pocketBlakus - Free Solo Cello Instrument For Native Instruments Kontakt

Blakus has released pocketBlakus, a free NI Kontakt instrument featuring slow legato samples of his dusty old cello.

I decided to have a crack at a simple single velocity layer, slow moving, expressive solo cello. So I dusted off my cello and prepared for the worst. This is my first sampling attempt and I really enjoyed making this.

pocketBlakus is available for free download in the official pocketBlakus thread on v.i. control forums (48MB download size). Note that NI Kontakt is required in order to use the instrument (no WAV files included).

There are several different versions of the NKI mappings available. The one I tested was the legato version and it’s pretty good. No velocity layers or round robins in the pack, but the recordings are good and they sound very natural.

The only thing I didn’t like is that the instrument is a bit too quiet altogether (hits around -24dBFS), but that can be easily fixed inside the DAW. You can hear my very short audio demo of the instrument below.

Kudos to Blakus for such a nice first sampling project. Hope to see more stuff from this guy in the future!