The sample library tonehammer was recently split into two companies, www.soundiron.com and www.8dio.com, and the existing tonehammer libraries appear to have been split 50/50 between the two companies. Soundiron inherited the Bamboo Stick Ensemble library, and has recently gone about giving this a major update.
The main thing you expect from a sample library called Bamboo Stick Ensemble, is a lot of samples of Bamboo sticks being hit. And you get just that, beautifully recorded, in a variety of slams and hits. You also get bamboo sticks being scraped - this is a surprisingly useful sound, and there are no less than 11 different patches with a variety of sounds and loops. This, along with the hits (of which there are 6 separate patches), would be worth the entrance price alone, but the guys behind Soundiron have an impressive background in the sound design business and decided to redesign the sounds recorded by the Bamboo sticks into a media composer’s treasure trove.
Now this is where the library really comes into its own: one sample section consisting of 7 patches is called FX, where you can find such oddly named instruments as Broken Sewer Trumpet, Chippy Theramin, Oblizolution and Succubus. The Broken Sewer trumpet is a real gem. Imagine Wynton Marsalis picking up a broken trumpet he had just found on the streets of New York after a glass or two too many, playing it through his Grandma’s gramophone with some serious attitude, and you vaguely get the idea. Priceless. The other six are just as good, and any media composer will spend countless happy hours trying these out, as wonderful soundscapes open up in front of him.
But that is not all, as another folder called Impulses begs to be opened. Within we find two subfolders of Effects and Spaces. These offer a myriad of sounds capes. The Bamboo Stick Ensemble library is so comprehensive, that I set myself the challenge to write an entire piece using just patches from this library. It was, quite frankly, not a difficult task, as you can draw from such a rich palette of sounds, be that lurking low pads, menacing thuds, scary scrapes or highly energetic bamboo sticks being hit. I have reviewed the library in greater detail in this video, as well as featuring the resulting track (entitled Say Boo To The Bam Bam):
You can hear the track by itself here on sound cloud:
The Library is currently priced at $39, and at that price is an absolute bargain.
NB To run any soundiron or 8dio libraries you will need the full version of Native Instrument’s Kontakt (not the free Kontakt player).
About Lincoln Jaeger. Lincoln Jaeger is a media composer, as well as being the co-founder of Great Scores Sheet Music and the founder of the newly established production music label Trailer Music Library.