Tonehammer has announced the release of its latest Kontakt-based instrument: Bamblong.
The Bamblong is a small tuned percussion instrument, similar in principle to a marimba. It has 4 bamboo resonance chambers, roughly ranging between 1½ - 2¼ inches wide and 8 - 14 inches long, with sound holes in the top of each. The playing surfaces are thin bamboo planks, suspended on pegs over each bamboo log. It came with a set of mallets with flat, round heads that appear to be carved out of bicycle tire. It has a very crisp yet mellow, raspy note with a short sustain.
Tonehammer captured it both wet and dry, using its old favorite hall and its large recording booth. Tonehammer used close micing techniques in both to get a responsive, warm, present and intimate sound. Tonehammer sampled the instrument exhaustively, with an average of 20 velocity layers per note and a standard 10 round-robin variations per layer. Tonehammer also recorded strikes and rolls using nylon jazz brushes in the dry set.
As a bonus, Tonehammer has included a selection of dynamic ambient patches, using only the Bamblong as the source material. It's natural sonic properties carry over clearly into these soundscapes, providing ready-made textural accompaniment.
As another added bonus, Tonehammer has included a large set of convolution reverb impulses, carefully recorded in the same hall as the epic instruments, as well as as the wet version of the Bamblong. Tonehammer did its best to capture the breath and clarity of the room, to allow you to bring any instrument you like into that same acoustical space. They are encoded in standard wave format, so any major convolution reverb plugin should be able to open them, including the built-in convolution effect in Kontakt 2/3.
Tonehammer Bamblong:
- Dry Mallets:
- Dry Mallet (tuned).
- Dry Mallet (untuned).
- Dry Mallet Lite.
- Dry Mallet w/ custom epic hall verb.
- Dry Brush Strike:
- Dry Brush (tuned).
- Dry Brush (untuned).
- Dry Brush Lite.
- Dry Brush w/ custom epic hall verb.
- Dry Brush Rolls w/ release samples:
- Dry Rolls.
- Dry Rolls w/ custom epic hall verb.
- Dry Rolls w/modwheel dynamics control.
- Dry Rolls w/modwheel dynamics control and custom epic verb.
- Wet Mallets w/ modwheel room size control:
- Wet Mallets (tuned).
- Wet Mallets (untuned).
- Wet Mallets Lite.
- Bonus Sound Designed Bamboo Ambiences:
- 8 fully controllable dynamic soundscape patches with modwheel sculpting.
- 30 individual long looping tracks.
- 1 Custom melodic combo patch.
- 23 Custom Convolution Reverb Impulse Files (of Tonehammer signature epic hall).
- 26 instrument patches, 2.542 samples, 1.45 GB installed, 450 MB .rar download.
- 44.1kHz/24bit stereo .wav formats.
- Format(s): Kontakt 2 and .wav.
Pricing & Availability
Bamblong has an MSRP of $35. Native Instruments Kontakt 2.2.4+ is required.
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