Icescapes: Snow and Ice Sound Library for Kontakt

The pond instruments were made by skipping stones, ice chunks and pebbles across a large frozen pond in a narrow canyon in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Each impact sends acoustic ripples across the ice, which the developer says produce a sci-fi, ray-gun-like zing as the sound is amplified by the pond's ice membrane and the canyon walls.

The ice and snow instruments also use ice block impacts and slides, along with hand and boot foley recorded in deep fresh snow. Soundiron describes the result as a blend of organic sound sources and synthetic-style tones.

The library is organized so the sounds can serve as percussion, with the kick, snare and hi-hat replacements the developer suggests, or as raw material for sound design.

Icescapes includes an adaptable LFO system with selectable shape, modulation target, speed, intensity, tempo sync and fade-in time. You can apply 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, and assign modulation sources such as velocity, mod wheel, expression, aftertouch, key position and step-sequencer table control.

The customizable arpeggiator provides a velocity table and control over direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. A key and scale lock limits notes to common scales and keys, which helps with melodic writing and live play.