Elementary Sounds Instruments
A pleasant surprise!
I recently came across Elementary Sounds, a company that makes Sample Libraries. Their aesthetic is very similar to another sample library company I love - Felt Instruments, so I contacted them to try their plugins. So, I had the chance to play with all their instruments for about a week and was pleasantly surprised by their sound quality and ease of use.
Elementary Sounds currently have 4 sample-based instruments. Wremena One & Two, Tayna, and Reka. They all sound great and have a very mysterious and warm ambient tone. You also have controls over the mics used, Attack & Release Envelope, and some extra controls like Warmth, Compression, etc. The design is beautiful and minimal, and they come as standalone plugins so you won’t need a sample player (thank god!).
Wremena One & Two
Wremena One & Two are based on electric guitar and bass. Sample-based guitars are rare since it’s quite hard to sample an instrument with such an expressive character and human feel. In Wremena’s case, the tone is mellow and well balanced and you have a few articulation options to choose from. The samples are not super-clean and that’s a good thing. The sound coming out from these plugins is warm and organic, and it would easily fool you that it’s not an actual guitar.
But where the magic happens is with the X-Slider you can tweak using your mod wheel. By moving it, the sound fluidly transforms from a clean tone to a washed-out, reversed ambient sound with some added glissando that sounds beautiful! That single control makes the instruments so expressive and dreamy. Also, the addition of the Harmonics articulation is very cool. If you’re like me who barely knows how to play the guitar, let alone Harmonics, having that option is great.
Wremena is definitely my favorite instrument out of the Elementary Sounds collection and it’s one of the best guitar sample libraries I’ve played. It’s full of character and texture without having too many controls to get lost. You just open the plugin and you’re good to go.
Tayna
Tayna is made of a 70s Rhodes electric piano. And again, it’s not your usual Rhodes sample library. I’ve had the chance to play a lot of Rhodes emulations and sample libraries (and even an actual Rhodes) and I was glad that in this case they didn’t try to do just another Rhodes plygin. Tayna uses the beloved Rhodes tone but also adds some dirt and extra warmth that was made possible with the meticulous sampling process they used.
And yet again, the X-Slider gives this instruments a whole new dimension. Each of the two patches (sustain and stylized sustain) have their own secondary dimension. One is reversed and mangled with effects and the second one is played back at half speed to recreate a cassette playback effect. They both sound amazing and help the instrument come to life.
Reka
And lastly, Reka is based on a digital Soviet-Lithuanian piano Venta EM-17. An instrument that I’ve never heard of and that’s extremely rare to find. Although it’s based on a piano, it sounds nothing like your typical piano. It’s dark and noisy and reminds me more of a synth than a piano.
All those plugins have an ambient feel to them, but Reka is for sure the most ambient of the bunch. Here, the X-Slider adds a string-like pad under your main sound generating a lovely wave of sound that’s gritty and nostalgic. Going from a clean piano tone to pads is the key to creating beautiful melodies and chord progressions that have a ton of texture and harmonics.
Conclusion
I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of those libraries. It is very obvious that Elementary Sounds have put a ton of work into the sampling process and that translates to the sound you’re getting out of them. Due to the emergence of sample libraries in the past few years, and the relatively easy process of creating your own sampled instruments in Kontakt or Decent Sampler, there are literally thousands of libraries available, and sometimes even for free. But to create instruments with character, an intuitive UI, and inspiring sound requires doing a lot of hard and detailed work.
And that’s the case with Elementary Sounds. The X-Slider’s functionality is amazing and it’s so easy to use and completely transforms the sound of the plugins. At the same time, the core “clean“ tones of the instruments are warm and mellow and will definitely stand out in your mixes.
Another important factor is the pricing. All instruments are, in my opinion, fairly priced regarding the value you’re getting. The price range is from 39€ to 69€ which is very reasonable in today’s market.
I’m in a position where I have hundreds of sample libraries and I’m actively trying to limit my options and just keep very few of them so I can be more productive. And all Elementary Sounds instruments are going into the favorites folder. So, I definitely recommend trying them out and discovering them yourself.
