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The Tuned Artillery Black Friday deal is 50% off, taking Soundiron's brass shell percussion library for Kontakt to $24.50 until Dec 6, 2026.
Tuned Artillery is a metallic percussion instrument with both pitched and unpitched sounds, captured by sampling empty brass shells that once served in field guns during the two World Wars. Soundiron rounded out the collection with a steel combat helmet from the Eastern Bloc plus two modern grenades that have been taken out of service.
The samples come in dry and hall versions.
Shells and helmets as instruments have history in modern classical music, and Harry Partch is one of the pioneers who used them from the mid 20th century on. You still hear them in avant-garde and experimental work, struck like anvils or pitched across a key range.
The precision-cast, machined brass rings with deep resonance and rich harmonics. Soundiron struck the sides, edges and base with mallets, hammers, sticks, brushes and bare hands.
The maker says it recorded multiple velocity layers in multiple articulations for every piece of equipment.
Soundiron was not content with three mic positions (close, wide and far). Every shell and helmet also exists as a close-miked capture from a sound-treated booth, which leaves the ambience up to you.
Version 2.0 has remastered samples in Soundiron's four-layer modular template. Ambient pads and soundscapes were newly created from the raw source content.
The library holds three main NKI instrument banks that load in Kontakt without locks, covering pings, dings, brushes, scrapes, bounces, clunks, shakes and effects recorded from helmets and grenades across 4 mic positions. It also provides 64 ambience patches built from that source material, 20 custom sound-designed FX and ambient presets, and 3,060 stereo samples in 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav, taking up 3.37 GB once installed. What can you shape inside Kontakt?
The interface has automation-ready controls for swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, coarse and fine pitch, articulation switching, cross-fading and layering.
The LFO has selectable shape, modulation target, speed, intensity, tempo-sync and fade-in time. There are 12 low-pass, high-pass and FX filters, with targets such as velocity, mod wheel, expression, aftertouch, key position and step-sequencer table control.
The arpeggiator has a velocity table and controls for direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. A key and scale lock keeps notes inside common scales and keys.
There is also a full FX rack with convolution reverb, including custom rooms, halls, chambers and FX environments.
It runs on Windows 7 or higher and Mac OSX 10.9 or higher. Soundiron lists a dual core CPU and 2 GB of RAM, with a SATA or SSD drive recommended.
You need the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or above. The free Kontakt Player only runs it in demo mode.
Yes. The Tuned Artillery Black Friday deal is 50% off, which puts this Soundiron Kontakt library at $24.50. The offer runs until Dec 6, 2026.
You get three master NKI instrument banks, 3,060 stereo samples at 24 bit / 48 kHz, 64 ambience patches and 20 custom FX and ambient presets. Helmet and grenade sounds are recorded in 4 mic positions. The installed size is 3.37 GB.
No. It needs the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or above. In the free Kontakt Player it only runs in demo mode and won't function in full.
The Kontakt interface has an LFO, 12 filters, an arpeggiator with velocity table, a key and scale lock, and controls for swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato and pitch. A full FX rack with convolution reverb is built in.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.