Flintpope has introduced Layercake, a freely downloadable sound design oriented instrument library for Native Instruments Kontakt.
If you’re involved in sound design and looking for a free way to expand your palette of sound crafting tools, you may want to keep reading. Flintpope has released a free Kontakt library that can be used as an instrument to create soundscapes and textures. The basic structure of this instrument called “Layercake” is made up of three samplers that contain four sounds each. As is expected from most Kontakt libraries, you’re given many controls and options to customize the 16 presets that come with Layercake. If needed, the user can even adjust the individual samples themselves.
See also: Free Sound Design Tools By Gavin Thibodeau!Listening to the demo of Layercake, I could see some of the sounds working very well in a trailer for a sci-fi movie or video game. The samples don’t appear to have much harmonic content, that is to say I’m not hearing melodies or chords. There are impacts, crashes, drones, eerie gritty sounds, that sort of thing. Because of this, I would imagine it could work as bed for additional music without a risk of clashing chords or keys. There also don’t appear to be any organic instrument samples. Everything sounds either synthesized or processed so heavily that it is transformed into a totally unique sound. One feature that could have been useful in this library would be to have an easy way to import your own samples to incorporate into the soundscape. This could be especially interesting with vocal samples. If you own the full version of Kontakt, though, you might try experimenting with importing your own samples using the instrument editor.
To snag this free library, you’ll need to head over to Gumroad.com. If you provide your email address they can send you a link to download and check it out. You can enter any amount if you want to support Flintpope’s work. Alternatively, you can support him on Patreon.
Layercake is available for free download via Flintpope’s Gumroad page (266 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 17 patches in NKM format for NI Kontakt).
