Tangent Drum

‘Tangent Drum’ is the one and only Tongue Drum you will ever need – and we say that with confidence!

Recorded with several microphone positions, some of them traditional some others daring and original, we pulled as many colours as possible from this beautiful instrument.

But that’s not all – we also deconstructed every single sample in three layers: The tonal, the percussive and the instrument root so as to be able to build advanced and spotless patches that will help you create music with crystal-clear quality!

Thanks to our deconstruction technique, we assembled multiple Tongue Drums with resonances in different keys (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) as well as an extensive 6-octave range free of any of those pitch-stretch artefacts once uses to get on the transients.

The results are extremely high quality sound as well as crazy clean playability!

What about the Articulations? Well… are you ready? Not only did we play the drum with our fingers (in different ways) as well as with mallets, but we also created a prepared patch played with a crazy amount of different objects! We even managed to bow the tongues! Finally, we ALSO designed more than ten unique Sound Design articulations in native Ambisonics, for full immersion!

You have more questions? Continue reading below for a detailed concept!

The Recording Phase

First, our starting point was to do what others had done in the past: we used an overhead pair of microphones to capture the sound of the drum… However, we also added an overhead Ambisonics microphone, meaning that we gathered the sound emitted from every possible angle to capture perfect realism, even if you are working in Stereo mixes.

From there, we decided to raise the bar, and worked in a new concept called macro sampling, in which we used extremely sensitive microphones as close as the source of the sound as possible, we’re talking about 1-2 milimetres close, and we adjusted the microphone for every tongue we played. Finally, we mixed our macro samples in a three-dimensional environment in which you can feel the tongue drum all around you.

Finally, we went overboard with experimentation by placing another Ambisonics microphone inside the drum, this gives an amazing feeling of being completely surrounded by the sound emitted by this capturing instrument – it’s a unique feeling as no matter how you rotate the source of the sound, you always feel embraced by it.

We created a Mix using all the microphone positions so that you can quickly approach the instrument in case you don’t want to spend time mixing – it’s a ready-to-go solution!

All of the above was made not only in native Ambisonics, so that you can create music in ANY speaker array you want (Stereo, Surround, Spatial Audio, etc), but also in Stereo in case you want to focus on this format for your music.

The Icing on the Cake

Aside from the extensive dedication in our recording technique, we also went overboard in playing techniques (articulations) as well as post processing of the Samples, and we are extremely happy to share this with you.

Not only did we play the Drum with our fingers and traditional mallets, but we created prepared articulations so pull as many sonic colours as possible! Hot Rods, Brushes, Wrenches, Bowed, Pens, Drum Sticks, Finger Nails, Sticky Fingers, and even Bowed Tongue are some of the organic articulations we prepared – everything in multiple Round Robins and Velocities… Additionally, we created a set of Sound Design articulations for even more insanity…

Almost 30 unique Articulations compose this instrument (5 Core, 13 Prepared, 10 Sound Design).