With a thoughtful concept, Swords to Ploughshares includes a wide range of categories of sounds, such as: Alarms, Sirens, Blasts, Boomers, Falls, Hits, Risers, Stingers, Impact FX, Animal FX, Nature FX, Tool FX, Transport FX, Ambient Tones, Grooves & Textures, Radio Tones, Voices & Textures, City & Mountains Environments, Klaxons, Sub-Synth Sustains & Staccatos. At the same time, they are transformed into notes to create modern melodies by playing on a MIDI keyboard.

This is not a Hollywood-style war SFX collection, or a traditional instrument or sound library. These sounds were recorded in uncontrolled real-world city and forest environments, by an ordinary person, under less-than-ideal conditions, using basic hand-held recording equipment, under war time conditions. Needless to say, some of the edges remain naturally rough. The field-recorded sound effects and live environmental soundscapes captured in this library allow a glimpse into our observer’s unique frame of reference at a specific place and time in the world. The sound-designed content follows the artist’s mental journey from that subjective experience as they mentally process and re-articulate it from raw kinetic energy into more musically constructive forms.

Using this tool, you can mix different layers of original field recordings to create complex melodies, textures, solo instruments, and synthesizers. It also allows you to craft unique percussion and cinematic drum sounds. The virtual instrument comprises 170 unique .NKI presets divided into two folders: “Custom FX and Sound Design” and the “Future Ploughshares (Presets Expansion Pack)” update. These presets were collaboratively designed by Maks Histibe along with talented sound designers and musicians from various countries, including Mike Peaslee (USA), Dave Section 63 (Germany), Peter Tomlinson (New Zealand), Lukas Lösking (Germany), Franklly Thallyson (Brazil), Zac Jacobsen (USA), Peter Edsbacker (Sweden), Pete Checkley (UK), Eneas Mentzel (Belgium), Brian Poulsen (Canada), Arman Mkhitarian (Armenia).

This library offers the artist’s unique vantage point during a transformative place and time in their life and the world around them. His goal is to transmute an act of oppression into a tool for expression. It is not meant to be a definitive, unbiased, unvarnished or complete representation of the artist’s entire experience or those around him. It is intended as a work of constructive and reusable sonic art. It is a dim and hazy window into another human’s personal experience, crafted with the simple hope that it serves and inspires your own creative process.

The development of the interface for the instrument was made possible through a collaboration between Histibe and one of the world’s leading virtual instrument developers, Soundiron. Native Instruments has also provided generous direct support to integrate this plugin into their NKS platform and the greater Native Access ecosystem so that it’s more accessible to everyone. We’ve packed the Kontakt GUI with lots of great sound-shaping controls that give you the flexibility to warp the sound in many ways. You have control over Volume, Attack, Release, Transient Offset, Vibrato and Octave layering.

The “Glide” control slider allows you to play legato and portamento leads. You’ll also find an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 13 low-pass, high-pass and FX filter, with assignable modulation control options, including velocity, mod-wheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. You can also use our customizable arpeggiator, with a built-in velocity sequencer table and control over arp direction, note timing, swing, randomization and duration. The user interface controls are rounded out by our modular FX rack tab, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 slots, in any order you wish. You’ll find classic phase, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and more. The Reverb effect includes 119 of our own convolution reverb impulse response presets, for a huge variety of different rooms, halls, chambers, outdoor environments and creative special effect impulses to completely transform the sound and take this rare synth into strange new territory.

For non-Kontakt users, we’ve named each WAV file clearly by category and keywords and organized them by category for easy browsing and direct use in cinematic sound design, video games and media post-production work.