Soundiron Cylindrum

The Cylindrum is a massive tuned percussion instrument designed using the principle of open and closed-air column resonance.

The instrument was constructed by Gregg Stephens with the help of some rather involved mathematics, plenty of elbow grease, and quite a few bloody fingers.

The end result is a massive 20-foot-long tuned percussion instrument with a pitch range spanning a full 4 octaves.

Overall, it sounds like a strange organic synthesizer coupled with tuned tom toms.

With deeply nuanced dynamic velocity layering and extensive round-robin variation, this instrument is truly an experimental percussionist's dream come true.

Contents

The Cylindrum library contains three separate variations of the instrument: dry small, dry fat, and wet.

The small set is made from a series of 1 1/2-inch diameter PVC water pipes played by tapping fingers over one end, with a microphone positioned at the far end.

The fat version is made from a series of 4-inch ABS corrugated plastic tubes with an open-ended rubber port hole, played with a ping pong paddle.

Both sets were recorded in a dry studio room, giving them a full, resonant, and fat tonality perfect for arpeggiated melodies and driving bass lines.

The wet version is built from 4-inch ABS corrugated plastic tubes with felt mallets on a 3/8" heavy rubber cap, recorded in an ultra-wide stereo array in a lush glass and tile hall.

This slightly more distant sound and closed port deliver a much more brutal transient impact perfect for dramatic scoring and layering with other percussion.

Multi-sampled Articulations

• 13 dry, individual 4" open-tube impact articulations, mapped in a chromatic ensemble with 10x round-robin and up to 7 velocity layers
• 1 dry 1½" open-tube impact articulation, mapped in a chromatic ensemble with 30 individual notes, 2 round-robin, and 20+ velocity layers
• 12 dry, individual 4" tube impact mute articulations, mapped in a chromatic ensemble with 10x round-robin and up to 3 velocity layers
• 18 wet, individual 4" closed-tube impact articulations, mapped in a chromatic ensemble with 10x round-robin and up to 7 velocity layers

Features

• 13 sound-designed atmospheric ambiences crafted from original Cylindrum content
• LFO system with selectable shape, target, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing, and fade-in controls
• 12 filter types assignable to velocity, mod wheel, expression, after-touch, key position, and sequencer
• Play-assist features with key and scale locking
• Modular FX rack window, with 18 DSP effect modules to choose from, including 99 custom environmental and 38 FX reverb presets
• 1 Master .nki instrument bank in open Kontakt format
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
• Multi-sampled acoustic articulations and designed atmospheric sounds
• 3,367 Samples
• 1.76 GB installed
• 24-bit, 48kHz PCM wav format
• Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
• Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments

Kontakt Format

This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument software platform.

Check out screenshots of our custom graphical user interface for Kontakt in the image gallery above.

They provide a wide range of sound shaping parameter controls, each one totally automation-ready in your host environment or Kontakt's stand-alone mode. 

This is a standard Kontakt open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player does not fully support it and can only run it in a time-limited "demo mode".

However, the sample directories are unlocked so you can use them in other wav-compatible software, sampler, and synth formats.

The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab, or import it into the Kontakt database and Quickload tools for easy navigation, loading, and organization.