I Love Lamp
3 Ikea lamps sampled with love and turned into a hang-drum-bell-esque tuned percussion instrument
The story
I like finding sounds in odd places, and one of those places happens to be the lamp above my desk. I’d been wanting to learn how to create a Kontakt instrument for a while, and lamp seemed to be a good place to start. After recording a few samples of me playing it with my thumb and getting them into a Kontakt template, I went on another sound hunting excursion around the house and tested out all the other lamps. Two more had some nice tones to offer so they got recorded and added to the template too.
So you now have 3 sounds to blend:
PINNG has a bell-like tone and suits any room with a wooden floor or industrial elements.
KLENK is a more percussive sound played on this lamp’s base and makes for a very cosy living room.
BUONNG has a glassy, rich tone and is the perfect addition to any home office workspace.
Modwheel controls the dynamics of PINNG and BUONNG, so when KLENK is turned up you can change the overall instrument sound from sustained and ringing to dampened and percussive.
Sometimes it sounds like a hang drum, sometimes like tubular bells, so there’s a few presets in there for you to get started with too.
Many thanks to Angus Roberts-Carey for his pianobook template, Dave Hilowitz for his video series on Kontakt, and our favourite Swedish furniture company for their tuneful lamps.
Reviews
Cmon, lamps can't be that good, right?
Oh man they can. While there is just a little bit of noise, I was wow'd by the amount of detail on this one. The sound is very metalic like a hang drum, but it has its own kind of chracter for sure. The GUI is fantastic as well! It matches the theme and it gives you some nice options to play around, including the depth of the sound itself and the stereo field. Just download it and try it already!
A love letter to lamps
The idea of sampling a lamp is already interesting, but the sounds this results in are also incredibly interesting. With a bit of post-processing this can quickly turn into a mellow sea of lampy-metallic sound that I am very much a fan of.
Unexpected sound!
Intrigued by the (I assume) Anchor Man reference, I decided to try this instrument out. It went very well with the Christmassy vibe I was going for! Thank you so much for making this - here's what I made with it.
https://soundcloud.com/eler1/home-for-christmas
