THE SWARMITAR and SWARMINET - two FREE Kontakt instruments loosely based on the Swarmatron (w/ guitars and clarinets)

[pkm]

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I've made a bunch of versions of these bendy swarmy Swarmatron-inspired instruments over the years in Kontakt and Omnisphere with various sound sources like strings, horns, and synths for my work on shows like Scandal and the Netflix film, The Block Island Sound.

The Swarmitar is made from 15 layers of ebowed electric guitars, blending the ebow guitar textures I love from the likes of Nine Inch Nails with the bendy swarmy swarmatron textures from totally way different people like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

The Swarminet is kind of the opposite. Instead of distored guitars or buzzy synths, it's made from 10 layers of clarinets played by someone who doesn't know how to play the clarinet.

So go out and transition into or out of tension, ride the mod wheel and play it like a rich, beautiful, detuned (or not) synth pad, run it through mountains of delays and reverbs to get a weird filtered Blade Runner horn, put it through your favorite amp sim, channel your inner David Bowie, use it as an interesting modulating bed underneath a solo instrument, bend it, swarm it, maybe even use it like you would use ten clarinets , but mostly I encourage you to pave your own path and please share your experiments with me!

(Requires the FULL version of Kontakt 5.6.8 or later)

free download links:
THE SWARMITAR: https://www.dropbox.com/t/JDP5KKn1SBuahxZy (https://www.dropbox.com/t/JDP5KKn1SBuahxZy) (also available on www.pianobook.co.uk (http://www.pianobook.co.uk))
THE SWARMINET: https://www.dropbox.com/t/B0yMmUeKmmUUrxoZ (https://www.dropbox.com/t/B0yMmUeKmmUUrxoZ)

And if you're interested in watching me clumsily make them:

THE SWARMITAR: https://youtu.be/MKAMI5BHm_Y
THE SWARMINET: https://youtu.be/0ONNLHX3HF8

[jbraner]

Thanks pkm - these are cool!
Just a quick question:
I didn't watch the whole video, but for swarmitar, for example - the swarm control adds more notes in to the "swarm"?
What exactly does the "swarm range" control do again?

[pkm]

Hey John, thank you! With the Swarm control at zero, all of the layers are playing in unison, and when you turn the swarm knob, they spread out in pitch, equally spaced from the root note, with the maximum interval from the root set with the Swarm Range control. So at maximum Swarm and Swarm Range set to 12, you'll hear the root note, 6 notes below it and 6 notes above it (in whole steps up to one octave). As you turn down the Swarm control, the different layers bend back towards the root in equal proportion. Or with the Swarm Range set to 1, you'll hear the root, a half step below, a half step above, and a bunch of notes in between.

The Swarminet works the same way but there are fewer layers so the intervals are a little more spaced apart (up to minor thirds instead of whole steps).

Does that make sense?

[jbraner]

Thanks! That makes perfect sense.
I haven't really played with the swarminet yet