Sounds and Presets: Alicia’s Electric Keys, Ambient MiniFreak Patches & Great Peak Presets
Experience Alicia's Personal CP70
5,0 / 5,0 | 
Following on from the hugely successful and brilliantly named, ‘Alicia’s Keys’, we get Alicia’s Electric Keys. We also check out some Peak and MiniFreak Patches.
This week we have some libraries for a couple of hybrid synths that both have digital oscillators and analog filters, but kicking us off this week is something new from Native Instruments and the unquestionable talent that is Alicia Keys…
Table of Contents
Alicia’s Electric Keys
Every now and again you will get an artist/developer tie-in and it can be a bit hit and miss. Remember Trevor Horn’s dalliance with Spitfire Audio? Nobody was more disappointed than I! So I will always approach such things with some trepidation. So when NI announced the lazily, but somewhat cleverly titled “Alicia’s Keys”, my guard was lowered.
This was a sample pack for Kontakt that featured Alicia’s own grand piano, sampled in great detail and with a bunch of great presets that worked in Alicia’s own signature R&B style, but also outside of that. It was actually really rather good.
And now we have Alicia’s Electric Keys, a similar sample library based on her Yamaha CP70. Now there are plenty of CP70/80 sample libraries out there, but what sets this one apart is the extensive FX processing that has been applied and how you can dig in and make your own customisations if you want.
Alicia’s Electric Keys may not be for everyone, but from the demos I’ve heard, it does offer some pretty useful and unique sounds. And of course it is NKS compatible meaning that if you own one of the latest Mk.III Kontrol keyboards, you are able to customise it right on the keyboard itself.
Alicia’s Electric Keys is available now for just €145.
Ambient Machine for Arturia MiniFreak from Mr Card Music
I LOVE the Arturia MiniFreak! Cards on the table, I think it is one of the best sounding, affordable synths you can buy that has so much going for it and sounds way bigger than its size might imply. It is, in my very humble opinion, pound for pound, one of the best synths you can buy today.
The Minifreak, and by extension its software counterpart, the MiniFreak V, is capable of covering many styles and tastes and Mr Card Music has just released another bank of sounds for it, entitled Ambient Machine.
For just €17 (normally €22) you get 50 presets that fit into the ambient genre quite nicely indeed. As you’d expect, all of these patches work on both the hardware and software identically. They’ll also throw in a bunch of presets for Valhalla’s Supermassive Reverb free plugin. And these are not the first banks that Mr Card has done for the MiniFreak.
Ambient Machine is Mr Card’s sixth bank for the MiniFreak and you can even buy all six libraries and save nearly 50% off the price if you bought them individually. And he even offers a free taster pack with some highlights from the main library so you can check out their handiwork.
Ambient Machine for Arturia MiniFreak is available now, on offer, for just €17, rising to €22 soon!
Limbic Drift for Novation Peak by Limbic Bits
Limbic bits continue to churn out quality patches for your synth collection and Limbic Drift is the latest and last in their series for the wonderful Novation Peak. Using FPGA oscillators, the Peak was one of Chris Hugget’s last gifts to us.
Using those powerful FPGA oscillators sent through superb analog filters, the Peak has gained many fans since its release. Limbic Drift contains 80 presets that cover many styles and really exploit the feature set of the Peak.
The Animate buttons, mod wheel, aftertouch and velocity can shape the sound way beyond its starting point. The pack itself costs £25 but can also be bought with the three previous volumes in this series for just £77.60, a saving of 20%!
Buy Limbic Drift for Novation Peak now for just £25.
1GB of Free Samples from freesoundsandmusic.com
I always try and include some freebies in this weekly column and here’s a doozy for ya! How does 1GB of free samples sound? Good? Well head on over to https://freesoundsandmusic.com/ and grab them in exchange for just your email address.
Compiled by Andrea Milana from his CremaSound collections, this pack includes a real variety pack of stuff that will work in almost any sample-based device you can think of. I originally encountered these via Andrea’s post in a Sonicware SmplTrek Facebook group.
There’s all sorts in here, from Bossa Nova drum loops to movie dialogue clips, ELZ_1 samples to 80s pop drum loops and loads of cheezy keyboard and video game clips. It’s a real mine of cool sounds and well worth the exchange of your email address for.
All of these 1580 samples have been sampled at various rates and depths and are completely royalty free.
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