Dystopian Guitars

PulseSetter-Sounds sets the tone to stun with cool KONTAKT-hosted huge hybrid guitar factory for film scoring

DYSTOPIAN GUITARS issued a unique kind of Kontakt library totaling 21.32 GB of highly-creative content designed to cover all modern hybrid guitar grounds for film scoring. DYSTOPIAN GUITARS achieves an extensive variety of sounds, from clear and soothing moods to hellish industrial tones, three years in the making.

“I have high expectations from guitar libraries as I am a guitar player myself, and found DYSTOPIAN GUITARS to be very practical and usable right out of the box, writing music the minute I tried it — a great and inspirational library.” GRAMMY® Award-nominated composer and performer David Arkenstone (World of Warcraft), 2020

Ultimately unique in today’s swelling soundscape production toolset, DYSTOPIAN GUITARS includes several different types of KONTAKT instruments fashioned from the perspective of working film composers, ensuring everything is very useable right out of the box with no fillers and a very intuitive GUI (Graphical User Interface).

It includes several so-called Natural Solo instruments and Unnatural Solo instruments — fully playable multisample patches; customizable Ensembles, capable of performing multi-samples, pulses, and sequences all at the same time; a playable Pulse Designer, with several guitar-based pulses and arpeggios; a collection of acoustic and processed Shimmers; several pads and ambiances; a collection of guitar Tools and FX; as well as PulseSetter-Sounds’ most powerful sequencer to date.

Digging deeper, Ensembles are complex instruments that let DYSTOPIAN GUITARS users perform several simultaneous layers of music in a very organic way when combining loops, multisample guitars, pads, sequences, and other elements — especially effective for film composers wanting to perform and quickly compose complete scenes, while working well also as a starting point when writing sketches or building a unique palette. Possibilities are (almost) endless!

• 21.32GB OF CONTENT (16GB COMPRESSED)
• 33 NATURAL SOLO INSTRUMENTS
• 86 UNNATURAL SOLO INSTRUMENTS
• 39 SHIMMERS
• 334 LOOPS
• 110 ENSEMBLES
• 101 PADS
• 30 TOOLS AND FXS INSTRUMENTS
• 68 BONUS SEQUENCES
• PULSE DESIGNER AND PULSE PERFORMER
• QUAD NOTE SEQUENCER AND ARPEGGIATOR
• GATE AND FX SEQUENCER

Elsewhere, DYSTOPIAN GUITARS showcases several multisample guitars and other string instruments, plus their alter egos — effectively hybrid Frankensteins that work well when writing modern film music.

Moreover, PulseSetter-Sounds tried to tweak even the natural versions by sampling them in unusual ways, as is its way — sampling an acoustic guitar by mostly playing open strings, for instance, or slapping an electric bass with different kinds of sticks.

Shimmers are various combinations of fast arpeggios and tremolos that will add movement, air, and expression to any kind of score — from an intimate piano song to a king-sized sweeping orchestral scene. Several acoustic versions are included alongside processed versions to match any style, so users are also able to mix and match their own combos.

Creativity abounds further still since PulseSetter-Sounds saw fit to helpfully provide DYSTOPIAN GUITARS with several kinds of pulses and loops that will match many different styles. Supplementing hundreds of pulses are their ‘playable’ versions, whereby users can play chords or combine loops in different keys — a very organic way of using loops. Last but far from least, the provided Pulse Designer duly lets users combine most loops for one-pass performances.

Performance-wise, DYSTOPIAN GUITARS also comes complete with more than a hundred customisable pads that its users can also mix and match in pairs, plus a powerful Gate and FX sequencer that lets users customise them to make them unique to their needs.

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Needless to say, PulseSetter-Sounds also added a number of different instruments to DYSTOPIAN GUITARS that did not sit easily in any other category, such as infinite raisers and downers, guitar impacts and scrapes, chords, a feedback machine, and more besides.

Besides being able to sequence all available effects in the FX GUI, discerning DYSTOPIAN GUITARS users can take advantage of PulseSetter-Sounds’ powerful Quad sequencer that will let them work with four independent lines, combining note sequences and arpeggiators in a very intuitive and musical way.

While taking advantage of newer KONTAKT guitar effects, PulseSetter-Sounds succeeded in building very organic instruments, combining those new effects with its own ‘baked’ versions using its in-house guitar and synth rigs — Muted Metal Guitar Combo is a prime example of this in action, allowing anyone to play very convincing heavy grooves without the need for external effects or external guitar software. Since the PulseSetter-Sounds team had so much fun with this, they decided to include a whole set of metal sequences in DYSTOPIAN GUITARS.

With 21.32 GB of highly-creative content designed to cover all modern hybrid guitar grounds for film scoring as a huge KONTAKT-hosted virtual instrument incorporating a wide range of sounds, from clean and dreamy atmospheres to hellish industrial tones, it is going to take time to fully explore DYSTOPIAN GUITARS as a new kind of library in which PulseSetter-Sounds invested so much time — three years in the making, no less. Little wonder, then, that the company collectively hopes that each and every user of DYSTOPIAN GUITARS will find a permanent place for many of its inspiring instruments in their template for unique use in project after project, for many years to come!

About PulseSetter-Sounds

PulseSetter-Sounds is a cinematic sound design company, creating sound sets, loops, and sample-based products for film and video game composers, owned by award-winning composers Freddy Sheinfeld and Guillermo Silberstein. As a group of media music producers and sound designers living in Los Angeles, the company clearly knows that a strong theme tune helps tell the story and evolve emotions in a film score.

Since they are also huge sci-fi-fi — yes, you read that right! — fans, the company collectively created its own ‘PulseSetter theme’ based on a futuristic dystopian-cyberpunk character who lives in one of several megacities where people have huddled together after several world wars; mixing new and old tech, this anti-hero lives for music and sounds in a world more into overthrowing the megacity overlord. Obviously this theme helps PulseSetter-Sounds propel its own sound story into hybrid and new sonic territories.

Pricing and Availability

DYSTOPIAN GUITARS can be purchased as a 21.32 GB (16 GB compressed) KONTAKT instrument for a time-limited introductory promo price of $169.00 USD until November 19, 2020 — rising thereafter to $199.00 USD

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Note that DYSTOPIAN GUITARS requires the full version — 5.7 or higher — of KONTAKT, Native Instruments’ advanced flagship sampler for macOS 10.12 – 10.15, and Windows 7 / 8 / 10.

Cello Ibrida – Quick Start & Video Manual

Guillermo Silberstein by PulseSetter-Sounds published a video manual to understand the Cello Ibrida engine.

Cello Ibrida – Sound Design Collection

Cello Ibrida is a sound design cello sample library. This Kontakt instrument combines textural samples using the normal cello section with hybrid samples from those samples like pads, sfx, multisamples, and finally loops as pulses, sfx, mostly in the low/lower mids keys | left side of the keyboard. Plus some added hardware synths.

PulseSetter loves sound design and recording a cello section to later use it as a sound playground was just the start. There was also a cheap blue cello involved that barley survived the mangling when recording it. There is also Gabriel Di Marco’s (Bear McCreary Cellist)  amazing Cello sound and PulseSetter also sampled a Moog sub37, the Arturia Matrixbrute, and finally they also ran the Cello multi-samples through eurorack modular and Cassette decks. We call these patches “sound sources” and there are about 260 of them.

• 260 Patches: Cello, Hybrid, Pads, Loops, Sfx
• 500+ Snapshots made from patches.
• 6gb Sample content
• Film composing oriented sounds
• Advanced Kontakt GUI (Not Player compatible)
• MIDI assignable cc parameters for Macro1&2, Xfade and LFOs

• When I first played the first 3 patches that are predefined I was already blown away and found very useful sounds, anyone, a composer can use in their track.

Cello Ibrida contains different types of sampling and sound design techniques inside one advanced GUI. The concept relies on not focusing on a single traditional library concept but several that when combined will bring out modern sounds that retain an organic sound. A cello section was recorded to do “texture” articulations and multisample.  From there we edited and processed a variety of sound design style patches to create low pulses, hybrid plucks, pads and sfx.

The matrix GUI contains a two-layer system each with its own effects chain, LFOs, Sequencer, and gate. But the magic happens in the performance matrix page where two macros, two envelope sequencers, and velocity source modulators can be individually assigned to different master effects, chord maker, and a detuner. This enables even the simplest of sounds to be continuously modulated and ever-changing. Additionally, we added CC assignable inputs for crossfade, macro1/2 and LFO rate/amount to let composers modulate all these parameters in real-time and thus, creating a great performance sound design instrument.

Pricing and Availability

Cello Ibrida is available now.

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