NAMM 2009Vir2 Instruments announces BLUE: Jazz Drums and World Impact: Global Percussion

Vir2 Instruments has announced another two Kontakt Player-based virtual instruments: BLUE: Jazz Drums and World Impact: Global Percussion.

BLUE: Jazz Drums
MSRP: $199.95

BLUE: Jazz Drums provides the essential backbone of jazz music production, featuring three of the finest jazz drum kits in the world, over a thousand jazz drum loops, and extensive control over each element, all packaged into one comprehensive Kontakt Player-powered virtual instrument.

The featured kits contained in BLUE are a DW Collectors Series kit and a Slingerland Jazz Series kit, circa 1978 (featuring a 1965 Slingerland snare) plus a selection of Zildjian cymbals. The DW Collectors Series kit has been recorded both with sticks and with brushes. All drums were recorded in 24-bit through a selection of the world's finest mic pre's, including Neve 1073s, True Precision 8s, and LaChapell 992EGs.

The interface of BLUE offers complete control over the sound and behavior of the kit, including individual control of direct, overhead, and room mics, EQ, additional humanizing control, reverb, convolution, and a huge complement of effects such as distortion, lo-fi, phaser, chorus, flanger, and more. BLUE fully supports various MIDI mappings including full built-in support for e-drum kits such as the Roland TD-12 or TR-20.

The loops portion of the library features more than one thousand live recorded grooves played by various drummers in various tempos and styles. The loops are presented in two formats: as whole loops that automatically tempo-sync to host tempo, and in REX-style loop slices, allowing the player to reassemble new loops from individual slices.

World Impact: Global Percussion
MSRP: $399.95

Get ready for a perfect storm of ethnic, world, and cinematic percussion. Featuring a massive collection of varied percussion samples, World Impact: Global Percussion spans the globe featuring percussion instruments from large to small, west to east, north to south, and traditional to rare. Sampled in meticulous detail and programmed for maximum and instant musical usability, the collection includes hundreds of varied percussion instruments from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and more. A massive multi-gigabyte collection of Japanese Taiko drums recorded from multiple microphone positions forms a central part of the library. Each instrument has been recorded with numerous alternate takes and velocity layers, assuring realistic and dramatically expressive sonic results. World Impact is an essential tool in the toolbox of every film composer, movie trailer producer, and aficionado of world percussion instruments.

Beyond the instrument collection, World Impact is augmented by a powerful pattern engine, the same engine that lies beneath Vir2's Elite Orchestral Percussion, allowing instant access to varied articulations such as chokes, rolls, flams, and ruffs, as well as patterned loop programming for both traditional and synthetic creations. The engine also allows for the layering of effects such as reverb, convolution, delay, chorus, phaser and more.

Availability

Both products are powered by Native Instruments' Kontakt engine and are therefore compatible with VST, AudioUnit and RTAS plug-in formats allowing them to work seamlessly within any major sequencer, in addition to standalone use.

Release dates have not yet been announced.