Results for ambient

Kevin Holland and John Staskevich have launched a Kickstarter project for the Luminth, which lets you generate melodies, percussive grooves, and ambient soundscapes.

The Luminth USB controller: click, turn, push+turn!

The Luminth is a minimalist USB control peripheral. To use the Luminth, simply click, turn, and push+turn. The Luminth changes color with the music.

Luminth Orbiter is a generative music software application. Make dramatic changes to the music with a single click. Dive deeper to make refined, subtle adjustments. Or, let Orbiter work autonomously to create music that morphs over time.

The Luminth is the best way to control Luminth Orbiter software, but Orbiter is fully functional with or without the Luminth.

The project is aiming to get $8,000 USD by June 13th, 2013. The Luminth software is available for a pledge of $30 USD, the USB controller is included with pledges of $100+ USD.

More information: Luminth

Synth Magic has announced the release of Phobos Interstellar Fantasy MKII, an updated version of the sound library for Native Instruments Kontakt.

This update takes the original 3 layer system of Phobos and expands it with a much larger sample library, updated Filter/Res sequencer which can now store patterns as well as switch voice selection on and off within each sequence, the effects sections has also been updated and there is also a new graphical user interface by Anders Hedstrom aka Flavours of Lime.

Phobos features

• Over 150 presets included to get you going on your interstellar trip.
• From ambient spacey alien communications, distant drones, spacey choirs, haunting strings and pads, atmospherics, space organs, Jungle stabs/ progressive house stabs and atmospheres.

The sound library is available for the introductory price of £10 GBP (regular £19.99 GBP).

More information: Synth Magic / Phobos

Equinox Sounds has released the Ambient & Cinematic MIDI Kits sound library.

‘Ambient & Cinematic MIDI Kits’ from Equinox Sounds features five fantastic lush and deep Ambient and Cinematic Construction Kits in MIDI format suitable for Ambient, Cinematic, Soundtrack and TV composers searching for some melodic inspiration.

These MIDI Kits are also perfect as a basis for music for TV and film.

Each Kit is provided with it’s component parts. You’ll get MIDI loops featuring pad melodies, guitar melodies, piano loops, flutes, plucked synths, etc.

As these Construction Kits are supplied in MIDI format, they will provide you with as much flexibility as possible. You can edit and transpose them, assign any sound you want and get your own and original melodic lines. The editing possibilities are endless as you can play the performances at any tempo or pitch without artefacts.

The MIDI pack costs $19.95 USD.

More information: Equinox Sounds /Ambient & Cinematic MIDI Kits

I am always excited to see what Simon Stockhausen of Patchpool can do when he gets his fingers on a new synthesizer plug-in. After hearing some of the teaser sound clips, I knew the Diversion soundset for the Diversion synthesizer plug-in by Dmitry Sches was going to be good.

Diversity includes a total of 101 patches and 6 variations. Simon aimed to create a wide range of diverse sounds…

… reaching from mellow and beautiful bells, pads, textural instruments and expressive lead sounds to edgy and soaring sequences and synths to dark and mysterious drones and soundscapes to otherworldly and abstract textures.

The patches use many custom waveforms made with Diversion and other sources. The sounds of this set were designed to be expressive, featuring complex modulations and x/y morph parameter assignments & aftertouch for more dynamic and expressive playing.

A breakdown of the patch categories:

• 9 Bell & Plucks + 1 variation
• 21 Keys & Synths
• 19 Pads + 2 variations
• 29 Scapes & Drones + 2 variations
• 23 Sequencers + 1 variation

For each of the patches there is a description and/or insights into how the x/y, aftertouch, velocity etc. can be used to control the sounds.

Some of the patches use quite a lot of CPU. Simon recommends reducing polyphony or switching off the unison mode while tracking (and turn it back on for the render). Diversion does some high quality sounds, and I’m more than happy to work around some of the CPU issues until I get a better CPU.

While checking out the sounds I got inspired to do a little piece of music. The sound clip below is made with 5 instances of Diversion, only using patches from the Diversity soundset.

I only spent about 15 minutes from start to render so I didn’t spend much time on the mix and just slapped on a gentle compression on the master. No other processing was done.

For more elaborate examples of the sounds of Diversity, make sure to check Simon’s demos.

So what do I think?

For a synthesizer as good as Diversion, it’s a bit of a shame there are only so few soundsets available for it. I guess there is a smaller market than for Massive, Sylenth1 and the likes, but luckily Patchpool supports the lesser known plug-in developers.

Diversity offers a most wonderful collection of sounds, beautifully designed by seasoned composer and sound designer Simon Stockhausen. With his signature cinematic style, Simon’s sounds are great for soundtracks and ambient music. They are ready to use out of the box, all you need to do is be inspired by them.

If you had a listen to the demos you undoubtedly heard that these sounds are designed in a way that when played alongside one or two other patches, or even individually, they are completely musical, expressive and generally totally mesmerizing. You just get completely immersed in the sounds, what inspiration!

More information: Patchpool / Diversity

Samplephonics has released Deep Textures, a sound library featuring a selection of ambient soundscapes, evolving textures and layered ambiences, plus a custom instrument for Kontakt 5 that allows unlimited flexibility over morphing, manipulating and processing.

Whether you are working on soundtrack compositions, deep electronica (house, dubstep, dnb, trip hop) or video game sound design, this sample library provides a truly diverse sonic pallete of long evolving loops that can be applied to create deep organic textures and evolving emotive ambiences, ranging from the dark and grimy to the hypnotic and etheral.

Deep Textures features

• 550 MB total content.
• Custom Kontakt 5 Instrument with 10 example layers (main download only – requires Kontakt 5 to work).
• 100+ 24 Bit Wav soundscape loops + samples, 15-30 seconds long.
• Sampler Instruments for Kontakt 4, Reason NN-XT and EXS24.

The sound library costs £34.70 GBP.

More information: Samplephonics / Deep Textures

The Unfinished has announced the release of Massive Darkscore IV, the latest release in the Darkscore series, which aims to provide cutting edge digital electronic sounds for hybrid film scoring and atmospheric electronica.

Darkscore IV is a collection of 200 high quality patches for NI Massive, full of gritty basslines, energetic synth sequences, deep pads, roaring basses and dark soundscapes.

If you are looking to add some deep, dark, driving electronics and atmospherics to your music, this collection provides you with a huge range of sonic possibilities. At its core it is targeted at the darker side of electronic film scoring, but is also flexible enough to be used in atmospheric electronic genres such as dubstep, ambient and industrial. The collection has been influenced by recent film scores, such as Total Recall and Judge Dredd, as well as the twisted electronic tones of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Each patch comes with flexible control via the eight macro knobs, allowing you to quickly control the tone and dynamics of the sounds and providing access to hundreds of new variations.

Darkscore IV for Massive is available to purchase for £19.99 GBP (requires NI Massive 1.3 or higher, .nmsv format). A free demo pack is available to download.

More information: The Unfinished / Massive Darkscore IV