Recently, a new Kontakt library has hit the free plugin market. Insanity Sample’s Bamboo Flute is here to offer you with a deep sampled ethnic wind.
Expressive World Flute
The new Insanity Samples freebie, which is also labeled as the Expressive World Flute on the developer’s website, is a 300MB Native Instruments Kontakt compatible library. It will work on the full retail version of the software (V5 and forward), with only limited support for Kontakt Player users.
Dry, Warm, Dynamic and Playable
Bamboo Flute outputs as a really warm yet dry sounding instrument. In production terms, “dry” means that the engineer can do anything that he wishes with the sound, creatively – and, on a more technical level, it basically says that there are no “wet” parameters in the sound – like heavy acoustics or deep, reverberant space echoes – that could affect the character of it artistically, and, as an understandable side effect of course, prevent the producer from shaping the sound the way they want to.
Insanity Sample’s Kontakt Bamboo Flute packs some advanced features and quite a few useful functions as well. One of the features presented is a velocity-based articulation-mapping module labeled “Overlaying”.
The Overlaying feature allows you to bind articulations and flute ornaments to a specific velocity range/zone. On display, there are eight rows representing each of the velocity zones which complete the 0-127 MIDI CC range. By utilizing this very function, you are able to decide whether you want certain sounds on certain velocity sensitivities, or not. Contrary to orthodox keyswitching, this overlaying method is able to provide the player with a bit more performance flow.
And, just in case you prefer your good-old keyswitches, you can simply activate those in the click of a button – or, even more efficiently (and thanks to the developers for that), by hitting the high C7 note on your MIDI keyboard controller.
Articulations and Ornaments
Bamboo Flute offers 12 differing articulations and special ornaments that you could utilize in your performances. Aside from the basic sustains and shorts, you are also provided with some more in-depth, specific flute ornaments and effects like various breathing techniques, flutter tonguing modes, phrase-based pitch bending sounds as well as a selection of articulated harmonics.
As said, you can either trigger those via their dedicated keyswitches or by utilizing the Overlaying configuration.
The included articulations are described and listed as follows. Patches have differing round robins that vary from 2, 3 and 4 RR’s to no round robins at all.
- Expressive Longs – soft vibrato sustains with true monophonic legato
- Overblowing (Start) – short ornamental vibrato sustains w/ overblown attacks
- Overblowing (Double) – short ornamental vibrato sustains w/ repeating overblown attacks
- Flutter Tongue – soft accented longs (tremolos)
- Flutter Erratic – bright and breathy overblown longs (tremolos) w/ unstable tonalities
- Turns Up – vibrato sustains w/ pitched up interval attacks (Minor/Major adaptive)
- Turns Down – vibrato sustains w/ pitched down interval attacks (semitone/wholetone adaptive)
- Ornamental 5ths – vibrato sustains w/ abrupt interval attacks (+7 semitones)
- Sforzando – short articulated ornamental/overblown pitch bent notes w/ varying interval attacks
- Staccato – short notes
- Staccatissimo – very short notes
- Trills (semitone/wholetone adaptive) – controlled via the Scale Link configuration or the E6 and F6 MIDI keys
Additional expressive features that Insanity Samples have included lay in the more technical areas of this virtual instrument. Bamboo Flute supports true legato – and if that is not enough on its own, it also offers an adaptive legato mechanism that can determine the legato type based on the live performance. The legato transitions can either be slow and gradual or relatively quicker – all depending on your playing.
Remaining features are your usual delay and reverb FX modules as well as a stereo control parameter.
Also included are two Performance labeled tabs. You can use these two tabs to create independent pattern variations for the different articulations.
Conclusion: Is Bamboo Flute the best free ethnic wind VST for Kontakt?
The sound of Bamboo Flute would be perfect for any producer that likes their dry samples. This little ethnic woodwind has a really nice breathy punch to it, yet is warm enough “in the right places”.
The amount of articulations and the impressive variety of sounds it provides make for a very nicely balanced and versatile instrument.
I like to compare it to the famous Emotional Recorder from Fracture Sounds. Although not better sounding than the Kontakt Player library, the Insanity Samples Bamboo Flute will offer you with more tonal stability, much bigger selection of articulations and more control.
Download
Bamboo Flute by Insanity Samples is compatible with Kontakt versions 5, 6 and 7. The Native Instruments sampler supports PC/Windows (32-bit / 64-bit) & Mac and is available in the following plugin formats: Standalone, VST, VST2, VST3, AU & AAX.
