Tiny Thumb Pianos
Tiny Thumb Pianos is a modern form of the ancient African Mbira dating back to 1000 BC, also called a kalimba or sanza. The Mbira has been used for poetic storytelling, often accompanied by a Hosho (gourd shaker), and played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and social gatherings. These wooden instruments from Zimbabwe have a gentle & melodic percussive plucking sound with a marimba-like warmth and tonal body.
We recorded each tine of Tiny Thumb Pianos in wide stereo, close and dry, performed in unison and solo. The Duo and Solo plucks were captured with 10 round-robins per velocity layer, with an average of 8 velocity layers per note. After that we sampled percussive hits, slides, taps, glisses, and other FX to enhance realism and make it feel like you’re dual-wielding tiny kalimbas IRL. We also rounded out the library’s natural tones with 20 ambient organic soundscapes and 20 custom FX presets to kickstart your creative journey. In short: this artifact is all you need to become a master musical storyteller.
WATCH NOW
Contents
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!
Kontakt Format
This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument software platform. You can view screenshots of this library's custom graphical user interface in the image gallery above. This library is packed with features to provide you a wide range of sound shaping parameter controls, each one totally automation-ready in your host environment or Kontakt's stand-alone mode. Learn more about Kontakt by Clicking Here.
This is a standard Kontakt open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player does not fully support it and can only run it in a limited "demo mode". However, the sample directories are unlocked so you can use them in other wav-compatible software, sampler and synth formats. The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab and import this library into the Kontakt Quickload window for easy loading and navigation.
Product Specs
- One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format
- Thumb Piano duo & solo plucks, percussive hits, taps, slides, glisses, FX
- 20 Ambience patches created from the source content
- 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples
- 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
- 1,805 Stereo WAV files
- 1.35 GB installed
- Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
- Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments
Documentation
System Requirements
The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.5 (or later) is required to use .nki instrument presets included in this library. The free Kontakt "Player" and "Add Library" import process do not support this standard open-format Kontakt library. Windows 7 or higher. Mac OSX 10.9 or higher. Dual Core CPU, 2 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.
Note: This digital product is delivered as a download via the Amazon S3 cloud network. A broadband internet connection is required. Please see our Help Page for licensing information, download and installation instructions, tutorials and to read our End User Licensing Agreement before ordering. All sales are final.
Videos
Walkthrough: Tiny Thumb Pianos
Composing An Ambient Video Game Loop