Price: $39
HOPKIN INSTRUMENTARIUM: RUMBA BOXES
Sample Library
Complete sample library for two bass kalimba/cajon-like instruments accompanied by a suite of automation-ready shaping controls plus presets, made for the free Kontakt Player (version 6+), Komplete Kontrol, all S-Series Keyboards and NKS software and hardware by Native Instruments. Published by SoundIron as part of their Hopkin Instrumentarim series, 2020.
This library features the sounds of two bass kalimba/ cajón-like instruments created by Bart Hopkin. Rumba Box is a name used in the English-speaking Caribbean for bass kalimbas. Typically the player sits on the box, reaching down between his legs to pluck the tines. For most of Bart’s instruments in this genre the tines have been reshaped to adjust the tuning of the most prominent overtone relative to the fundamental, making a more coherent tone quality. The big, resonant sound boxes are excellent for hand percussion, in the style of cajón.
The big Rumba Box is the fattest, and bassiest of the two instruments in this set. The samples include the plucking of the tines as well as and various sorts of percussion on the resonant body of the instrument. Sympathetic resonance in the tines greatly enriches certain kinds of percussion strokes.
The other instrument in this set, Arby McCone, is a rumba-box/cajón/percussion-gadgetry agglomeration. Originally it too was just a rumba box, but it also worked very nicely as a cajón — a wooden box made to sound good under a variety of hand-percussion strokes. Several additional percussive sound-makers are attached, including spring-mounted metallic sounds & clave sounds, shekere-type beads, shakers, rattletines, and a couple of bells. This thing is really fun to play. The Arby McCone samples include plucks, mallets, percussive taps, knocks, slaps, and a variety of aux percussion.
The technicians at SoundIron have faithfully sampled every interesting sound they could get out of these instruments, with two stereo mic positions. Also included is a wide selection of custom FX presets and plenty of our signature sound designed ambient content, crafted from the raw acoustic source to give you complete creative freedom.
The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. We’ve also included 20 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.
This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Our customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.
The interface is rounded-out by our modular FX rack panel, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes our favorite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. We’ve added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!