Fracture Sounds have made a very special announcement this week, revealing a whole new Kontakt Player dedicated series of instruments, called Blueprint.
The first Blueprint freebie to be featured in Native Instruments flagship sampler is a Fender Rhodes Mark I electric piano. Based on the original hardware developed in the 1960s and distributed during the 1970s, this vintage keyboard instrument is sure to bring a nice and old charm to any musical piece.
Developer: Fracture Sounds
Supports: Native Instruments Kontakt & Kontakt Player 7 and up, Windows and macOS (Stand-alone, VST2, VST3, AU, AAX / 64bit)
Size: 2.3 Gigabytes (download) and 5.8GB (uncompressed)
Almost straight away, you realize this is not the ordinary free e-piano. Electric Keys by Fracture Sounds is of real commercial value, and its pro sounding features speak for themselves.
A layer of mechanical noise with Attack and Release triggers adds a really pleasant and warm, even intimate kind of feel to what is already a deep sounding electric piano on its own.
This sampled Rhodes also provides a great deal of variation. There are two tone options for the instrument – a “raw” DI (direct) and an amplified one. Granted, the amp signal setting is the clear superior between the two, and where the instrument shines best.
An extra layer of sound introduces this very lush ambience, which takes the whole instrument experience to some ethereal dreamscapes. Essentially, this layer of ambience is a quite heavily processed interpretation of the original sound, with generous amounts of reverb applied, some reversed delays, and additional processing.
Effect and feature wise, the Electric Keys user interface seems to provide quite the necessary essentials. There is a chorus and reverb (room and hall) and also a bunch of not-as-common sound design features, such as a Sample Start configuration and a dynamics setting (Velocity Response). The extra features can be accessed by clicking the relevant cog icons.
To download this free Electric Keys library, you may refer to the Fracture Sounds website. It will ask you to submit your email address (and sign up to their mailing list). After that, you should receive a product serial number which you can then register and activate in Native Access. The latest version of Native Instruments Kontakt (and Kontakt Player) is required.
