The Elements - Sound on Sound - February 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
If the patch names within The Elements are anything to go by, the folks at Sample Logic have a pretty good sense of humour – ‘Hells Panties’ and ‘Vista Crashed Again’ are good examples, but the are also plenty of patch names that reference their inspiration, including a number that are clearly suggestive of the types of sounds used by Sean Callery in his music for the hit TV series ‘24’. Sample Logic’s development team also seem industrious – The Elements contains over 13GB of sample data (supplied across some 1,700 instruments and loops. These are all presented to the user via NI’s Kontakt 2 Player front-end, so AU, VST, DXi, RTAS and stand-alone modes are all supported.
The material is organised into six categories; Ambience, Bass, Harmony, Impacts, Melody and Rhythm. The documentation suggests that these categories comprise the six key elemtns (hence the title of the library) that can be used to construct a compostion. While most of the material forms instrument patches, there are also plenty of loops, and these are tempo-matches to the project and mapped across the keyboard for pitch adjustment.
Despite the large number of patches, navigation is easy. The titles give a good guide as to the contents of the various ‘elements’. For example, the 450-plus Ambience patches are dominated by soundscape-style materials. While some of these are pads, the patches also cross over into sound-design territory and there are also tempo-sync’ed beds. On the whole, the moods are dark and disturbing rather than relaxing – a comment that applies equally to patches in the other ‘elements’. There is little here by the way of straight, traditional instruments – even those based on strings or guitars have generally been processed – but the various choir/vocal patches are an exception. They appear in both the Melody and Harmony sections and contain some very atmospheric choir pads, as well as a small number of nice ‘world’ vocal phrases. The Impacts category is also worth a mention. This consists of nearly 400 ‘hits’ covering a huge range of styles and textures, from musical ear-candy through to some great sound-design material.
The Elements will probably appeal more to media composers than those looking to construct their next top 10 single. That’s not to say there isn’t material here that could work in a song-based compostion – there are some great synth arpeggios ad bass sounds that would tick that particular box – but this library really excels for dark or dramatic underscore and sound design. Given the volume of material, it also represents excellent value for money. For film and TV composers looking for a large bundle of sound that doesn’t require them to spend a large bundle of cash, The Elements is an ideal solution.
John Walden
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