Review of Altered States
by Zero-G
The horror. You wake up in the middle of the night because someone is knocking on the
door. "Who in the world could that be?" Should you open the door?
You pause. Maybe you don't want to know who it is! Is it the police?
Neighbors? Uh Oh. B-but Maybe! IS it is a long lost lover who has finally
come running back, now convinced YOU were the right one all along?! "Who
ARE YOU!" you shout through the door. You hear some muffled sound like
someone pleading with you to open the door.
In one quick motion you unlatch the door and
swing it open and stare into the eyes of the interloper. Gasp. You
discover the person at the door...is YOU!
That was the creepy feeling I had when I spun
through the presets of Altered States, a sample collection by Zero G.
For one the sounds are definitely on the strange side, many quite horrorful,
many exotic, many spacey, many dreamy, twisted and tortured sounds for your
composing pleasure. For two, the author's style is so TweakHeadz-like, it
was like looking into a mirror. Its much like where I was at, sonically,
when I did Celestial Windowpane. Freaked me out! We apparently
followed a similar muse, especially on the space motif, So I immediately felt a
kinship with the author.
The basics
Altered states is a virtual sound module that comes in
Intakt format with its own special version of the Intakt sampler. You don't need the
full version Intakt to run it, and it works great in Kontakt 2 if you are
building a big library. You can't load other sounds into this special
version of Intakt, but you can alter the presets and save your own. In
Kontakt 2 and the full version of Intakt you can access the sample level of the
instruments and really go to town creating new textures, FX, and Kits.
The sounds (quantity).
The
collection is a little over 4GB. The box says it has 3,499 instrument
patches. Well, sort of. Some of these instruments are just single
samples spread over the keyboard. A typical directory usually starts with
a huge preset comprising lots of samples like "All Aqueous Atmospheres", then
breaks down to its singles that make up that preset like "Acid Pool", "Bubble
Bath" "Death Wave" etc. The good thing about this approach is you can play
the single samples anywhere on the keyboard and get a different pitch.
Nothing wrong with this approach. Just don't think there are 3,499
multi-sampled instruments.
But there is a lot of material here. I am
in awe of the sheer depth of the library (and of how much work obviously
went into it). There's no way i can talk about all of it, so i will speak
in generalities. The library appears to be a compilation of 10 different Zero-G
libraries and some new material. The original sample CDs were in audio format
and also a variety of sampler formats and are still available, some for $99
each, so this Intakt collection is quite a value. You can check out
www.zero-g.co.uk for more info.
The main categories of sounds are 1.
Atmospheres, 2. FX, 3. Loops, 4. Pads, 5. Percussion Lots of music beds
you can put right into a film soundtrack. Lots of drones and soundscapes
in stereo, fully baked with FX and ready to go. These are well-crafted and
there is a wide variation. The FX section alone contains Bits and
Bobs, Feedback, Industrial, Machinery, Sci-Fi, and Surreal, Guitar and Bass,
Plucked and bowed, Wind and Brass, Animals, Birds, Insects, Nature, Arpeggios,
Communications, Computers and Robots, Analog Echoes, Oscillations, Radiophonic,
Synth alarms, Synth bells, synth FX, Wind and Waves, Laughter, Phrases, Scary,
Screams and Shouts, and Warped. That's just the FX section and those are
directories I just listed.
That gives you a taste. There's tons of
loops at every BPM. Intakt will automatically stretch all of them
to your project tempo so they all work. Again, an incredible variety of
useful things. Plenty of stuff to keep you busy for a long, long time.
Sound Quality.
I checked through
many directories in Kontakt at the sample level and every instance I saw was 16
bit 44.1. They definitely sound 16bit. Many samples are ambient,
drenched in reverb and are of a dark and lo-fi quality. The entire set has
a dark, sometimes murky shadowy vibe, living up to its name of altered states.
Among the percussion, there are clean brilliant samples, and these samples are
clean enough to stand up in front of a mix. If you want full treated FX
oriented sounds ready to drop its here, here, here. I made a few multis already in Kontakt 2 and was amazed at how easy it was to make custom,
evocative pads and sound FX that were very thick.
Who should go for altered states?
Film composers building their library cannot pass this up. You can make a
full soundtracks with this library alone. The stranger and more macabre
your theme, the more you will find Altered States a gift from heaven, or hell,
if you prefer. All the elements of horror and suspense are here, along
with the worldly and otherworldly and eerie. Music composers in the
ambient traditions will love it as well.
Transcendentalists, beat-mappers,
hip hoppers looking for unusual samples for their beats will find a treasure
chest of jewels. Heck anyone doing electronica (which to me encompasses
all the genres of trance, DnB, house, trip hop, etc) is going to be OK with the
library. Strict classical composers won't want it, people doing pop will
find it too dark and shadowy, Country composers won't like it (except for the
horse samples). Pad makers will be righteously blown away, analog synth
blip heads will love the variety, Percussion, conventional drum and world drum
enthusiasts will be able to make some great kits.
To get the most of the
creative potential of this huge library of samples I recommend using them in
Kontakt2 or the full version of Intakt that will let you access the sample level
and build your own presets. You'll love what you can do. The
Intakt-based libraries are very compatible, the CPU hit is generally low to
moderate. I found the supplied version worked fine in both Logic7 and
GarageBand3.
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