Fracture Sounds has released Zen Drum, a deep sampled a deep sampled steel Hank Drum for Native Instruments Kontakt 5.
The library includes four articulations, tonal resonance for chromatic playing while resonating, and an atmosphere layer that can be used to create lush, sustained tails.
A key component of the tank drum’s physical design is the way neighbouring notes resonate alongside the main note played, resulting in a rich tonal resonance – an important sonic characteristic which we wanted to capture. This presented us with some unique challenges when sampling the instrument, namely that the original instrument is tuned to an 8-note scale, while we wanted Zen Drum to be a chromatic instrument that could be played in any key.
Our solution was to capture the pure tones of each note separately from the resonance, allowing us to spread the notes chromatically across the keyboard while keeping the resonance at the correct tuning. This approach had numerous other benefits: the ability to control the volume of the resonance, or to turn it off entirely for a completely pure tone, the ability to shift the tonal centre of the instrument for playing in any key, and several other performance improvements under-the-hood for maximum realism.
Zen Drum features
- Deep sampled steel tone drum.
- 5 dynamic layers, up to 10 round robins.
- Our signature ‘atmosphere’ layer.
- Unique ‘resonance’ control for maximum flexibility.
- ‘Tonal Centre’ feature for authentic chromatic playing in any key.
- Simple and user-friendly interface.
- 2.03GB download size (NCW compressed from a ~4GB sample pool).
- Requires the full version of Kontakt 5.3 or above.
Zen Drum costs £29.99 GBP. It is available for the intro price of £19.99 GBP until June 12th, 2018.
More information: Fracture Sounds
