Library number 2! With my first library finished, I approached this one with a new goal: to explore the limits of what the latest version of Decent Sampler (V1.7.4) can do.

For this I decided to tackle a percussion library. In particular, I’ve always found shaker samples to be difficult to play in a way that sounds natural. So that was my challenge.

The solution I came up with to make them not sound artificial was to play full rhythms and record them for real (as opposed to just sampling single hits and leaving the player the task of trying to make them sound realistic). 3 different shakers recorded and looped at different tempos.

I added mod wheel support to switch between tempos (100-200bpm), and keyswitches to change the beat subdivision (1/4, 1/4T, 1/8, 1/8T, 1/16). Essentially providing shakers suitable for tempos anywhere between 50bpm and 400bpm (in 5bpm intervals).

I also included single hits just to give players the option, as well as prayer chimes and (of course) the eponymous frog! All instruments have their own separate panning and volume controls, and there’s a global reverb dial.

NB: This library uses features only available from v1.7.3 of Decent Sampler onwards. Will not work with older versions.

Update: V1.3 now out! I’ve made the shaker tempo options more granular. The tempo of the recorded samples can now be adjusted to any whole number value between 100-200bpm. (In previous version it was only possible to adjust in 5bpm increments.)

Demos:

Matthijs Hebly’s Demo (Shameless Plugs):

Contributors

Plug-in Play

Frog wrangler and shaker player extraordinaire! Each shaker was sampled at a few different tempos and time-stretched to fit as granular a tempo range as my patience could handle. All single hits sampled with 4-5 different velocity levels. No frogs were harmed in the making of this library.