Bristol-based sound design studio Slate + Ash has announced the release of a new Kontakt instrument. Primaries / Woods is the next edition in the company’s Primaries series, inaugurated in 2024 with the release of Primaries / Strings.
Where that instrument focused on solo string performances across bass, cello, viola and violin, Primaries / Woods is based on the sounds of the woodwind family, packing more than a hundred recordings of bassoon, clarinet, flute, oboe and saxophone into an instrument that the company says is designed to “capture the physical exchange between player and instrument”, exploring solo woodwinds as “a fundamental colour in the orchestral spectrum”.
Primaries / Woods’ library of multisampled articulations is accessible via the same sophisticated sound engine found in Primaries / Strings, which is capable of layering two sound sources together with independent controls for tuning, envelopes, filtering, and key-zone.
Each layer can be processed with a selection of fifteen macro effects, with delay, reverb, compression, tremolo, bitcrusher, pitch-shifter and more on offer, along with a master effects section on the output that features EQ, compression and a lo-fi processor. Effects can be modulated via the onboard LFOs or MIDI CC.
Primaries / Woods’ spatial mixer allows you to blend multiple reamped versions of its sample library together across an XY pad; recordings have been reamped in the Funkhaus echo chamber in Berlin and Real World Studios’ Wood Room, and processed via an EMT 140 plate reverb and Bricasti M7.
Primaries / Woods is equipped with four input modules, spanning a multi-mode arpeggiator, scale-aware harmony generator, and a randomizer that introduces octave shifts, tuning variations and panning into the mix. There’s also a tape simulator onboard that can be used to time-stretch and pitch-shift sound sources.
Though Primaries / Woods uses woodwind instruments as a sound source, Slate + Ash has creatively processed its source material to create a broad range of synthetic textures that sound worlds away from the original recordings, and the instruments’ 200 sound-designed presets offer everything from “warm pads and subtle underscore layers” to “arpeggiated sequences, synthetic pulses and granular textures”.
As was the case with Primaries / Strings, you’re able to drop your own samples into the instrument’s sound engine, effectively giving you a versatile and powerful sampler with which to manipulate and rework your own sounds.
Primaries / Woods is currently priced at £149 and can be purchased with Primaries / Strings for a discounted price of £349. The instrument runs in Native Instruments Kontakt 7.10.7 or higher, or in the free Kontakt Player.
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