he original is played by a long-haired dude wearing a Noh mask (hence the name) in one of the most controversial bands of all time. I could have called this the "Maggot Snare" or something sic, but I think that blister already exists.

My drummer played his signature model, and I recorded these samples somewhere along the way in 2011 but never came around to actually doing anything with them.

Until now.

It's very easy to handle - load the plugin, play MIDI note D1/38 and that's it.

There are rim-shots, they get triggered by velocities of 121 and above, so don't go painting 127s and come complaining about the clicky sound. ;)

ther than that - no articulations, nothing.

As the original snare was specifically tailored to shine in a low-tuned modern metal mix, that's of course where it belongs. But feel free to use it for anything else as well, it's a pretty dynamic beast.

This particular snare model is generally relatively bright and has little low end, so I added the "+punch" Module (lower right of GUI) that will bring some serious *thump* into its sound.

If a Kick drum can be sub-kicked ... why not a snare? :)

The "Silk" controls let you torture the attack phase of the snare, for each microphone independently. Turn to the left for more click, turn to the right for more silk.

You can un-/mute the individual top or bottom microphones completely by simply clicking on them.

Have fun, and go easy on those velocities! Especially for rolls, they need to be very soft and gentle.

The Black Noh Snare is a free download at Chokehold.

Recorded with expensive gear and high-quality cables, yes, but no Neve consoles or Studer tapes involved. Sorry to disappoint you. ;)

I didn't just want to get the samples out of this machine, I wanted to capture and simulate the dynamic range of the device - which had an impressive -76dBfs noise floor.

Even though it was a one-shot machine, the idling noise was loud enough so that a close listener could really hear the samples fade into the noise floor differently at changing velocities.

Others have sampled D4s before, but they usually just capture one loud sample and scale its volume down for lower velocities. Which also lowers the volume of the noise floor being played back, and thereby distorting the dynamic behavior of the device. Might sound cleaner at lower volumes, but not authentic.

Construct will be a commercial product, so the public beta will have an occasional 'demo-tone', other than that it is fully functional.

Pricing and pre-ordering will be available shortly.

Please note that this is a beta version, and although I made every effort to release a stable one, it may be prone to bugs and will be going through several changes over time until a final v1.0 is released.

Construct is free public version.

Thus it can do analogstyle sounds reminding of the old Moog and Prophet days but also merge this with the digital realm in various ways to achieve sounds beyond.

Featuring Phil’s vintage Korg MS-20 modular synth and SQ-10 sequencer, Analog Performer: Nano Loops is a great introduction to the

Nano Loops includes sixteen loops at 120bpm. It contains:

• 16 ACID wav format loops (34MB total)
• Sliced versions of the 16 loops in Apple Loops, Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, and REX formats
• 44.1kHz/24-bit mono audio throughout

You do not need a software sampler to use this library

The Nano Loops pack is a free download at Precisionsound.

Xclusive-Audio has announced Raw Hiphop Drums, a free sample pack featuring drum samples for hip hop music production.

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The sample pack is free to Xclusive-Audio newsletter subscribers.