Affiliate disclosure: the "Get this deal" button is an affiliate link to the store. If you buy through it we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full policy
Whale Drum Black Friday pricing from Soundiron is 50% off, which brings this Kontakt tongue drum library to $19.50 until Dec 6, 2026.
The Whale Drum is a sampled 14" vermilion tongue drum with 8 tongues, recorded in a dry studio. Soundiron picked it for a marimba-like warmth, a dreamy tone, a softly rounded attack and a slowly undulating decay.
The lower notes carry the most weight, which the maker describes as especially deep and rich.
Tongue and slit drums count among the oldest known instrument families, and the maker notes they were first developed in Africa thousands of years ago. This is a modern take on that idea, with tuned tongues that give accurate intonation.
The instrument is played with mallets, wooden sticks and brushes. Every mallet note was captured at both tongue center and edge, with an average of 10 velocity layers and 10 round-robin variations per note.
Stick and brush articulations were played over different edges and surfaces of the drum.
The wet set was recorded from a slight distance in a large reverberant tile and stone hall. The maker pitches it at orchestral arrangements and atmospheric songwriting.
All articulations and sound sets can be layered, blended and switched independently.
The custom Kontakt interface has controls for swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, coarse and fine pitch, articulation switching, cross-fading and layering. Everything is automation-ready in your host or in Kontakt's stand-alone mode.
The Advanced Control window adds an LFO with shape, target, speed, intensity, tempo-sync and fade-in. A dozen filters cover low-pass, high-pass and FX duties, and their settings can follow velocity, the mod wheel, expression, where a key sits on the keyboard, or a table driven by the step sequencer.
The ARP system has a velocity sequencer plus controls for direction, note timing, swing, randomization and duration. A key and scale lock helps with melodic writing and live playing.
The modular FX rack offers 18 DSP modules across 10 slots, in any order. Its effect lineup spans phasing, flanging, echoes, overdrive, guitar amp and speaker cabinet modeling, dynamics processors, tone shaping, a rotary speaker, plus convolution reverb offering custom rooms, halls and chambers.
This is an open-format Kontakt library with 2 master NKI instrument banks and 20 sound-designed FX and ambient presets. It holds 3173 stereo samples in 24-bit, 48 kHz WAV, taking up 1.14 GB installed.
It needs the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. The free Kontakt Player runs it only in a time-limited demo mode, and the Libraries tab does not support it. Whale Drum can be opened through the file browser in Kontakt, or you can add it to the Kontakt database and call it up from Quickload.
The sample folders are unlocked, so the WAVs work in other wav-compatible samplers.
System requirements: Windows 7 or higher, or Mac OSX 10.9 or higher, with a dual core CPU and 2 GB of RAM. A SATA or SSD drive is recommended.
Yes. The Whale Drum Black Friday deal takes 50% off Soundiron's Kontakt tongue drum library, bringing it to $19.50. The offer runs until Dec 6, 2026.
It has a dry Whale Drum with mallets, sticks, brushes and effects, plus a wet hall set with mallets and sticks. Bonus content adds a 3-note Baby Whale Drum, a toy xylophone, atmospheric pads and ambiences, and stick and brush percussion effects.
Only in a time-limited demo mode. The library is open-format and needs the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. The WAV sample folders are unlocked, so you can also load them in other wav-compatible samplers.
The interface has swell, attack, release, vibrato, filter and pitch controls, plus an LFO and an arpeggiator with a velocity sequencer. There are 12 filters and key and scale lock, and an FX rack with 18 DSP modules across 10 slots.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.