Mahmoud Altaf has announced the release of Egyptian Darabuka Lite, a lovely free darabuka sample library designed for use with Native Instruments Kontakt.
This is a sample library of a beautiful Darabuka that I’ve received as a gift and thought it would make a great addition to use in my projects, especially since I’ve sampled certain articulations that I mostly use.
I case you’re wondering, darabuka (also known as goblet drum or doumbek) is a popular Middle Eastern and North African percussion instrument. You’ll probably notice that its sound is quite similar to congas, although darabuka has a bit of that cool oriental vibe which makes it stand out.
The free Egyptian Darabuka Lite library sounds very nice and Mahmoud Altaf is planing to release an updated commercial version of the library in the future. The current version of the instrument doesn’t include any round robin variations, however there’s loads of different articulations and velocity layers inside, so it shouldn’t hard to get a natural sounding performance with it.
Each articulation comes with four velocity layers, although the rolls feature only two velocity layers. The samples were recorded in mono with the AKG 420 Perception microphone and I really like the sound quality of the included one shots.
The library also includes two example MIDI performances, which are a pretty neat bonus for people such as me who aren’t that good at playing percussion instruments. You’ll need the full version of Kontakt in order to load the provided NKI mappings, but the library also includes WAV files which can be used in virtually any sampler out there (here’s a list of our favorite free samplers).
The sample library can be downloaded for free from the author’s website and there’s no need to sign up for any additional user accounts. You can optionally sign up to their mailing list in order to receive updates about future releases.
Audio Demo
Check out the Egyptian Darabuka Lite audio demo:
Download
Egyptian Darabuka Lite is available for free download via Mahmoud Altaf (4.33 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 12 samples in 24-bit WAV format, instrument mappings in NKI & EXS formats, 2 MIDI files).
