Columbia 1 – Toolkit
Experimental instruments created from objects in, around, and outside the studio...
ByZach Miller
The story
Columbia 1 is a series of experimental instruments created from objects in, around, and outside the studio. The resulting sound lends itself well to industrial, lo-fi, and musique concréte as the nature of the instruments lend themselves well to warping and manipulation.
The name Columbia comes from the poetic name of the United States. This is a reference to Spitfire’s Albion series of libraries, where Albion is a poetic name for the island of Great Britain.
This is my first venture into sampling after needing a new palette for my second album. At the time of production, I did not want to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of sample libraries only to use two or three presets (likely the same few presets everyone else uses). Additionally, I couldn’t find any library that fit the bill for my needs. The natural conclusion was to begin writing my album and design sounds as I needed. The result was Columbia 1, a tailor-made library providing a dark and gritty selection of instruments for this new album.
The instruments include a selection of metal coffee cans and bowls, sticks, crates and boxes, trash cans, pocket sized synths, a 70’s Sohmer & Co. upright, a Fender Telecaster, and many more.
Reviews
This deserves to be at the top of Pianobook!
Firstly there is a tonne of content in this library. Plenty of patches of varying sounds and textures inspired by music concrète. This can act as a great sound design tool but also provide a range of musical patches too, all of which are easily tweakable within the Logic sampler. From percussion to pads and more! Amazing work.
A Huge Found Sound Collection!
This is a massive collection of found sounds. There is a little bit of everything in here. I really love this library because so often you need a little something rhythmic, but not necessarily a shaker. This library has so many options, from playing cards, ticking watches, and trash cans to sound design whooooshes from a shower. There's even a collection of fun loops! One third of the library is devoted to rather lo-fi synth samples. These are fun and very playable. Everything is uniformly well recorded, and immediately playable. This is an excellent library, and one of the many hidden gems on the PB site!
A HUGE library that you probably need
IT'S HUUUUUGE. Really. Guitars, Pianos, Pads, Synths and tons of percussion instruments are here for you to try out. I mean, THEY ARE SO MANY. And they are also super nicely recorded, they are dynamic, and realistic. And creative. And well programmed. I mean... You can't want anything more than that. I guess the next step would be to port it into different platforms like Kontakt or DS, just to make it free for non Mac users.