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Native Instruments Ashlight is the final “darker” chapter of their latest Kontakt 6 or 7 virtual instrument trilogy that explores granular synthesis.

Trilogies are popular in movie productions. Star Wars, Lord of Rings, Hobbit … They also exist in the music tech world. For example at Native Instruments. With the Straylight and Pharlight libraries, Native Instruments showed us two deep granular virtual instruments for Kontakt 6.

This trilogy now closes with the third and last release Ashlight.

Native Instruments Ashlight

Native Instruments Ashlight
Ashlight was built in collaboration with Frank Elting and Amsterdam sound design agency The Solos, who have a long list of credits on blockbuster films including The Predator, Glass, Mad Max, Game of Thrones, and more. Also known from their latest collaboration Dark Mass with Steinberg.

This new release completes the Native Instruments’ latest granular instrument trilogy for Kontakt 6. Unlike the previous releases, the last part turns to the dark and colder side of granular synthesis.

Native Instruments Ashlight engine

Granular Engine
Ashlight uses the same mighty dual-layer granular engine with five different sections. It starts with a performance page where you can instantly change sounds, and tweak them on the fly with predefined parameters and an XY pad. The actual engine is hidden on the next four pages. On the grain page, you can set individually the granular parameters for both layers,

Then, you have an advanced sample layer that combines one-shots, arpeggiated patterns, and multisampled instruments. Here you can also manipulate the sample content, adjust the loop points, and more. Lastly, you can add effects (EQ, filter, delay, delay…) to your sounds.

Positive to see is the implementation of MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) in this library. For example, you can create polyphonic modulations of the grain parameters and more.

Sounds
And it’s not just a sample library but a powerful granular virtual instrument. You can either discover the 300 onboard presets packed with harsh textures, muted keys, cinematic atmospheres, pulsating textures, and more. Or go deeper and create your own dual-layer textures using the included sound library. The latter offers a wide range of unique sound sources including rubbed metals, carbon, ceramics, glass, waterphones, cymbals, feedback cycles, and more.

Ashlight definitely has a lot of sound sculpting options. The demos already sound very tempting and yes, with granular, I’m always more than interested in.