Glass Beach
Glass Beach is a unique sample library for composers and sound artists that combines experimental percussion and sound design with an oceanic sfx and ambient soundscape library. We explore a wide variety of different natural beach, bay, estuary, marsh and wharf environments in wide stereo with a richly-detailed quality that puts you right there in the scene.
Glass Beach itself is a unique place on shore of the old village of Fort Bragg, on the northern coast of California. For decades during the last century, the town dumped its trash in the sea, heaping it into heaps towering 30 feet above the waves. “The Dumps” were finally shut down in 1967. After years of clean-up efforts, all that remains are the tons of broken glass too small and plentiful to pick from the sand. However, the relentless years of tide and waves have turned this glass into something magical. These millions of glass beads tumbling in the gentle surf create a remarkable effervescent sound you won’t find any other place on earth.
Contents
On our visit to Glass Beach, we captured a wide variety of tiny glass percussive hits, taps, clicks, steps and scrapes, perfect for sound design and creative rhythmic composition. We’ve also gone into the field to record sea and bay ambiences from a variety of coastal, bay, marsh and estuary environments, including crashing waves, lapping tide pools, busy wharfs, peaceful marshes, tricking waterfalls, drippy sea caves and even the strange “Wave Organ”, an aquatic sound sculpture located near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Lastly, we’ve created plenty of custom sound-designed atmospheric pads and custom FX presets to get your creativity flowing. And for users that prefer to work with the wavs directly, we’ve clearly named, categorized and catalogued them for easy browsing.
We’ve packed the user interface with powerful controls to give you total flexibility. You have control over 4 sound layers, each with swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, tuning, articulation switching, cross-fading, layering and more. The advanced window provides arpeggiation, filters and LFO with multi-parameter modulation and routing options. The modular FX Rack window offers 18 DSP effect modules freely assignable to 10 rack bays. You’ll find reverb, phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb includes 139 halls, chambers, rooms, outdoor environments and special FX impulses to completely transform the sound and open up new worlds of creative possibility.
204 Sea Glass Percussion Elements:
- 34 Grain bounce single clicks
- 24 Grain bounce multi-clicks
- 15 Grain bounce multi-clicks
- 23 Grain light, thin single hits
- 10 Grain light hits
- 10 Grain medium hits
- 10 Gain heavy, bassy hits
- 13 Grain pour effects
- 10 Grain light shake effects
- 10 Grain heavy shake effects
- 10 Grain light scrape-up effects
- 10 Grain heavy, bassy scrape-down effects
- 15 Glass beach sand boot footsteps
85 Ambiences:
- 14 Sound-designed pads, textures and atmospheric synths
- 13 Ocean beach heavy wave and choppy surf ambiences from various distances
- 7 Ocean beach gentle wave ambiences from various distances
- 3 Ocean beach walking ambiences
- 8 Ocean tide pool ambiences with gentle water lapping in different environments at various distances
- 7 Fisherman's Wharf ambiences, with sea lions, seagulls, crowds and boat sounds
- 3 Small dock and pier ambiences in marsh and bay environments
- 4 Marina and boat ambiences
- 6 Bay shore beach wave ambiences
- 5 Marsh general ambiences
- 6 Marsh and sea wall water lapping ambiences
- 3 Wave Organ aquatic sound scupture ambiences
- 2 Sea cave waterfall trickles
- 3 Sea cliff water drips and trickles
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
- 2 master NKI instrument banks in open Kontakt format
- 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
- Multi-sampled acoustic articulations, field recordings and atmospheric sound-design.
- 289 stereo samples
- 2.73 GB Installed
- 24-bit, 48 kHz Stereo PCM Wav Format
- 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
Please Note: The full unlocked retail version of Kontakt 5.5.2 or later is required for all instrument presets in this library. The free Kontakt Player, Libraries rack, Native Access, Komplete Kontrol and the “Add Library” import feature do not support this library. Windows 7 (or later) or OSX 10.9 (or later) is required.
Note: This software is delivered as a digital download. 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
Glass Beach 2.0 by Soundiron Walkthrough
Composing With Glass Beach
Soundiron Glass Beach Podcast & Walkthrough
Glass Beach | Pierre Augustin Vallin - Do You Want A Drink?
Composing Using Glass Beach With Nathan Boler