How does a sample library become a Triumph Audio sample library?

A sneak peek at our process.

First off we gotta sample something right? And it’s gotta be interesting or if it’s a standard instrument (think cello) then we gotta do something a little different. Right? I mean should I jump in and be the 150th person to record legato cello? I may take that task on in the future but for now let’s focus on unique instruments (think Ghost Ukelin, Short Wave, Feedback Drones and Roadtrip Percussion). Since Cinematic Toy Piano is coming out as we release this blog post let’s talk about it. Cinematic Toy Piano starts out with your good ol’ basic toy piano sampling. Nothing overly fancy here but some good mics, good mic placement, a great place to record, some high end convertors and someone really patient to hit every single key over and over in various velocites.

Step 1 - Record an instrument. We recorded our Toy Piano at Triumph Studio’s composer home of me: film, tv & game composer Kevin Manthei (Invader Zim, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ben 10, Tron Evolution, Star Trek Online, etc). Triumph Studios has a really large well treated scoring stage and we dropped the toy piano in the middle and placed two sets of stereo mics up. Two close on either side and two up high to capture the room. I am a big Digital Performer fan and have been for many years and sequence and record with it. Digital Performer was the DAW we recorded and edited the samples on. We have two high end Apogee Symphony’s with their 8 mic pre cards and used those for the recording. I have some great old school mic emulation mic’s that I love from Warm Audio that cover most of the recordings.

Step 2 - Edit said instrument. We jumped into editing Cinematic Toy Piano and for our main library patch we ended up with 4x round robin and 3 velocity layers. One thing we wanted to do with this library was get a really aggressive and loud top layer. We achieved that really well! So for those of you wanting to get really into it and have some strong accents in toy piano we got you covered. We also did something a bit different with our next articulation. We did a staccato pass. This may seem a little strange since the there is so much ring off on a toy piano but there is a really cool thing that happened with this pass. Royal Dean who played the toy piano naturally hit the keys in a staccato fashion and a great wooden hit type sound accompanied the tonal quality of the strike. So with this articulation you get more performance noise and sound of a live person playing. Many sample libraries have too much noise reduction, are perfectly in pitch IMHO and we loose the natural sound of humanity. This patch has lots of humanity!

Step 3 - Early Programming. We drop all those samples into our Kontakt engine and start assembling the patch. Our engine is based on the Photosynthesis engine which is an open source engine created for Kontakt that we have modified for our libraries and have found it really easy to use. It has a really robust section for rhythmic production, on board fx, compression, eq and final mastering.

Once Royal and I are happy with how our main group of patches are sounding we are ready for the fun stuff. On this library we sent out the Authentic patches to a bunch of people that we work with that created engine produced patches. These include many of the patches you see and hear on the Processed side of our libraries. This is the stuff that really turns our Toy Piano into CINEMATIC Toy Piano. Royal and I also do a ton of programming and creation of sounds at this point in the product and we ended up with over 100 patches. We have found that having multiple people create patches allows for so many more unique patches and sounds to be created and discovered.

Step 4 - mangle. We love to mangle the original audio material. We have done this in so many ways on past libraries and we will devote more blog time to that possibly on our next release but for Cinematic Toy Piano we sent off the library to Jake Weston who took various individual samples and ran them through his modular fx set up. What was fun with this was how we got material back that didn’t even remotely sound like a Toy Piano. We also got material back that had some sparkles and interesting elements that reminded us of the fact that yes IT IS TOY PIANO!

Step 5 - Programming & Organization. At this point of the project we can see the finish line but we have to start really organizing and laying out the library so that you the user can instantly see and understand all the categories and layout of the library. We finish up our Kontakt patches from the modular material and asses our library as a whole and the best way to present it to the user. On Cinematic Toy Piano we ended up with these categories.

Authentic - the main patches - no processing - just the facts.
Authentic Processed - patches that are clearly Toy Piano but manipulated slightly
Soundscapes - otherworldly sounds that sound brand new and cinematic
Pads - really pretty and soft pads to angry and big monster pads that sound like cathedral organs.
Lead - tonal leads that run from bell to synth like
Basses - tonal basses in various styles and sounds
Pulses - these pulses run the gamut from clearly toy piano to EDM 4 on the floor. We love working with Austin Blau and having him create the most usable and crazy pulses and rhythms!

Step 6 - Beta test. We send the library out to a handful of fellow composers to get their feedback and see how it lives up to their testing. After we get their feedback we continue tweaking and massaging the content. It’s not done until it’s done. I know this sounds strange but the library tells me when its ready.

Step 7 - Internal Beta Test and get that library up on Pulse. We love working with Pulse and their Pulse Downloader app. It sure beats Native Instrument and having to open up Native Access. I get scared every time I have to do it on my other libraries I purchase. :)

Step 8 - All the other stuff….. Even for the simplest of libraries they require a ton of work and lots of team effort goes into it. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive. Next time I may talk about the marketing side of things and what goes into getting the library ready from that perspective! Making the library is really just the first STEP!

Cinematic Toy Piano is out now! Go check it out and give it a spin. We know you will love it.

Let us know if you have any comments or thoughts!

Best,

Kevin Manthei

founder Triumph Audio