Whether you're a sound designer looking to cover your bases, or you’re a composer looking for the missing ingredient in your next score, look no further than the Kontakt Toolkit: The most well rounded instruments available.
With so much available claiming it is the secret sauce for every mix imaginable, it can be difficult and at times confusing to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to covering all aspects of frequency. From the low end bass tones of a tuba or double bass, to the high end shimmer of a violin, acquiring each instrument individually can also be expensive. Enter the Kontakt Toolkit.
Pattern Strings - Ben Osterhouse
Let’s start with strings. Whether for a searing climax, or foreboding tension, strings are a necessity for full bodied composition. Pattern Strings offers a unique approach to ostinatos by providing a collection of tempo-synced rhythmic fragments. These 19 rhythms have been recorded at two dynamic layers on violin, viola, cello, and bass, with 4 round robins, totalling at 8.32GB of samples.
The interface utilizes an intuitive drag and drop mechanic which allows you to arrange the rhythms into sequences in which all the rhythms flow together with natural phrasing and musicality. You can beef up the sound of an instrument by turning on Doubling, and the Tempo Sync switch allows you to set the sample playback to half speed or double speed.
Ben is famous for making some of the best boutique string sampling around, and Pattern Strings is no different. Think of Sonokenitic, but with more control, and more rhythmic variation. An absolute must have.
Bela D Media - Vocal Tools Quartet
When it comes to vocals, no other is more ubiquitously applicable than the VTQ. A special edition bundle of the four-part (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass) Vocal Tools solo voice series, every elements is in the natural legato state with the ability to advance along, miss-match and shuffle any element - in any key - within the given vocal range of the soloist.
Vocal Tools is a sophisticated power tool that will unleash your creative genius. Bela D Media was the first to offer vocal phrase sequencing software when working with the sampled voice. With this insightful and user friendly script, the user has the control. Effortlessly sequenced into realistic vocal melodies in real-time and all within the Kontakt environment with full visual representation - creating the illusion of sung language has never been easier. Better still, with their latest update, users can now use the Mod wheel to control the sample offset for linear phrase manipulation, and can use the Pitch Bend wheel to sample speed offset (slowing and speed-up) for subtle tempo manipulation.
A genuine game changer from a developer at the forefront of the genre.
Retcon - Boards Of Canada Synthesis - Audiowarp
Moving into more synthetic sounds, Retcon is an undeniable choice. More than just another sound library, Retcon is a uniquely designed virtual instrument that features a colour coded HEX layout giving you easy access to a wealth of controls. Designed specifically with ambient and synth music in mind, Retcon contains a host of powerful features built specifically for creating atmospheric, lofi, heavily modulated pads, leads, keys and plucks. At the heart of Retcon is a dual voice wave-based architecture containing 84 unique patches which can be blended and controlled separately or in unison.
Retcon’s feature set is split across six pages of 19 hexagon controls focusing on Voice, Filter, FX, Options, Modulation and Sequencer. Each page is carefully laid out and uses an easily identifiable colour scheme to make the experience intuitive and fast.
Designed specifically for use with the latest hardware from Native Instruments, Retcon is heavily integrated with both Maschine and Komplete Kontrol, and features 130 snapshot presets with plugin mapping and seamless control for browsing and loading sounds.
New Orleans Brass - Insanity Samples
New Orleans Brass is a brass powerhouse, boasting five instruments (2 Trumpets, 2 Trombones, Sousaphone and Sketch Ensemble), each with a plethora of articulations.
Specifically designed to embody the charm and character of the New Orleans Brass Band sound, but also equally great for injecting the funk into a record, as well as recreating that Jazz/Blues’ heartland sound. Use a multi-patch and arrive at something truly filmic too!
The vision behind the instrument was to create a library that could explore fully the world of the New Orleans Brass Band, with that signature lo-fi and raw sound, coupled with beautiful precision and multiple articulation choices.
Often overlooked, sometimes it really is all about that brass.
Percussion Hits - Spectrum Arts
To round this list off, we’ve got to talk about percussion. Percussion Hits is a bank of orchestral drums hits intended for film and TV scoring, as well as video game soundtracking. The collection contains different attack profiles, such as single hits, long and short crescendos, arpeggio groups of notes, or reverse effects that are mixed with rolls to offer rich and modern textures.
This library allows drag and drop use in a DAW, or a keyboard and MIDI control with the Kontakt interface. However, what really makes this stand out against the others in its class, is the genuine care that Spectrum Arts took when putting it together. Combining both classical and contemporary percussion, this library oozes charisma, and at that price, is hard to pass up.