Lineage Percussion Melodic Ensemble has been revealed as the 7th library in the free Native Instruments Kontakt Player lineup: The Free Orchestra 2.
February’s Lineage Melodic Ensemble by ProjectSAM features a mix of three tuned percussion sounds, fused together – marimba, vibraphone and celesta. These instruments are part of the commercial Kontakt library Lineage Percussion, released in January.
As an individually sampled soundset (well, at least for the majority of it), this new VST seems to provide quite an intriguing amount of dynamics and tonal varieties. It plays softly and very chime-like on the quieter dynamics while being “clicky” and metallic on the more prominent velocities. Yet, it’s not far too bright or thin sounding and is actually quite decently balanced.
It has a nice body to it all the way around – mainly thanks to the marimba but also the celeste – even in the higher velocities and the higher range tones.
The transition between each of the dynamic velocity layers seems quite smooth and responsive, and as a single unit this instrument actually feels surprisingly natural and very playable.
As per the description and similar to the previous free release (TFO2 Lineage Percussion Kit), the tonal range with this one was limited as well so it doesn’t provide more than 3 octaves total.
Unlike the January release which saw a fully-capable, fully-functional and fully-featured library, this time it’s quite of a different story. We don’t get the “luxury” of the individual percussion elements whice are of course present in the full retail version and also not the varying microphone positions that each one of these instruments has in the original release.
Instead, we get a pre-mixed setup and this inseparable blend that sounds fairly good and decent, though I can’t really ignore the fact that it’s quite a bit too much on the wet side and just a little too reverberated to my dry-instrument-sounding preference.
Aside from the base sound, ProjectSAM also included an ambient layer which is labeled “Void”. You can use this parameter to mix the natural signal with the processed sound for a different feel.
The Free Orchestra 2 Lineage Melodic Ensemble is available through the latest update on Native Access. It is compatible with the latest version of Kontakt and the free Kontakt Player by Native Instruments. Supported formats are stand-alone for 64-bit Windows/Mac, VST3 & AAX as well as the AU format for macOS and also NKS.
