Native Instruments Kontakt is an extremely powerful and versatile tool. And yet, if you’re anything like me, you typically use Kontakt as if it were just a simple sample player for your instrument libraries.

And that’s a shame because there’s so much more… If you’ve flipped through the Kontakt manual you might remember reading something about KSP (Kontakt Script Processor) scripts.

The KSP scripting language provides access to essential parameters and many forms of advanced event processing, and allows for custom instrument control panels (i.e. the Kontakt 3 library instruments) and advanced MIDI processors to be captured in user scripts.

The guys at Soniccouture recognize the power of KSP; they have already included scripts in products like Abstrakt and Hang Drum, improving playability and providing new and exciting ways to work with the instruments.

Their latest title Scriptorium features a large collection of sound design tools to spice up your Kontakt experience:

• 35 KSP scripts,
• 60 advanced Kontakt instruments,
• and 4 video tutorials.

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Inspiration Sounds recently released Pure Live Breaks Vol 1, a collection of drum grooves played by International Session Drummer, Gary Widlake.

Pure Live Breaks Vol 1 features over 270MB of rough and ready drumloops recorded at tempos from 95-130 BPM.

You get a little over 120 dry loops and the same amount of processed loops, in Acidized .wav, REX2, and Apple Loops formats.

The drum kit used for the recordings sounds nice and clear, with a thumpy kick and crunchy snare. Although the sound of the drums is identical across the various loops, there is quite a variety of grooves which fit well in pop and funk music, and can easily be used in other genres as well.

Looping live drums is always a bit tricky, dealing with cymbals and such. Inspiration Sounds has done a great job crafting loops with natural sounding starts and looping points.

The processed loops sound a little more aggressive (multi-band compression, some reverb perhaps) and are probably better suited for pop/rock or electronic music.

So what do I think?

It’s rather hard to program drums to sound live, which is good for people like Gary. I’m quite taken by the work he has done on these grooves. They are diverse and many loops can be cut up so you can improvise on them in your music. I personally like the sound of the drums a lot: tight & crunchy, though laid back & groovy.

Inspiration Sounds has put up a demo track and some free samples, so check those to see if you think these are some of the freshest and phattest drum grooves around.

Pure Live Breaks Vol 1 is available for download for £19.95 GBP (about $40 USD) from Inspiration Sounds.

Soniccouture recently released Balinese Gamelan, a 24GB sample library featuring the sounds of a Balinese Gamelan.

So, what is a Gamelan?

A Gamelan is an ensemble of instruments originating from Indonesia. The majority of Gamelan instruments are percussive, and most of these are bronze. They include xylophone-like metallophones of different sizes and pitch, tuned gong chimes, very large pitched gongs, and an assortment of drums and percussion. There are many types of Gamelan ensembles, but the two dominant types are Javanese and Balinese. Balinese Gamelan has a characteristic ’shimmering’ sound which is due to the detuning of paired instruments playing the same musical part.

It seems no two gamelan ensembles are the same. Each instrument in a gamelan is built and tuned to be part of one specific ensemble.

Apart from traditional gamelan music, its sounds can also be found in many film soundtracks (i.e. Akira) and even in modern dance music.

Soniccouture’s Balinese Gamelan features samples of a Semara Dana, built in 2004 by I Made Gabeleran of Blahbatuh, Bali.

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Goldbaby Productions has released another sample library featuring some sampled drum machines: Analog AutoRhythms Vol 1.

After the familiar sounds of the The Tape808, 909 and freebie 606 (all Roland TR machines), Goldbaby dug up 8 somewhat more obscure vintage drum machines to sample.

Analog AutoRhythms Vol 1 comes with a nice PDF with detailed information on each drum machine.

• Conn Rhapsody Rhythm Unit - This is a (rare) rhythm unit from a Conn Rhapsody organ. It has 22 presets and 10 sounds.
• Korg Rhythm 55B - This Roland CR competitor has some warm analog sounds. It has a stunning 96 patterns, and 10 sounds (looks like this is the version 2 model without the disco rhythms).
• Electro Harmonix DRM 15 / 16 / 32 - Features the lovely space-drum and the snap sounds. The analogue sounds from these boxes are great for electro music.
• Eko Ritmo 12 - The little brother of the Ritmo 20, this rhythm box has 12 preset rhythms.
• Univox Micro Rhythmer - A small little analog box with 8 preset rhythms and 5 individual sounds. I thought the Rhythmer only had a kick sound with layered hihat, but this machine does have the individual base drum sound (and snare, hi hat, open hi hat and rim shot).
• Roland Rhythm 330 - The Rhythm 330 (or TR-330) has a warm analog sound. It’s another organ rhythm box without the actual organ. Comes with some lovely cheesy patterns.
• Hohner Rhythm 80K - This German rhythm unit features 80 patterns and 8 sounds. It’s sounds rather tame with a subby kick and modest snare sounds.
• Olson X-100 - An American rhythm unit that nobody seems to know much about. The 8 individual sounds can be triggered. It sounds quite noisy and rough to me.

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