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This script overrides any normal pitch bend that might be programmed into an Instrument.

There are three knobs, and all can be automated. The first is the Pitch Bend TYPE, and the second two are just the range for upper and lower bends in semitones.

There are 6 types of pitch bend included here:

• All – this bends all notes, like normal pitch bend
• Last – bends only the last note played
• Highest – bends only the highest note being held down
• Lowest – bends only the lowest note being held down
• Held – bends only notes being held down (not those in release )
• Release – bends only the notes in release (not those being held down)

The last one, Release, is obviously impossible on a guitar, but can be fun to play with.

DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT

Works in Kontakt 4.2.4 or later.

We had over 240 entries for our user tracks competition – music composed using Soniccouture instruments, amongst other sounds of course.

It was a hard and lengthy process to whittle those 200+ down to a shortlist – and a fascinating process during which we learnt a lot about the music people make with our instruments. An invaluable exercise for that reason alone.

But, there’s also some great music. There wasn’t really any bad music. Well, hardly any. So, subjective as these things must always be, we tried to take into account, production quality, creativity, interesting use of SC instruments – and stuff we plain old liked – sometimes it’s not so easy to say why. And of course, with any shortlist, it’s fair to say that it could have been a different selection of tracks on a different day – the standard was very high. If your track wasn’t included, don’t take it personally.

Tim York is our winner – here’s a link to his album on Bandcamp

The top 3 tracks as voted for by the public were :

1st Place : Water Stone By Tim York | Skiddaw Stones

2nd Place : Resonance By Rossi Musica | Ondes

3rd Place : Tomie’s Bubbles By Candle Gravity | Konkrete, Tremors

The more common ‘workstation’ approach was always to simply switch the motor to off on the Vibraphone, record it static, then fake the tremolo in the synth/sampler using an LFO with a bit of filter and amplitude modulation. Which, in the context of workstation sounds, doesn’t do too bad a job, in that ‘Mock-Tudor’ style that workstation sounds have.

But about a year or 18 months ago, Dan hit on an idea – whether in the bath, I know not – and like many breakthrough ideas, it was beautiful in its simplicity.

Powell hypothesised that if one recorded the vibraphone twice, in a static state each time, once with the motorised fans fully open, in the vertical position (v) and then again with the fans completely closed, in the horizontal position (h), then by simply crossfading between the two with a simple sine LFO in the sampler, you would get a very natural tremolo effect (Tr).

The only way to test the hypothesis, however, was to actually record the vibraphone – twice – with no real idea if it would actually work ( ie : ‘sound good’) when finished. Bravely we pressed ahead. Enlisting the help of lab assistant Ed, an instrument was sourced (a Yamaha YV-3910M ‘Professional Gold’), and a studio booked for January 2013. For this project we returned to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio – a favourite of ours, but one from which we had been away for more than ten years.

The vibraphone session at Real World. Not as much fun as you might think.

It was a long session- two full 12 hour days listening intently to the metallic ring of the vibraphone key takes its toll on the strongest of men. This was not just one vibraphone sampling session, after all – after we had recorded the entire instrument, every key, with 20+ velocities several times each for round robins, damped and undamped – we then did it all over again again, with the fans closed.

Even once the recording was complete, we were still not able to test Powell’s Hypothesis. First, the samples had to be edited – 3,864 of them, as it turned out. Finally, after months of painstaking work, in the summer of 2013, our small but dedicated team prepared to put the theory into practice.

Did it work? You can judge. Check out our Vibraphone Now!

Send Us Your Music, Win $500 of Soniccouture Instruments

We get sent so many great tracks that use our sounds, we really wanted to have a place to keep them all together. So to kick it off, we’ve decided to have a small competition.

Now, this is not a go-and-make-a-remix-type thing or anything that requires much effort, all that is required is to submit any track you have already made (via Soundcloud) that uses a Soniccouture instrument – free instruments are fine too.

How It Works

First submit your track via the Soundcloud link on this page. All the tracks will then be displayed at the bottom of this page.

After one month, Dan & I will pick a shortlist of our favourite tracks for a public vote.The track with the most votes will win a $500 (€375) voucher to spend in the Soniccouture shop. This voucher can also be kept and used against future purchases and releases.

You will require a Soundcloud account to enter, but we figured most of you will already have one, and if you don’t, well, they’re free and handy to have.

ENTRIES HAVE NOW CLOSED, A SHORTLIST WILL APPEAR.. PRESENTLY

The Winner will be announced October 31st 2013

[soundcomp-entrees type=’soniccouture-2013′]

It’s important to remember that you must set your sample to loop correctly at the tempo set in Kontakt or your host sequencer.  The example instrument included below works properly when Kontakt is set to 102 bpm.   The script uses the tempo to calculate the note LENGTH divisions, so the loop and tempo must be set correctly.  (Also remember that for any script using start time offset, you need to have Kontakt in “sampler” mode.)

You can Activate the script with the button at the top left, and using the key defined below that button turn it on or off via MIDI.

The LENGTH and RANGE knobs allow you to set the size of the note division and the Range over which to randomize the start time.   Usually you would set the Range to the number of bars in your loop.

Below the ACTIVE button on the left you will also see buttons for REPEAT and HOLD.   REPEAT will keep retriggering the sample at random points as long as a note is held down.   HOLD will stop the slices from being randomized, so when HOLD is down you will repeat a single slice.   Both these controls also have MIDI Key assignments so that they can be easily automated from a sequencer.

Finally the DIVISOR knob is relevant only in REPEAT mode, and it speeds up the repetitions if you want to use this to create glitch or drill effects.

DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT

Works in Kontakt 4.1 or later.
Beat Shredder works best before any other scripts in the script chain.