This month our sample producers have come up with their own warped take on the orchestral ‘thing’, mashing up a range of sounds good and proper. This aural pandemonium is intended for music and sound design on the more experimental side of the tracks, but that’s not to say they couldn’t be used for even the most commercial of tunes by those with the nerve to try it.
CM Classics
800 16-bit samples
This month’s trip back to issues old takes us into the mid-50s and features The Electronic Garden’s Baby Bee multisampled Hammond M3, as well as further collections from the Groove Criminals and Cyclick Samples, a selection of pads and textures from TEG, and 185 drum rhythms in MIDI format.
Cyclick Samples - cyclick.samples@ntlworld.com
Groove Criminal HQ - email: groovecriminals@Yahoo.co.uk
The Electronic Garden - www.theelectronicgarden.com
501 TEG Paax 2 CM patches
A batch of samples and patches for the Paax 2 CM sampler, produced by The Electronic Garden. TEG have created a comprehensive collection of ready-to-use instruments, tracked at 24-bit quality and mapped out across the keyboard.
The collection includes pianos, basses, guitars, strings, brass and keys, along with a few special FX. To help you out, TEG have included a few basic construction maps so you can build your own patches with the minimum of fuss.
Before use, copy the entire CMPaax folder to your hard drive so that the plug-in knows where to look for the samples.
The Electronic Garden - www.theelectronicgarden.com
200 rachMiel Specialist samples
“I decided this month that, rather than make interesting oddities that might end up collecting dust, I’d present some truly useable samples. To help me figure out what kinds of samples were most useful, I asked the guys at
the KvR Forum for help. They suggested: loops with tempos in the file names; long evolving notes and chords recorded at different pitches; no complex melodic lines; ditto for all but the simplest basslines. Several people said that what they really wanted was idiosyncratic rachMielia that they could get nowhere else. Thanks guys – I listened, and here are the results.”
rachMiel - www.rachmiel.org
ANDREW DUKE BATTERED D-BASS
321 24-BIT SAMPLES
For his contribution to our demented symphonia, ‘The Duke’ descended into his studio, pulled out a pre-1900 German flatback double bass and proceeded to deftly strike it with a carbon fibre bow. Three weeks later he emerged bearing this eclectic range of material, created with some seriously inventive bowing and recorded with two mics piped into Adobe Audition 2.
The results are completely free of effects, making them ideal for your own musings, and include a variety of individual sounds, harmonic exercises and bowing techniques, alongside some more obvious chords and riffs.
Andrew Duke - www.andrew-duke.com
CYCLICK SAMPLES LOOP KITS
305 24-BIT LOOPS
Cyclick have created ten tempo kits of 25 to 35 loops, each made up of five to seven different sound variations. The loops have, on the whole, a bar or two of decay left on the end due to excessive reverb and delay abuse. The samples are named with the instrument/style type (e.g. ‘Marc’ is Marcato, ‘Pizz’ is Pizzicato, etc), followed by a letter referring to the sound variation (A to F), the tempo and the key.
The sounds range from atmospheric to aggressively distorted and will help you see your orchestral patches and sample collections in a new light. They constitute great fodder for mash-ups, as well as making a nice change from standard synth and pad programming.
Cyclick Samples - cyclick.samples@ntlworld.com
GROOVE CRIMINALS - UNKYARD ORCHESTRA
185 24-BIT SAMPLES
The Criminals have been busy this month with a wild collection of tools, bits of metal, pots and pans, transforming them into a bizarre collection of sounds.
There’s a whole range of SR-202 and Battery kits, and the collection is complemented with a host of atmospheres and textures produced by processing the hell out of a bunch of synthesized stringed instruments. The dons of sonic criminality then completed the set by attacking a guitar with a violin bow and shoving the results through a convoluted collection of stomp boxes. Pure evil…
Groove Criminal HQ - email: groovecriminals@Yahoo.co.uk
MIKE WEEKS MULTISAMPLES
OSMOSITRON – 12 PATCHES
Osmosis was the primary synthesis method used by the Osmositron – similar to the Optigan and Mellotron, but using metallic conductors to channel EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenom) signals, rather than tape banks. This selection of 12 patches is a true rarity – cherish them, cos you won’t find them anywhere else!
PISMOTRON – 11 PATCHES
A guitar synth developed in the 30s, the Pismotron uses a plate made of crystalline sand and phonograph needles to create shimmering walls of ‘Pisms’ from reverberations on the glass. Different plates were made, and pitch control was handled by the equally weird Pismotar that came with it.
GLISSENTAR – 7 PATCHES
This guitar-mulator was most likely derived from a university experiment. Here, it’s processed for some modern impressions of what it might have sounded like today had it not been superseded.
Visit Mike's website at www.endmusik.com
MIKE WEEKS ONE-SHOTS AND LOOPS
ARCHIVAL
60 shots of madness – voices from beyond bring you all the sounds you need for proper ghostcore.
PISMOTAR LOCK GROOVES
In his hunt for rare Pismotron plates, Mike discovered some that had lock-grooves and sampled them. 40 crazy grooves, that may redefine groovy.
STARTLE STABS
Careful with these – they’re speaker-poppers! Designed to punch out and startle your audience.
Technical note: For proper installation of the SFZ patches, place the SFZ files into the sample folders themselves (ie, Pismopooder.sfz goes into the Pismopooder samples folder)
Visit Mike's website at www.endmusik.com