Cassette Mallets.02 for Ableton: Lo-Fi Mallet Instrument Library

The library contains three instruments, each covering a different sound territory. Sound 01 mixes old glockenspiel plates recorded on a thin steel plate. Sound 02 is a two-octave xylophone blended with corrugated sheet resonances. Sound 03 uses the same xylophone, recorded with three mallets attached to an old bed mattress spring with copper wire to create a random, granular pattern.

All sounds were recorded on three different cassette decks. Sounds 01 and 02 contain five dynamic layers, and Sound 03 contains four. Additional synthesis techniques are layered in to give the instruments a fuller sound and extend their range across the keyboard.

The library includes 58 instrument racks: 18 basic racks and 40 additional presets, all with mapped macros. Custom effect racks are also included.

Each note was denoised with a high-quality algorithm to prevent noise stacking when several notes play together. Some noise remains in the samples to avoid denoising artifacts. A noise knob adds cassette hiss back in, letting you set its volume separately and apply filtering. When you play a five-voice chord, only one noise sample is heard instead of five stacked on top of each other.