Noir Music
Back in April 2022 we were travelling north to the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to cash in on the success of a whole genre of dark and twisted murder mysteries. Both of our sampling experts, Groove Criminals and Cyclick Samples, came up with packs of evocative soundscapes inspired by the north. And murder. Those who kill? Those who sample, more like. Here’s Robbie from Cyclick on his matching pair of Noirs…
“These two sample packs have been created to conjure the tense, brooding soundscapes of the modern noir, as perfected by the many series produced in Scandinavia. The raw winds, icy cold and melancholic rain were, somewhat painfully, kept in mind as the musical and atmospheric samples were created.”
On Noir Music he says: “Pianos, guitars, a Mellotron, a splash of synths and a smattering of drums make up the looped lines folder which spans across four tempos. The A-D suffixes indicate lines that were created together. Some of the drum hits were sampled off as beats were made, while the Mellotron, guitars and pianos were put to use to make a set of one-shot chord hits. These have the chord names in their filenames for the curious, but most are some form of minor or diminished with any major component offset with a few minor ones – can’t get too hopeful… it’s noir!”
Noir Atmosphere
Turning his attention to his second Noir pack, Robbie from Cyclick adds the following detail…
“Strings, pianos and a Mellotron (the Arturia one) were put to good/bad use with tons of reverb, compression (to keep things level) and various other flavours (definitely the Eventide H949) to put together a set of eery, haunting and often quite nasty loops and string one shots to summon up those wintry northern European atmospherics. Note: the loops in this section are made to be seamless so the start and end points may clip if played as a one shot, so just add a fade in/out to the first/last instance or use a little attack/release if dropped into a sampler.”
SELECTED STUFF USED
SOFTWARE
Arturia V CollectionSteinberg Nuendo 11UAD pluginsEventide pluginsSoundtoys pluginsiZotope N2/O8 andNeoverb pluginsIK MultimediaAmplitube 5NI Kontakt 5LiquidSonics SeventhHeaven ProFabFilter Volcano 3 andTimeless 3
GUITARS
Gretsch ElectromaticG5122Squier Jazzmaster VintageModifiedMusicman Stingray bass(1977)Danelectro Dano ’63baritoneFocusrite ISA 828 preamps
In May 2022, we embarked on a (longer than we thought) synth journey through the last 60 years, with samples to match. Here are the ’80s and ’90s…
The 1980s by Cyclick
Robbie from Cyclick on his 1980s samples and a decade
