Aztec Death Whistle

Aztec Death Whistle is a deeply sampled folk wind instrument that captures the dark soul of the ancient Aztec death whistle, a ceremonial clay resonator used during human sacrifice rituals and warfare at the height of the Aztec (historically also known as the Mexica) empire in Central America, during the 14 and 15th centuries AD in what has now become modern day Mexico.

This whistle — technically grouped into the same family of whistles as bird and animal call whistles — is made of kiln-fired clay. It has two chambers which create air cavities that are resonated by blowing into the top of the skull. It produces a harsh, raspy atonal vocal sound very much like a dying breath, but with a shrill demonic essence that is certain to evoke dread on an almost instinctive level. It is the sound of death incarnate.

We recorded this instrument exhaustively, in a dry studio, as well as from close and far postilions in a large open hall for a rich, lush ambience. With deep velocity layering and natural round-robin variation, plus tons of unique sound-designed and atmospheric content, the Aztec Death Whistle library puts the soul and essence of this dark and unique instrument into the palm of your hand.

This is a standard open-format Kontakt library that includes a variety of playable articulations. We recorded sustains, flutter-tongues, staccatos, hand percussion in our dry studio with deep dynamic layering and 12x round-robin. You’ll also find single-shot dramatic stinger effects, such as swells, crescendos and diminuendos. We then recorded the instrument in a large cathedral from both close and far stereo mic positions to bring out a darker, more mysterious and ambient quality. We also created a wide variety of dark, ethereal and sinister sound designed ambiences, synth patches and FX presets created with the raw acoustic source to give you plenty of nightmare fuel to get your horror on. They make an ideal accompaniment to the main natural articulations in this library.

The library comes equipped with flexible control features, like attack, release, transient offset, dynamic swelling, octave, vibrato and a robust Arpeggiator system that provides a full range of custom dynamic arpeggiation modes and step sequencer pattern creation options. There’s also a complete DSP effects rack, including convolution reverb with dozens of unique spaces, such as cathedrals, churches, halls, bunkers, garages, tunnels, chambers, rooms and plenty of special FX impulses to fully explore and endless variety of strange and unexpected sonic manipulations. All of the samples are also uncompressed PSC stereo wavs, so you can manipulate them directly and import them into any wav-compatible audio software you wish.

Features

• Fully multi-sampled Aztec clay resonator whistle.
• 14 Instrument Presets with dozens of selectable articulations and performance controls.
• Beautifully rendered 3D user interface
• Special Midi-CC and Velocity-crossfaded presets
• Custom sound-designed FX and ambient presets in a variety of categories and styles.
• Sustains and staccatos with and without flutter-tongue rolls.
• 3 Mic positions for main articulations: Dry Studio, Hall Close and Hall Far.
• Dynamic hand percussion articulations, played on the clay whistle
• Short and long single-shot effects and stingers
• Round robin for every staccato and hand percussion articulation.
• Multi-mode Arpeggiation with step-sequencer.
• Convolution Reverb with 70 different cathedrals, churches, chambers, rooms, halls and special effect impulses.
• A full multi-effects rack, with EQ, filter, phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp & speaker simulation and more.

Kontakt Instrument

This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. Kontakt 5.5 requires OSX version 10.8 and later for Mac, or Windows & and later for PC. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument / software sampler platform. 

Check out screenshots of our custom graphical user interface for Kontakt in the image gallery above. They provide a wide range of sound shaping parameter controls, each one totally automation-ready in your host environment or Kontakt's stand-alone mode.

This is a standard Kontakt open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library. However, the sample directories are fully accessible to allow user customization, import and mapping into other wav-compatible software, sampler and synth formats.

The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab, or import this library into the Kontakt database and Quickload tools for easy navigation, loading and organization.

Product Specifications

• 1.4 GB Installed
• 723 Samples
• 14 Kontakt 5.5 .nki preset banks
• 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed stereo PCM wav audio
• Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization

System Requirements

• Windows 7 or higher.
• Mac OSX 10.8 or higher.
• Dual-Core CPU, 4 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library. 

Important Notes: 

• The Full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or above is required to run this software.
• This software will not function in full within the FREE Kontakt Player engine and will only be available in DEMO mode.