String Bundle

Click Here for MP3 Demos   [split] About The Struck Grand Twine Bass Street Erhu Bizarre Sitar Frendo Zitherette Bowed Bucket Bass   The String Bundle is a collection of 7 of our premier stringed instrument libraries, encompassing a broad range of acoustic sounds and integrated performance capabilities. This package includes over 13,000 samples, 15 GB of content. You'll find over hundreds of intuitively playable, fully customizable Kontakt instrument presets and brilliant sound quality. Click on the tabs to learn more about each library, including the downloadable pdf user manual and full product specs. And check out screenshots of some of the custom Kontakt interfaces, providing a variety of automation-ready sound shaping controls. This bundle brings it all to you in a single package, all at a deep discount of over 30% off list price. Owners of any of the individual libraries in this collection can also Contact Us for a personalized quote on an discounted upgrade to the full bundle. System Requirements The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.1.0 (or later) is required to use .nki instrument presets included in these libraries. These are all standard Kontakt open-format libraries, so the free Kontakt Player doesn't support them. However, the sample directories are all fully unlocked, uncompressed and completely accessible to allow user customization, import and mapping in other wav compatible software, sampler or synth formats. Also be aware that the special Libraries tab doesn't support these open-format Kontakt libraries, but you can use the standard File browser tab, or you can import these libraries into the Kontakt database and Quickload window for easy navigation and organization. Windows 7 or higher is required for PC. OSX 10.7 or higher is required for Mac. Dual Core CPU, 3 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for the libraries in this collection. This software is delivered as a digital download, so a broadband connection is required. All sales are final. Please see our Help Page for download and installation instructions, tutorials and the End User Licensing Agreement before ordering.       The Struck Grand Piano is an extraordinary instrument collection that delves deep into the fine art of piano abuse. This 9 GB collection explores all of the ways a 1926 Steinway Model L parlor grand piano can be "played" from the far side of the hammer. You'll find well over 4000 samples of pick plucks, steel hammers, finger mutes, harmonics, slides, mallets, glisses, scrapes and otherworldly sustaining effects over the full note range. This collection shines as equal part stringed/tuned percussion and super-harp/mega-zither with a huge key range and rich, complex musical character. The Struck Grand features 3 extraordinary new control systems that will unlock new creative and production possibilities. The new "Layer Builder" system let's you easily create an endless variety of unique complex sonic flavors, with total control over up to 12 independent layers of sound. Let us re-invent your whole concept of tuned percussion with the simple turn of a dial. The library also includes a bonus selection of real-world space and FX convolution impulses and ambient drones, tonal pads and evolving soundscapes, all with custom morphing and dual-layer mix control. This library goes far beyond any other piano "effect" library you've heard before. And as always, we've gone the extra mile with profound total attention to detail through our nuanced programming, total user parameter control, sonic flexibility and simply unmatched playability. You'll feel The Struck Grand live and breathe under your fingertips. As always there is a range of automatable LFO, EQ, filter, custom convolution and sound-shaping systems to expand on the creative possibilities that this library offers. If you love guitar or harp, you'll love our Gliss/Strum Creator. This unique tool allows you to instantly start playing life-like strums and glisses over the whole key range, with a huge variety of chords and total real-time control over direction, stroke alternation, string, speed, dynamics, palm muting, pick attack and more. Each parameter can be automated on the fly, allowing incredibly organic performances. The Struck, Harmonic, Mallet and Gliss elements are perfect for dramatic and suspenseful scoring, while the Steel Hammer, Slide and Picked sections area ideal for expressive and nuanced classical and ethnic compositions. With rumbling bass and glistening highs, we've captured each articulation with ultra-close, dry micing right on the strings, for exquisite life-like detail, stunning presence and fidelity. Product Specs 9 GB Installed 4,058 Samples 40 .nki instrument presets 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization Click Here to download the PDF user manual   The Twine Bass is composed of a pair of very special instruments: a modified cello and a traditional Kenyan fretless stringed instrument called a Bolon. We strung the cello with rough hemp twine in various tunings and played it as a stand-up bass. The resulting sounds are deeply sonorous, with rich, warm resonance, powerful low end and a woody, soft quality. The bolon has a cow's horn for a neck and a gourd as a body, with four twine strings and a goat-skin resonating head that the strings pass directly through. In addition to deep-sampling the strings with 10x round-robin and up to 14 velocity layers, we sampled a number of other sounds such as legato slides, string mutes, tuning peg pluck/twists, finger taps and brushes, and other percussive effects on the instrument's body. This unique custom instrument collection features our brand new, exclusive glissando/chord generator. This powerful tool gives you deep control over a wide variety of chord and glissando functions such as speed, range, scale, stroke direction, string dynamics, humanization and more. You can choose from 26 different chords and 13 different scales. The number of strings is adjustable from 1 to 24 in Glissando mode and 1 to 6 in "guitar" Strum mode. There is also a bank of 16 assignable key-switches for instant access to your favorite selection of chords. The Twine Bass is a massive library, containing over 2000+ samples and weighing in at over 2 GB. As usual, it comes complete with a full range of performance shaping and effects controls, including full control over our custom convolution reverb impulses, allowing you to take the sound in any number of new directions. We've also included a collection of ambient pads, atmospheric drones and evolving soundscapes, giving this library a vast array of tonal possibilities. Our newest feature is the Glissando/Chord Generator. In Glissando mode, you can choose the speed of the gliss, the scale, time signature, gliss direction, note duration and either control the velocity in real-time or use the table to draw the velocity of each note in the gliss. You can define the number of strings (up to 24). In chord mode, there's an integrated auto-strum function that allows you to determine up and down strokes or alternate automatically. You can also control strum tightness, timing variability between each note in the strummed chord, the number of strings and the mode/scale that the chord adheres to, with any root note you desire. In both modes, you can play multiple glissandos or chords at different root notes with full polyphony. You can also arrange up two 12 real-time chord/gliss mode changes using our user-definable key-switches. In the legato presets, we've taken a different approach, with a two-handed playing system that allows you to finger-tap and play hammer-ons and pull-offs on the frets with one hand while plucking with the other. Left handed? No problem, we've provided a switch to flip the hand arrangement. You can move the open note to any note you like on the fly, play with or without legato, and control slide volumes and transition pitch-bending. Product Specs 2.3 GB installed 2037 Samples 77 .nki instrument presets 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed PCM wav audio Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization Includes a bonus collection of custom sound-designed ambiences, drones and special FX presets, as well as our favorite custom convolution reverb impulses and an advanced Kontakt user interface with full automation support. Click Here to download the PDF user manual   The Street Erhu is a truly unique live-performance phrase library featuring over 4600 high-quality traditional Chinese Erhu violin phrases. Weighing in at over 6 GB of content, this collection covers 8 different Erhu violins, ranging from bass to treble and in a variety of tunings. This one-of-a-kind library combines the authenticity of an emotive street musician with granular deep sampling fully controllable through our powerful custom user interface. For the creation of Street Erhu, we worked with veteran street performer Qi Xin Huang and local Erhu craftsman Kenneth Lam. Qi Xin’s playing is raw, emotive and authentic, evoking a traditional flavor not possible with a sterile and overly rigid performance. Each erhu sampled in this library offers its own unique flavor, creating a palette of different sounds fit for any stylistic need. This Street Erhu features 83 presets for Kontakt. There are 1328 bass erhu, 2543 mid-range erhu and 341 treble erhu phrases recorded in a dry studio environment, plus 398 bowing and fingering sfx. There are also 12 additional songs recorded live on busy city streets and 40 songs recorded in a bustling underground subway station. We've also included 48 ambiences created from the source material allowing users to experiment with a wide range of soundscapes and FX. As always there is a range of automatable LFO, EQ, filter, custom convolution and sound-shaping systems to expand on the creative possibilities that this library offers. The Erhu is a traditional 2-string violin dating back more than a thousand years, likely originating from Mongolia. The instrument has a small hollow snake or goat-skinned cylindrical resonating body and a long thin neck with no fingerboard. It is played upright in the performer's lap, with the bow passed between the strings. Bow contact on the strings is never broken, giving the erhu it's distinctly sinuous playing style. Each distinct erhu set features a variety of songs and motifs, with between 24 - 36 phrases per song spread over the keyboard in standard fashion. New songs can also be selected and loaded instantly using selector key-switches or the song selection menu. There's also a built-in 40-step phrase sequencer with multiple playback modes that pops out when you need it. We provide complete control over tone, note attack and release, start offset, playback speed, pitch shifting, legato mode with adjustable cross-fading, bowing sfx, crescendo swelling, and volume & resonant filter LFO effects with adjustable shape, rate and synch, with full automation support on all parameters. Current phrase playback and offset start positions are conveniently and clearly displayed in the waveform window. You can also instantly set the erhu into a wide range of real acoustic environments and special effects is easy with our fully integrated convolution impulse selector. Product Specs 6.3 GB installed 4,710 Samples 43 Kontakt 4.nki instrument presets (legacy sampler mode) 40 Kontakt 5 nki instrument presets (TMPro time-stretch support) 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization Includes a collection of 48 custom sound-designed ambiences as well as 46 of our favorite custom convolution reverb impulses and an advanced Kontakt user interface with full automation support. Click Here to download the PDF user manual   The Bizarre Sitar may not seem so strange at first glance. It has most of the elements found on any other sitar, with it's traditional gourd body, both main playable strings and sympathetic resonating strings, parda (adjustable curved frets), kunti (tuning pegs), dandi (neck), ghoraj (main bridge) all complete with orante hand-painted accents. At just over 24" in length, however, this little beauty is barely half the size of a standard sitar. Simply being small isn't bizarre by any means, but what is bizarre is how it can achieve such a lush, full-bodied sound while being so small. Intended as more decoration than instrument, we feel this little guy has been highly underestimated. Although soft-spoken and possessing fewer strings than normal (5 main and 6 sympathetic), all this "baby" sitar needed was someone to listen closely. And we did. Very close. At the heart of our Bizarre Sitar library are the strumming patches. Two main strumming tunings are included, a fifth and and octave/unison. An onboard "Speed" knob (MIDI assignable and defaulted to the modwheel) allows you to sculpt the speed of the individual strum from very tight, fast strums to slower, plucky strums. The unison articulation was tuned with strings in unison and in several octaves to give a very full sound. The fifth articulation was tuned with strings in unison and in fifths, similar to the Pancham-Kharaj tuning popularized by Ravi Shankar. By recording several different strumming speeds for both the fifth and the unison strumming articulations, this library allows you to create realistic sounding strums by adjusting the speed in real-time. The strums are tuned and spread across the entire keyboard, providing deep, droning sounds in the low end and sharp, mandolin-like plucks in the high end. In addition, we've also included individual string plucks for lead lines and accents. The first string on the sitar was recorded in several different tunings with multiple velocity layers. The natural tendency of this instrument is for the pitch to be slightly sharp on the initial attack and bend down gently over time. The effect is increased in the higher velocity layers.Special combo patches give you both plucks in the high end and strums in the low-end for easy playability. Also included are a number of effects (fret scrapes, mutes, etc.), staccato bowing, tremolo bowing and sustained bowing. Though not traditionally bowed, we decided to include several bonus patches of bowed sitar: sustain, staccato, and tremolo. The tremolo patch features an "intensity" knob to adjust through three different intensity layers and a "Speed" knob to adjust the playback speed of the tremolo samples. This allows you to more closely match a specific tempo or crank it up and go crazy. There are also a number of sound designed ambient drones sculpted entirely from the recorded source material. All of these things combine with our custom front panel performance controls and extended DSP FX and arpeggiation systems to make this an extremely flexible and versatile virtual instrument. This library was originally released in 2010 by Tonehammer. For our new version 2.0, we’ve improved key-mapping and overall playability, added a full set of brand new automatable performance controls, DSP FX and powerful meta-arpeggiator systems and refined the overall playing experience. The newly included Convolution Reverb effect features 74 select custom impulse responses recorded from some of our favorite locations, as well as a variety of unique sound design/FX impulses to choose from. Product Specs 1.69 GB installed 597 Samples 25 instrument presets 24 bit / 44.1kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples Format(s): Kontakt 3.5 .nki and pcm .wav Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization Includes a bonus collection of custom sound-designed ambiences, drones and special FX presets, as well as some of our favorite custom convolution reverb impulses and an advanced Kontakt user interface with full automation support. Click Here to download the PDF user manual   Frendo is a custom-built Soundiron instrument. We created this monster by stringing bailing wire around and through through steel plates and bolts, over galvanize steel piping and across wood planks. It was meant to suffer. You can help it by mistreating it in horrible ways with screwdrivers, bows, drum sticks, mallets and fingers. The instrument holds a vast amount of otherworldly sounds, which is ideal for composers looking for new disturbing, horror-like textures for their scores. Frendo is partially a mallet instrument, recorded with wooden and rubber mallets, but is also a more traditional string instrument, since we recorded finger plucks and bows. It's the sound of Satan's cello, weeping softly for your burning soul. Made of knotty pine, rusted steel bailing wire, eye bolts, hooks, deck screws, hurricane brackets and an old 24" bass drum, this 5-stringed son of a bitch was 8 feet long and 3 feet wide. The body had a 2"6 spine and two separate body segments to allow torquing and bending while the instrument was played. It was strung with black iron bailing wire, wound over galvanized steel angle brackets and plates and through heavy gauge eye bolts that we used as tuners, by way of a pipe wrench. We played it with a violin bow, screwdrivers, rubber and wooden mallets, picks, hands and fingers and have provided an array of custom controls, presets, effects and tools to allow total sonic freedom and control over the sound. This library is a unique tuned percussion and string instrument in it's own right, but also makes excellent effect and sound design material for stingers, trailers, reveals, slates, post production and any number of other specialized production uses. This library was originally released in 2008 by Tonehammer. For our version 2.0 update, we improved key-mapping and overall playability, added a full set of brand new automatable performance, DSP FX, convolution reverb and advanced arpeggiator controls and refined the overall playing experience. The new Convolution Reverb effect features 73 select custom impulse responses, featuring some of our favorite recording halls and some rather unusual custom FX impulses. Product Specs 990 MB Installed 1,100 Samples 30 Kontakt 3.5 .nki instrument presets 24 bit / 44.1 kHz uncompressed PCM wav audio Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization Includes a bonus collection of custom sound-designed ambiences, drones and special FX presets, as well as our favorite custom convolution reverb impulses and an advanced Kontakt user interface with full automation support. Click Here to download the PDF user manual   The Zitherette is a simple 8-string fretless zither, roughly 12 x 20 inches in size. Zithers are a broad family of hollow-bodied string instruments common throughout all of Europe and Asia. Variants range from the dulcimer to the Koto, with countless other flavors unique to each region and culture. Common to each of them is the arrangement of multiple strings over a hollow body. The oldest known variant of the zither family dates back to 4th century B.C China, while new additions continue to spring up to this day. Our particular hand-held zither has steel strings, with a smooth, dark tone, with a clean biting attack and long, natural decay. At it’s softest, it has a pristine, almost harp-like sound, while the hardest notes bend deeply at the attack, with a pronounced twang. We chose a pluck articulation and captured it very close and dry, in wide stereo. We sampled our little zither extensively, as we do with all of our instruments. Each string has an average of 8 velocity layers, with 4 round-robin variations per layer. We also captured palm mute release triggers, with 2 velocities and 4 round robins per note. We created a variety of presets, to allow maximum flexibility and intuitive playability. We also created an array of custom sound-designed fx patches, extending the creative possibilities even further. Lastly, we’ve created a “wet” version of most of the core patches with a convolution reverb effect preloaded. These "wet" patches feature select custom impulse responses recorded from some of our favorite locations. This library was originally published by Tonehammer in 2009. Product Specs 627 MB installed 319 Samples 25 .nki instrument presets 24 bit / 44.1kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples Unlocked presets and wav samples allow full user customization Includes a bonus collection of ambiences, special fx presets, and a few of our favorite custom convolution reverb impulses. Click Here to download the PDF user manual   The Bowed Bucket Bass is what happens when you hammer together an big fat instrument out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket, a wooden 4×4 beam, bass turners and cello strings. The bucket was fitted with tuning lugs and then holes were drilled out to allow individual strings to pass through, using the bottom wall as the bridge, so that sound projected outward and down. Then a 4×4 wooden beam was affixed to the bucket and the strings were then stretched up the heavy wooden neck, roughly nailed in place and hand -tuned. Remember that old string and paper cup trick from when you were a kid? Yeah, think bigger. We bowed it, plucked it, struck it with drumsticks in a close, dry setting to get tons of tonality and then programmed it into a living, breathing self-contained bucket band. We then manipulated all that raw material to created a variety of playable atmospheric pads and ambiences to bring out the full creative potential of this rather odd contraption. Bowing the strings produces a surprisingly clean, yet rich and beefy sound, with plenty of growl and low end and a nice clear bite. It’s sound is a little similar to electric cello, but with a unique rawness and body. For our percussion, we simply banged on it like an idiot, with results just as you’d expect – plastic bucket drums. We captured various bowed articulations from both inside and outside of the bucket. We also plugged in our custom polyphonic Sim-legato and Uberpeggiator systems to some instruments, just for kicks. And of course, as a bonus, we’ve also created a variety of very cool lead, pad, ambient droning and FX presets to expand your creative options. This library was originally published by Tonehammer in 2010. Product Specs 545 MB installed 568 Samples 29 .nki instrument presets 24 bit / 44.1kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples Format(s): Kontakt 3.5 .nki and pcm .wav Click Here to download the PDF user manual