Free Timpani Vst
The Timpani you may recognize from orchestral music, it is often featured to give an “epic” sound in orchestral music. Played slow and methodical, it can impart a sense of urgency or dread, as if the entire earth may collapse. If you couldn’t tell, I am a fan of Timpanis. So any VST that reproduces them even somewhat accurately, I am a. Posted in Drums by free vst Sonatina Timpani is a sampled timpani from the Sonatina Orchestra public domain library.
- Size 44.6 MB / 44.8 MB / 52 MB / 52 MB VSCO2 Timpani is a sampledtimpani. Samples were recorded by Versilian Studios / Sam Gossner. Free vst plugins November 27.
- Kettle Drum - Developer: Samsara Cycle Audio.
Top 10 Cinematic Percussion Sample Libraries 2019
Every composer needs a few percussion libraries in their arsenal to create cinematic thumping, heart-pumping action scenes. But which one to choose? Should you stick with only one or use a combination of a few good ones? In this post we’re going to take you on a search for the top 10 best and most useful cinematic percussion libraries for 2019, in no particular order of course.
1. Heavyocity – Damage
This one has been out there for quite some time and it’s a favorite among many A-list composers in Hollywood, including names such as James Newton Howard and Tom Holkenborg A.K.A. Junkie XL. The guys from Heavyocity have come up with some of the most popular sample libraries out there and Damage is one such library.
It’s a classic really and whenever I think about writing action cues my choice usually goes straight to Damage. It gives you 30GBs (16 GB compressed) of dramatic pounding drums, fusing industrial sounds and orchestral drums into a devastating artillery of percussion with well over 200 sound sources and 500 single-shot elements with up to seven velocity layers and up to nine round-robins per drum. Osx free vst host.
Damage features traditional percussion, snares and toms, various assortments of metal and wooden objects with a rather unique and obscure collection of sounds like exploding cars, cranes, junkyard objects, dumpsters and large objects dropped from great heights. It is the first instrument in Heavyocity’s offer that features the notorious Punish knob for compressing and saturating your sound, giving you that extra bite and grit.
2. Audio Imperia – Cerberus
This is Audio Imperia’s second entry into the domain of percussion libraries and it’s a rather great entry. It sounds a bit dry compared to others out there but that is because it is designed to be used for trailers and fast paced action cues. It comes with 13GBs of samples and many a round robin per drum and also features a stacking engine to beef up your drum sounds.
Cerberus comes with 7 mic positions for regular samples and 3 mix positions for processed samples and also comes with a set of tighter and more loose loops. Drum ensembles are featuring instruments such as Gran Casa, Kick Drum, Toms, snares, clack and clicks.
If you own Audio Imperia’s Jaeger orchestral library, this is a great add-on because it was recorded on the same stage as Jaeger.
3. Laboratory Audio – StrikeForce
Laboratory Audio are fairly new on the market and StrikeForce is their first and only sample library. And boy oh boy, it’s a good one. It features 72 big drum ensembles, 11 big solo instruments, 12 small drum ensembles, 13 big snare ensembles, 7 solo snare instruments, 27 types of anvils, big anvil ensembles 14 sub booms, 21 clock tickers, 4 impact menus and all of that ranging at roughly 6 velocity layers with 16 round robins per sample. The size of it reaches 43GBs on your hard drive.
It has already been endorsed by composers such as Junkie XL, Ramin Djawadi, Rupert Gregson-Williams, and others. The user interface is very sleek and you can easily find your way around it. If you’re looking for some heavy-hitting cinematic percussion, look no further.
4. Sample Logic – Drum Fury
Sample Logic is a veteran at cinematic sample libraries with many popular products like Cinematic Guitars, and the best-selling Morphestra that has been featured on countless film and game scores. Drum Fury is their latest cinematic percussion library with a very sleek and streamlined GUI and the library itself features 113 instruments with almost 11GB of samples. The drums sound really punchy and very tight. There are Taikos, Toms, Gran Casas, gongs, ethnic percussion and many others and they all sound amazing straight out of the box.
The energizer and polisher sliders serve the purpose of, well… energizing the sound by compressing it and adding some nice transient expansion to the initial hit. I hope to see more of this in the future by Sample Logic, it’s a real treat!
5. Spitfire Audio – Hans Zimmer Percussion
You can’t have a top 10 list of sample libraries without Spitfire Audio and these guys really deserve all of the accolades they get.
Hans Zimmer Percussion library is developed in collaboration with the man himself and it comes with a whopping 48.5 GB of sample content with instruments ranging from Taikos, Boobams, Bombos, Djuns, big low booms, rather interesting snare drums and all of that (except Los Angeles version) recorded and mixed at the famous AIR Studios in London.
It comes in three versions; London, Los Angeles and London Solos with a really nice selection of mic positions with mix presets by Hans Zimmer, Junkie XL and Alan Meyerson, so rest assured you’re getting some awesomely tuned percussion. Based on many reviews it’s not as versatile and affordable as many other percussion libraries out there but for that big pounding percussion work it does the job exceptionally.
6. Auddict – Drums Of The Deep 2 Unleashed
This library comes at a size of 27GB of samples with 5 mix positions capturing up to 8 drummer ensembles for that huge pounding sound. It has 20.000 samples included with instruments such as field drums, frame drums, gran casas, toms, surdos, taikos, timpani and rope tension drums. The developers say that all of these samples are recorded with actual instruments used on Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter. The samples themselves sound really great for the price although they are not so tight compared to Cerberus by Audio Imperia or Drum Fury by Sample Logic, but they do have a very natural organic sound which you can tweak to your own liking.
7. Red Room Audio – Saga Acoustic Trailer Percussion
This one got my attention based on the GUI itself because it’s really cool and ancient looking, featuring a Greek Warrior. Kudos to Red Room Audio for that. But we are not here to judge the visuals of the library but the actual sound, and the sound is really awesome.
If you are composing music for a historic action drama, this is the library for you and it delivers that nice punchy in your face smack. Great for trailers too. It features orchestral and world drum ensembles, cymbals & gongs, solo drums, anvils and other metals, field recordings of battle gear, tools, machinery, doors, tanks, silos, and all of that is sampled with up to seven dynamic layers and 10 round robins per sample with 4GB of sample content.
8. 8Dio – Epic Ensembles
These are individual collections of different instruments divided into Taiko, Dhol, Framedrum and Tom ensembles and are based on the highly popular 8dio’s legacy epic ensemble libraries, but fully enhanced now to provide a more modern sound. The GUI is redesigned and offers a lot of new options and each one of these libraries comes with 10 velocity layers and 10 round robins at a rather small footprint of 2.5GBs per library. Each one is under $100 so give it a go because you can never go wrong with 8Dio.
9. Native Instruments – Action Strikes
Action Strikes was developed by Sonuscore for Native Instruments and it is featured by default in Native Instruments Komplete bundle. The library itself is based on the engine featured on the controversial library Action Strings, due to the loop creator that you can customize to your needs. Some may disagree, but I found the library to be very useful when you’re on a crunch to meet the deadline and you actually do have total control of the performance loops. If you are not a fan of triggering loops, there are individual one-shot samples for all of the instruments offered in this library that comes with 12 ensembles at a size of 3.2GBs.
10. EastWest – StormDrum 2
An oldie but goldie as they say, this one is not sampled for Kontakt but for EastWest’s PLAY engine. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the sound quality that comes from their instruments and StormDrum is one such instrument on their product list. I can still hear a lot of samples from it in many trailers and scores even today, and that says something about a library still being used even after 10 years.
Created by Nick Phoenix and Thomas Bergersen (Two Steps From Hell) in collaboration with Doug Rogers at EastWest Studios, this is one of the pioneers of cinematic percussion libraries and it still packs a punch. You have loads of ensembles and sounds available, ranging from small metallic percussion to big pounding taikos and gran casas. Don’t give up on it yet because this old boy still has a lot of strength to it.
All of the libraries we covered here will surely give you years of fun and creativity in your production workflow, so get out there and start shaking the very foundations of the Earth!
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Pitched drums, such as Timpani(also known as kettle drums), are vital in orchestral music.
Chances are if you’re working on sync music or with string instruments and horns, you’ll have use for Timpani.
Finding a great sounding Timpani VST plugin can be tricky, as many sound pretty terrible. Don’t worry, as I’ve taken care of the hard work, sharing five of the best Timpani plugins you can use in your compositions.
Note: Few Timpani VSTs will be standalone. Most will come included in either an orchestral VST library or a percussion library.
Table of Contents
- Things to Consider When Buying Timpani VST Plugins
1) Orchestral Percussion SDX by Toontrack (Paid)
Right out of the gate we have Orchestral Percussion SDX. The library sounds fantastic, being that Toontrack tracked the instruments in the main hall at Galaxy Studios.
Each instrument is multi-sampled, giving more realism to each sound.
Let’s take a look at some of the features:
- 120+ individual instruments
- Playback up to 11-channel surround
- Extreme detail and great articulations
- MIDI clips included
The major downfall of the library is that it does require Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 to function. If you already own SD3, Orchestral Percussion SDX may be a great option!
2) Big Bang Cinematic Percussion by SONiVOX (Paid)
Big Bang is an excellent, yet affordable, library that includes loads of great-sounding percussion (including timpani). The best way I can describe the sounds are epic.
Let’s take a look at some of the features:
- Multi-take round-robins
- Multi-velocity samples
- 8 User-assignable stereo outputs
- 8 User-assignable effects busses
- MIDI learn
- Over 200 percussion instruments
- 15GB of samples
- RTAS and AAX support
At the time of publishing, Big Bang Cinematic Percussion is on sale at Plugin Boutique for $59.
3) Timphonia by Modwheel (Paid)
Here’s a standalone timpani VST! Timphonia by Modwheel is one of the best-sounding kettle drum plugins I’ve heard so far.
The library includes 11 “regular” Kontakt patches (yes, Kontakt is required, unfortunately) with hits, flams, ruffs, rolls, with both mallets and sticks.
Timphonia also includes 18 “irregular” Kontakt patches including extended techniques such as pedal bends, bowed cymbal on timpani bends, coin spins, broomstick rubs, shell hits, rubber ball bounces, and more.
As stated, you will need the full version of Kontakt and 7.1 GB of space on your hard drive.
4) Spitfire Percussion (Paid)
Don’t get me started on Spitfire percussion. There is absolutely nothing better. This library is incredible.
For all you composers out there, look no further than Spitfire Percussion.
The instruments were recorded meticulously at Air Studios with the world-renowned Joby Burgess.
The library is rather expensive, but the Timpani samples sound so realistic. To give you an idea, there are a total of 43109 samples included in the instrument.
Kontakt is also not needed as the free player does not time out due to Spitfire’s license with Native Instruments.
5) Kettle Drum – Timpani (Free)
For those on a budget, check out Kettle Drum – Timpani by Samsara Cycle Audio.
Unfortunately, this Timpani VST is not the greatest. It sounds rather monophonic, and it seems that there is limited sustain of each pitch.
I can only recommend using this if you’re doing pop or hip hop production and intend to mess it up with effects.
Here are a few other free timpani VSTs to try out:
Things to Consider When Buying Timpani VST Plugins
Depending on your needs as a composer and producer, you may select plugins differently.
Using Kettle Drum VSTs for Effect
If you’re not an orchestral composer and plan to use Timpani in production (like hip hop beats for example), you might get away with using a free instrument.
Free Timpani Vst Music
The free timpani VSTs I’ve found tend to sound terrible when compared to their realistic-sounding counterparts.
When used in pop production, however, they may seem exceptional in your mix with some effects.
Using Timpani VSTs For Orchestral Composition
If you’re composing realistic sounding music for movie trailers, TV spots, video games, etc… you will need to fork out the cash, unfortunately.
Timpani VSTs aren’t always standalone. Even when they are, often it’s better to purchase the library that has all the orchestral instruments recorded in the same room.
The instruments gel better if they’re from the same library in my experience.
The Kontakt Player Times Out
I sound like a broken record on many of these posts, but the Kontakt Player isn’t the greatest.
For one, it times out after fifteen minutes. If the instrument you choose to buy runs in Kontakt, be sure you own Kontakt. There is nothing more frustrating than dealing with a plugin stopping due to a time restriction.
If you don’t own Kontakt, pick a standalone library.
What Are Timpani Drums?
The Timpani is a set of four or five pitched kettle drums that play in orchestras, symphonies, and even marching bands.
Free Timpani Vst
Percussionists playing Timpani control the pitch of the drums with a foot pedal located at the bottom of each.
There is a pitch indicator on each drum, but often they are inaccurate, so it’s best to use a pitch pipe.
Famous works that feature Timpani include E. Berlioz: “Symphonie fantastique,”“G. Mahler: Symphony No. 2,” and “J.S. Bach: Christmas Oratorio.”
Free Cello Vst Plugin
Looking for more VST percussion? Check out my other roundups.
Have you used any orchestral percussion libraries or standalone Timpani VSTs? Which ones do you like? I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment and share if you found the article helpful.
Free Timpani Vst Plugin
Thanks for reading.