Bojan Boyss has introduced CGC Shaker, a freely downloadable (valid email address required) experimental percussion library for Native Instruments Kontakt.
The library is based on recordings of camping gas cartridges (hence the CGC acronym in the title). These were sampled with numerous round robin variations, leading up to a total of 880 samples which are included in the pack. There are 22 round robins included for each articulation, ensuring a natural sounding performance. The good news for people who don’t use Kontakt is that Bojan Boyss also provided the WAV versions of each sample, making the library compatible with all DAWs and samplers on the market.
So, how do you make shaker sounds with camping gas cartridges? Well, that is the magic behind CGC Shaker. Since the sounds weren’t created using professional instruments, the library has a fresh, lively feel to it which with definitely be a perfect fit for some productions. I’d say that these will work best for layering on top of purely electronic drums, or for adding groove to shuffled hip-hop drum beats. The sound is close to a traditional shaker, but still different enough to sound new and interesting.
If you load up the library in Kontakt, you’ll also have the advantage of using the customized instrument panel which provides direct access to control parameters like the ADSR envelope, tone, effects (delay, reverb, and chorus), as well as a built-in sequencer and an arpeggiator. Also included are the patches for Akai MPC, Native Instruments Maschine, SFZ, as well as a set of audio loops in WAV format. As mentioned above, the individual hits are also provided as WAV files. The different formats can be downloaded separately or in one large bundle.
The library is free to download for anyone who subscribes to the Bojan Boyss mailing list. To get the discount coupon (which will reduce the price to $0 at checkout), scroll all the way down the product page linked below and enter your email address. You will receive an email containing a discount code which should be used at checkout. Alternatively, you can pay the recommended price of $8 or enter any other amount you prefer.
CGC Shaker is available for free download via Bojan Boyss (up to 463 MB download size depending on the format, ZIP archive, contains audio samples & loops in WAV format, patches in SFZ/Kontakt/Maschine/MPC formats).
