Metallurgy

Concepts: Sound Design and Custom Metal Work in Kontakt

The more Kontakt has continued its dominance in the sampling market the less we find ourselves with a desire to reach for other samplers. In fact more often than not we find ourselves trying to get older material into Kontakt. However we know that mapping and polishing patches can be a very time consuming (and demoralizing) process. We decided to do the heavy lifting for you here, setting up all the parameters in a recipe just reacquiring some creativeness!

We teamed up with the talented sound designers at Boom Library to create the source sample material. Their source material, with our interface, makes for a great pairing. This is vol. 1 of many more to come.

Kontakt already offers a wide variety of tools for modifying a source sound into a finished, produced sound however in the shadow of a looming deadline more often then not we are forced to use Kontakt pre-sets or other products to get what we need. Our intention with this product was to provide you with a set of tools, specially made for you to be creative without relying upon presets (even though we included a bunch of ideas just to get you started). Our first volume uses some wonderfully recorded metal/industrial source material.

Kontakt Design: Volume 1 Metallurgy features what may be the most powerful Kontakt interface to date

Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of this page.

What you can accomplish:

In Metallurgy a finished “patch” is made of one to four layers run through up to 4 global FX. Each layer contains one “source” sound modified through a series of “personalized” modifiers. Lets look at these modifiers:

IMPORTANT NOTE: To edit a preset, just CMD click (or control click on PC) on the [!] button on the interface. This will put it into edit mode and allow you to edit the patch.

Layer Modifiers/Parameters:

• Gain - the volume of the layer
• Pan - the position in the stereo field of the layer
• Offset - the delay in milliseconds before the sound triggers
• Tune - the root pitch of the layer from extremely deep to extremely high
• Repeat - the amount in eighth notes you want a sound to repeat itself after the initial strike
• R-fade - the amount in velocity each successive “repeat” will decrease in volume from the previous one
• Reverse - triggers the sound in reverse

Each layer then has three individualized FX settings which must be turned on/off via the power switch: EQ, Reverb and Delay.

After you have your desired amount of layers you can access the (global) “FX” settings. Here you can chose up to four effects (out of eight) which will effect all your layers simultaneously.

• EQ - A 3 band mastering Equalizer
• Reverb - A mastering reverb – a small touch always seems to help
• Flanger - A tool which can add a modern sweeping effect to your sound
• Chorus - A mechanical sounding micro doubling effect – perfect for sci-fi and modernism
• Distortion - Bit distortion plug in, perfect for going lo-fi
• Compression - A typical mastering compressor
• Phaser - That familiar tape-flanging effect
• Rotator - A tool which modifies the stereo field

• Kontakt FULL v4.2.4 or Higher
• ~5.7gb Harddrive space required