Zebra Elementals Series by Treeswift Audio

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Hey everyone! Jan from Treeswift Audio here. I'm a composer and sound designer from Germany and have been a fan of u-he's products for over a decade, with Zebra in particular having become my desert island synth a long while ago.

In late 2020, I started working on commercial soundsets and eventually launched Treeswift Audio as a boutique soundware label in March 2021. Our debut product is called Zebra Elementals: ISLA, a collection of 120 instruments for Zebra2 that are covering a wide range of styles, uses, and synthesis techniques, but share a common theme: They're all inspired by water and fluidity. Some of them quite literally so (you'll find a lot of drops, drips, streams, rivers, waves, and surfs, all carefully blended with all kinds of original melodic components), some of them in a more abstract way – ultimately, ISLA is a collection of sounds that are fluid.

Here's a quick introduction to ISLA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiuH-RZqq04

Although not a "bread and butter" library by any means (I like to call them "secret spice rack" collections), ISLA got a whole bunch of enthusiastic reviews and feedback from the Zebra community, which had us return to the lab pretty much straight away and start working on the second chapter in the series. After more than a year of development, we recently put out Zebra Elementals: AERA, which builds on the same concept and takes its inspirations from air, wind, flying, heights, breath, and vocals.

Here's a bird's eye view (hah!) of AERA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh8glO8aD0Y

ISLA and AERA are both genuine works of love, and we're hoping the borderline obsessive attention for detail is plain to see in every patch. We've designed these libraries mainly with the needs of composers writing for film, TV and games in mind, but they feel equally at home in any modern electronica or pop production.

If you're interested, you can find out more information, demos, and in-depth patch walkthroughs on our product pages, where you can also purchase both libraries from our online store:
Zebra Elementals: ISLA
Zebra Elementals: AERA

Until next Sunday (Oct 16, 2022), you can still buy AERA at a launch discount of -20% off its regular price (EUR 34.99 incl. VAT where applicable), or both libraries in a bundle at an additional -10% off.

And on the off-chance you've read this far (:D), we also have a lil' freebie library called Zebra Chicklets that has a bunch of original Zebra patches that wouldn't fit anywhere else.

Hope you'll enjoy & thanks for reading!
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Now I don't normally post in these forums (I'm very much the lurking type) but after hearing Jan's demos, and listening to the entire walkthrough for BOTH his soundsets, I have very quickly come to some conclusions that I'd like to share.

This man is RIDICULOUSLY talented!
For me these are some of the finest pieces of Zebra programming ever. Contentious, well maybe.... but I stand by that statement.
They inspire - in a way that, back in the day, I was inspired by Eric Persing presets from various Roland synths.
I simply DON'T buy presets - but I just bought both of Jan's, because there is absolutely no way I could program them myself!

Thank you Jan. I take my hat off to you. Fabulous work!
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Wow, Jeetee… thank you so much for your support and the kind words, that's much appreciated. ❤️ Hope you'll get a ton of use out of ISLA and AERA!
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I'm going to buy the bundle, they seem to be wonderfull.
I imagine you are working on a fire an earth sets ?
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Yes Jan very good presets !

Please make more textures and enigmatic pads :)

You are the best when it comes to zebra this days.
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Hey thanks so much! 🙏 If you have ideas for what you'd like to see in future sets, keep 'em coming!

@robisme, of course there's a couple elements left (depending on which brand of classical philosophy you're subscribing to :D) and I'm fully planning to rounding out the series accordingly. I can't promise it's going to be the next thing straight away, as I have a couple other half-realized ideas in the pipeline, and after a year of intense Zebra hacking I wouldn't mind expanding my playfield a bit right now – but the Zebra Elementals series is still the most near and dear to my heart, so expect something sometime probably (Jan M, marketing professional).

@OrionAlpha101, right on! Enigmatic anything is my jam 8)
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Jan, you are an inspiration!! Beautiful work on these series :clap:
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I just bought the bundle. Very good and inspiring sounds, really! Some can be cpu-hungry, that's because you did make a huge use of every possible feature of Zebra (imho), and that's awesome.
I'm looking forward to discover more of your work.
Please, wait for Zebra 3 's release before continuing the Elemental series, because I want to invest on long term, and the format won't be compatible. Unless you provide an update (might be some work, but I would definitely buy it).
Thank you
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Thanks a bunch, glad you guys like the libraries! ❤️

@robisme, the approaching Zebra3 transition is of course a bit of a concern when it comes to the consistency of the series. From Urs' statements on here, it looks like they're planning to keep Zebra2 (soon Zebra Legacy) around as a fully maintained product for quite a while, so at least these two Elementals won't be losing their home. But of course I'd much rather bring all of them into the Z3 age properly once it's out, as long as there's a way to viably do that without having to re-do large chunks of the libraries from scratch. I guess only time will tell :)
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I can't help but add : even after the great realease of Zebra Legacy, no soundset gives me as much inspiration as yours. I wish I had such gifted skills. Really, thanks you again for those wonderfull sounds.
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Ahoy everyone! Just wanted to hop back into this thread for a sec and share a bit of news that should be of interest to any of you who want to delve deeper into synth programming and sound design – I'm about to launch my own series of synth workshop videos! It will be titled Jan's Patchwork Corner, and in each episode I'll do a deep (and I mean deep) dive into one of my patches, break it down into its components for you, explain the design decisions and how everything fits together to achieve the sound that I wanted, and leave as many bits of general synth technique and theory in my trail as I can muster :wink:

Here's the announcement video, in which I go into a bit more detail about the what & how & why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiHLKzDaTCk

I'm still busy sanding off the remaining rough spots in the production package and the first few episodes, but it's getting fairly close to release. I'll keep you posted! In the meantime, feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you won't miss anything :)

Enjoy!
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Looking forward to this...
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Oooo.... marvellous!
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I just discovered Jan's incredible work a few weeks ago. These sounds are amazing. His new tutorial series on YouTube is finally here: https://youtu.be/qFyUSTChAp4
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