Tonehammer has released Laundronium, a new sound library. Here's what they have to say about it...
The idea of the washing machine as a piece of musical equipment, while not unheard of, has been fairly limited in its scope. Generally you'll see the white cube playing a rudimentary spin cycle beat behind a mediocre guitarist who is only vaguely aware of the naturally occurring music which is constantly present in our modern environment. The washing machine will play this beat dutifully, knowing that it isn't respected for musical talent like its ancestor the washboard. We spend so much less time with the modern washing machine, than the folks of previous generations did with the washboard, that we've become coldly detached from it. The washing machine happily does all the work, never complaining, and still we complain about laundry day. If we just took a little time to talk to our washing machines we may find out that they are treasure troves of musical potential.
The broad range of percussion elements we've captured here cover everything from soft, gong-like, harsh, warbly, trashy, tight, muted, dreamy, bassy, to warm and sweet tones. All presets are arranged both as tuned and untuned percussion, with mode switching at the push of a button. We've also built-in our flexible Überpeggiator, along with a range of automatize sound-shaping knobs and do-dads. There are also a number of texturally rich bowed articulations (yes, we strung up a washing machine), with round-robin staccato and long sustains with release. We also bowed metal edges and surfaces. We've also included a huge range of of our signature multilayered special effects, drones and ambient soundscapes, with tone-shaping and FX control features. The myriad sounds and textures must simply be heard to be believed. Last, but not least, we figured we had to go the distance and cover a wide range of traditional washing machine sound effects from a full wash cycle, recording up close in wide stereo. I don't know about your washing machine, but ours from the freakin' future. You could pretty much do up the sound design for an entire sci-fi film with this puppy alone.
The library includes 47 instruments, 1.22 GB, 1045 Samples and bonus custom convolution reverb impulse files. This is a standard open-format library, so the full retail version of Kontakt 3.5 or later required. The Free "Player" does not support it. Click to read the full pdf manual.
Laundronium by Tonehammer Pricing and Availability:
Available now for an intro price of $29.
The price goes to $35 on June 5th, 2011.
More information:

• Laundronium

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