Soundiron has introduced a new Kontakt instrument library featuring a unique collection of sound-designed atmospheric leads, ambient synths, textural soundscapes and snow and ice sound effects. Icescapes aims to capture the heart of winter.
The wintery pond instruments were created by skipping a variety of stones, ice chunks and pebbles across the surface of a large frozen pond in a narrow canyon, high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. These skittering impacts across the ice sheet emit a strange sci-fi ray gun zinging effect caused by an acoustic phenomenon called flexural waves, a type of bending sound wave produced by the acoustic ripples that radiate out at supersonic speeds from the point of each impact, amplified upward by the pond’s large resonant ice membrane into the high craggy canyon walls that surrounded us.
The ice and snow instruments are built from a variety of ice block impacts and slides, and from hand and boot foley recorded in deep fresh snow.
Regularly priced $19 USD, Icescapes is on sale for the intro price of $11 USD until January 3rd, 2025.
Also available is a new sample library with the sounds of a unique hand-made instrument created by Dust Bowl Guitars. Based on the concept of a traditional cello, the Artillery Shell Cello instrument features an empty metal artillery shell as the body of the instrument, allowing it to produce an eerie, shimmering metallic resonance.
A standard cello tailpiece and bridge are mounted directly onto the shell body, with the top left open allowing the sound to resonate out. A curved metal rod as been affixed to the open-ended top of the shell, with a traditional cello fingerboard attached to it.
Extending up beyond the fingerboard, the metal pole is topped off with a combat helmet featuring a contact mic pickup mounted to the underside. The Artillery Shell Cello was recorded acoustically with large diaphragm condenser microphones as well as the contact pickup.
Available for the full version of Kontakt 6.2.2 or higher, Artillery Shell Cello costs $59 USD.
More information: Soundiron
