bulbul Tarang has two sets of strings, one for melody and one for drones. The melody strings are all tuned in unison. They are fretted by keys and played with a plectrum.
This massive sample collection has multiple-velocity samples with round-robin alternates, along with note-off samples, and separate samples for the drone strings. All samples decay naturally - no looping. It has a custom Kontakt script which reproduces the monophonic response of the real instrument where lifting a key can cause the note to continue to ring at the root note produced by the open strings, with a selectable root-note. The interface also allows you to choose a polyphonic mode, and the tuning of the drone strings. It comes in two versions! An acoustic and an electric version.
Also known as the Indian Banjo, it is a common folk instrument from India. The electric version comes with controllable distortion and an amp-simulator.
Solina Instrument:
Oh Solina, how I pine for you. A few bits of wood, a few frequency divider circuits and a bucket-brigade delay line was all it took to make everyone from the Cure to Pink Floyd to Jean-Michel Jarre fall in love with you.....
A multi-sampled ARP Solina String Ensemble, with as always, a few tasty extras - and if you didn't want extras, you'd just go down to Ye Olde Vintage Keyboard Shoppe and buy the real thing, wouldn't you?
Toy Piano Instrument:
I have sampled it extensively, as I wanted to retain the highest fidelity and authenticity! Each note is sampled at two velocities, so you get the full effect of the differences between the keys, although I did extend the range a little bit, and unlike the real thing, there are black keys. The special note-off noises are also sampled (note-off volume is controllable).
Mellovtronika Instrument:
The famous Mellotron strings sound.
But its not a static Mellotron sample:
I've made it respond to velocity.
A touch of the mod-wheel smoothly brings in a phaser for an even more retro sound.
And there's still more: a dedicated midi-control causes the Mellotron sound to break up into a granular, faraway sound like the lost transmission from a pirate radio station on a ship that went down in the Bermuda triangle in 1969.
A convolution plate-reverb rounds it out.
Mellifluous Instrument:
A multi-sampled Mellotron flute.
I've expanded its mind a little though: digging into the keys with aftertouch brings in a bit of a growl, and a dedicated control fades in an octave doubled sound. If you want to get more radical, grab the mod-wheel and the whole thing gets pumped through a cranked-up amp for distorted leads to make your guitar player weep. A convolution reverb, plate of course - how else are you going to record your Mellotron? rounds it all out.
Bone Flute Instrument:
The Bone Flute. This sampled instrument is designed for realistic flute lines:
Long main samples, a selection of different attack samples for various playing styles, and separate samples for wind noise.The Kontakt script allows realistic monophonic legato-playing.Real-time controls for breath, wind-noise tremolo and octave-doubling are available through knobs provided by the Kontakt script or through Midi CCs.
The Bone-flute is lovingly programmed to provide a playing experience markedly superior to anything else available in the Paleolithic and even well into the Neolithic ages.
Milk Bottle Instrument:
A Vintage Milk Bottle: for that wide-mouth breathy down-home whoosh. I found this vintage example in the bushes behind my house outside of Johannesburg - the modern ones just don't sound like this anymore. Sampled with various levels of water in for different notes. There are three playing modes - normal, normal with attack and staccato. And, of course with multiple velocities and round-robin. Lots of extra control: The mod wheel brings in a tremolo. The dedicated Kontakt interface provides a host of other controls: you can choose the playing mode (normal, attack or staccato) manually or have the three modes keyswitched (pick 88 or 61-key keyboard layout), there is a control for the tremolo speed which goes from tremolo to rapid burr, and finally, you can choose between two different built-in convolution reverbs.
