Ahoy!



!!! UPDATE Mar 1st 2013 !!!

You guys are crazy. 3.000 people listened to my little demo in just over a month.
I guess one can call this "popular demand", so I decided to give Tiny Metal Impact an update!

This update includes:
* Kontakt 4 monolith version of TMI incl. deep (for me ^^) scripting for key display etc.
* New and much nicer GUI
* Key switching between instruments (C0, C#0, D0, D#0) in both Kontakt and the player.

Things to mind:
* TMI @ Kontakt and TMI @ VSTi/AUi Player are two completely different beasts. Their Reverbs are NOT the same.
* I haven't figured out yet how to control the Envelope in Kontakt, so there's no Attack knob yet. Be assured: it will follow.
* Key switching in TMI VSTi/AUi player WORKS, but the "Instrument" box at the top of the GUI doesn't show the change yet. Hope that can be fixed soon.

(Scroll down for updated TMI player GUI)
The new Kontakt GUI looks like this:



You can download the files for free here:
http://free.chokehold.net/tiny-metal-impact/

!!! UPDATE Mar 1st 2013 !!!


In the last couple of days I did a very strange thing for a KVRist... I hooked up my Mic to my Interface and actually recorded something. Hah. I could hardly believe it myself.


Anyway, what came of it were 95 little samples which I very neatly sorted into 4 instrument categories:

* Clicks (40 sounds)
* Clangs (14 sounds)
* Pops (14 sounds)
* Chimes (27 sounds)

The title "Tiny Metal Impact" and the names of these four instrument categories alone should be enough to give you a clue as to what's cooking. If you still don't know, read on... otherwise just skip down to the demo track or the downloads.


Basically, it's just tiny metal things colliding with other tiny metal things. There are coins, keys, a fork, a wee candy tin, and I let them all play together. Hell, I even brought out my trusty DI box to get a clang or two, as well as some switching noises.

There are also some mouse-clicks in this pack, and they're obviously not coming from tiny metal mayhem as all the other noises. I hope you'll forgive this lack of authenticity, but hey, it's free...

Very percussive and transient-rich material, lots of clicks and ticks and so on, just the right sort of stuff to layer your drums with. Give a kick the extra click, or polish off that lame snare with a juicy "pshht".

But there are also much deeper and even bell-ish sounds in there, hats, cymbals... well, not actually hats and cymbals, but noises that could be used as hats and cymbals, or layered with hats and cymbals.

Arpeggiate some of those clicks to bring movement into your meandering ballad, liven up that lifeless anvil in your orchestral piece with a healthy "diiinggg" ... coming from a fork, ringing after being struck with a coin.

Maybe need something that sounds like shoes on a sandy surface? Like a blade cutting through flesh? Or maybe you're the sort of genius slash sociopath that I am, who takes a short *pop* and for no apparent reason turns it into a minute-long pad...?



Well, hovever it may be, I went ahead and put together a cutesy demo track for y'all amusement, and of course to show off my new baby. All sounds in this track are sounds from Tiny Metal Impact, no other instruments, samples or synths were used.
I did put a Comp and a Limiter on the Master Bus, just to give it some snap.
The demo track was recorded "live" in several passes with a MIDI keyboard, using 4 instances of the sample player plugin I'll write about in a second. First listen to this and adore it:

http://soundcloud.com/chokehold/tiny-metal-impact-demo



A little background trivia:

Just having 95 samples was boring, so I screwed around for a while and stuffed the samples into a sample player plugin that loads as VSTi under Windows and as AUi on Mac, both x86 and x64, and created a fancy GUI for the whole lot. (tested with Reaper x64 on Win8 x64 and OSX 10.8.2)

So now one can wreak havoc live with a keyboard, isn't that fantastic?!

Installation is easy: unzip the downloaded .ZIP file and...
WIN: ...move the .DLL as well as the sample data folder into your VST plugin folder.
MAC: ...move the .component to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/
KONTAKT: ...move the .NKI monolith (samples included in file) to your Kontakt library.


Loaded into your host, the plugin's GUI looks like this:



The three knobs on there are pretty self-explaining:

* volume makes the whole lot louder or quieter (globally),
* attack regulates the envelope, so you can have smoother or harsher sounds, and
* room brings in some very basic Reverb, best used sparsely.

ATTENTION: the attack knob "belongs" to the Category / Instrument currently loaded, so if you change that and then load another Category / Instrument, the attack knob will re-adjust itself.
Volume and room are global.

The box in the middle, right underneath the label "Instrument", lets you (guess what) choose the Category / Instrument you want to load. (Clicks, Clangs, Pops, Chimes)

I actually considered putting all samples onto one patch (Category, Instrument, whatever), but that would've been 95 samples for 88 keys, so I would have had to think up something bright like velocity-switching between some of the like-sounding plugins ... and then remembering on which 5 keys on the big 88er they were...

So in order to unleash the full potential and play all 4 Categories / Instruments together, you'll have to load 4 separate instances of the player, selecting a different Category / Instrument in each one.

At the bottom of the interface there's a piano keyboard. It sorta works, but it's not really worthy of "performing" with it. I placed it there to remind you that the 4 Categories / Instruments all contain a varying number of samples, so the patches all end on different notes on the way up - but all start at the same C1. (that is C1, if your host doesn't count differently)

Regarding hosts, some may tell you that the plugin has 16 ouputs - don't get carried away, the Tiny Metal Impact samples only use the first Stereo output.

Apart from that, there's really not much more to say.



Play around with it, have fun, do what you wish to do with these samples: make musik, create new sounds, use them as FX in movies or radio shows or presentations, at no cost at all. No price, no subscription, no license fees, use the samples privately or commercially.
You don't even have to create an account at a lame site you don't care about in order to download, isn't that fantastic?

Just please don't rip 'em off and redistribute the samples as your work or something low as that.


So finally, here are the download links:

!!! UPDATED LINKS SEE BEGINNING OF POST !!!

Tiny Metal Impact - WAV only - Win VSTi x86 - Win VSTi x64 - OSX AUi x86/x64

Enjoy!


Let me know how you like the samples, how the plugins work for you - and post the music you make with these (if you wish). I'm curious to know how far my babies are going.

Cheers,
Rob
Last edited by chokehold on Thu Jun 13, 2013 11:41 pm; edited 9 times in total

No love?

very nice freebie! the demo sounds great!
thank you very much chokehold!

grtz

Just seen this. Cheers!

I guess it wasn't the brightest move to post this on a Saturday night... ^^

Let me know if you run into any problems, this is sort-of a first timer for me, I'll try and fix everything I can.

If enough of you enjoy this, I might make a Kontakt 4 version of it, maybe even one for Geist - if that's possible with the Lite version.

I've downloaded the waves and It's just about perfect.
Great work. :tu:

YES love!

http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2013/01/19/tiny-metal-impact -by-chokehold/

Thanks for that! Much appreciated!

If I see (or rather hear) this getting some use, I might make some more.
There's just too much inspiration around me, and I can't figure out where to start...

Thanks, Chokehold. Loved the demo.

Giving us samples is one thing, but providing a player and an inspiring demo is beyond the call! Well done.

SWTrex

Downloaded. I'm not in a position to try it at the moment, but will do as soon as possible. Either way, respect and thanks for your efforts. Thanks to bpblog as well for turning me on to this (and many other things) to begin with.

thanks Chokehold. I love stuff like this. I have my own retarded workflow, so I opted for the WAV edition, but very cool of you to do the whole sampler thing. thanks again.

Thank you guys for the kind words!
I'm glad you have use for it.

I know it's not actually thaaaaat impressive, but let's put it like this... it was an experiment. If it goes well, and not too many of you experience problems with the plugin or have any other devastating criticism, I'm preeeetty sure I'll make some more interesting and more sophisticated things over time...

Cheers,
Rob

it's pretty impressive to me. I would never have thought of including a plug in with a sample set I made. even the fact that you actually got around to recording the stuff and split it into individual wav's. I uploaded a percussion kit i made, and I uploaded as an EXS instrument so that I wouldn't have to split the files.

Love this simple little instruments. Cheers.

Bravo and thank you very much: i this kind of metal.