Bamboo Stick Ensemble: Kontakt Percussion Library by Soundiron

The core of the library is percussion. Soundiron sampled 8-foot bamboo poles with a 2-inch diameter, and the instrument includes high and low stabs, single-shot sustains, tremolos and looping sustains. The three instrument categories are Percussion, Tonal Effects and Special FX.

Beyond the impacts, the library includes drones, screeches, roars and horn-like wails made by grinding the bamboo against stone. The developer describes these as a way to push a simple, non-traditional object into a wide range of tones. The library contains 456 stereo samples at 24-bit / 48 kHz, totaling 592 MB installed.

The Kontakt interface offers automation-ready controls for swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, coarse and fine pitch, articulation switching, cross-fading and layering. An adaptable LFO system lets you choose the shape, target, speed, intensity, tempo sync and fade-in time.

The arpeggiator has a velocity table and controls for direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration, and a key and scale lock keeps melodies in common scales. The modular FX rack provides 18 DSP modules across 10 slots that you can order freely. The convolution reverb includes 99 room, hall, chamber and outdoor impulse responses plus 40 custom FX impulses.

The library suits scoring work that needs epic percussion, since the developer built it around that goal. Its drones and roars also fit sound design and ambient textures. Because the samples are unlocked WAV files, you can load them into other WAV-compatible software, samplers and synths as well as Kontakt.