Website- http://www.beladmedia.com

Price- $199

The world is full of sampled pianos, guitars, horns, and every other imaginable instrument. And we love them, there is no doubt about that. The fact that you can get such wonderful sounds out of a computer without actually having access to the real thing often makes me giddy with excitement.

But there often comes a time where something different is in order. I don't want the same old instrument. I want to give "normal" instruments a break and find something different. Sampled Landscape from Bela D Media claims to be something different.

Sampled Landscape is a sample library made to run inside of Kontakt 2 or 3. There isn't a player included, so you will need to own Kontakt to run Sampled Landscape. You will need a little over 1.5GB of hard drive space once extracted.

What Exactly IS A Sampled Landscape?

So you may be thinking that Bela D managed to capture the grass in their front yard as it whispered in the wind, right? Or maybe the sound of a butterfly landing on a flower? Well, of course not. That would be boring. Instead, Bela D has created a unique blend of instruments and sounds geared towards soundscape and soundtrack work. But the term "Sampled Soundscape" really doesn't sound as cool, nor does it give you the full story.

The Sampled Landscape samples span from the intriguing to the just plain spooky. The library is divided into three categories: Drones, Instruments, and Landscapes(in other words, Multis). The main focus of Sampled Landscape seems to be ethnic voices, rare winds, and things that ring(hey, that's got a ring to it! Sorry, I'll get my coat), such as various bells and chimes. And this is all built around a pad-like structure.

Sampled Landscape isn't your typical film score library of stings and big percussion, although it contains a few cliché sounds. These are more "mood-setting" type of sounds. The sounds within are the type that would act as filler for tense and thrilling scenes of the extreme ends of emotional imagery. The slow motion flight of a helicopter through a tattered and smoke-filled post-war scene. The type of sounds you would expect to hear as the brave college kid walks into a new room of the haunted mansion, despite  his better judgments, into the darkness . Sometimes creepy, sometimes soothing, but full of life and even a story.

Drones……….oooooohhhh, Creepy

The first part of this library is labeled "Drones". What you will find here are single instruments, most with more than one type of sound playing at once. The majority of these sounds revolve around a pad/drone type of backdrop, with the ability to bring in extra movement and textures. These pads on their own are very cool. From the echoing hollowness to the slightly detuned moaning of the environment, these pads fill out well.

Most of the drone patches include sounds that you can introduce into the patch using the mod wheel and/or expression pedal. While your pad is playing, you could bring in the sound of some ethnic flute FX or a gentle Tibetan chant, or maybe even a complimentary pad at a fifth interval. You may find a dose of sub-bass rumblings attached to one of these controllers, or some odd sounds of ghosts "whooshing" around the room. These patches alone could create all the ambience you need for your next scene. And there is nothing that you have to figure out on your own as each patch's interface clearly states what the controllers do for that patch.

The interface for most of these drones consists of two separate panels. The first panel is really just there to look pretty and tell you which sounds are assigned to certain controllers. The second screen is called the "Latch" screen.

The Latch screen lets you set which notes will "latch on" when you play them. In other words, you can hit the note and let go, and it will keep on playing. This is a cool feature because you can set the note range as well. So you could set the bottom two octaves of your keyboard to latch and the rest will react normally. Hit the bass note and let go while you play some haunting ensembles up top. You can set whether you want to only allow one latched note at a time, or more than one. And then there is a panic button, just in case you're too lazy to turn OFF a latched note(which is done by simply hitting the note again).

My only complaint with the Latch screen is that you may not notice it's even there because it's on a separate tab. So you may find yourself wondering why your notes won't stop!

A nice touch on these drones, especially considering the wide range of results you get when playing in various parts of the keyboard, is the name of the recorded note in the patch name(see above pictures). So you can always know the range where these samples were meant to be played, and you don't have to search for the "hotspot" to find the most natural sounding samples.

The Drones are a solid set of samples, and really let you create ambiences with minimal effort. But there is more: the Instruments.

This Ain't Your Mommas Instrument Set

This Instrument section contains the largest portion of the library. You will find dozens of instruments, mostly of the non-traditional kind. The Instruments interface contains several screens to control everything from the envelope to effects and the filter. Granted, most of the instruments are of the acoustic variety, but these controls help to offer some fine tuning over all aspects of the sounds.

The cool part of this interface is that there are pages that let you control individual volume, pan, and tuning of all elements of an instrument. So if there are multiple layers to an instrument(not velocity layers, but sound layers), you can change them all independently. Some instruments have upwards of nine or more layers, so this brings extreme flexibility to the patches.

As a result, the interface can seem quite complex. But it's pretty easy to use, and gives you plenty of control over what your patch sounds like.  But enough about that, what about the instruments themselves?

There is a large selection of ethnic and tribal vocal loops. Lamenting, evocative, and meditative sounds of both male and female vocalists are presented in a number of different patches. These are primarily random melodies in a selection of different languages, and can't really be "played". Though you will find a couple of patches that contain some playable oohs and ahs. These mantras and moanings can bring a nice touch to any pad.

One of the nicer instrument types represented in Sampled Landscape are the winds. There are some very cool instruments included, many of which you probably have never heard of. You'll find some more well-known instruments such as Shakuhachi and Didjerdoo and various bottle blows, among others. You'll also find many ancient flutes and tubes with everything from single notes to phrases.

Ever heard of a Fujara or a Quena? What about the Hocchiku? Well, these and more rare instruments are sampled for Sampled Landscape. You'll find a Bansuri flute, and even a Turkish Clarinet(ya know, the instrument used to hypnotize snakes to lure them out of the pot?). The selection is nice. Some of the instruments are quite limited, while others are extensively sampled and keyswitched. You may or may not know the sounds, but now, to a certain extent, you can have them.

There are several pads and effects included in the Instruments section, similar to what you will find in the Drones. These pads place you in a scene, ranging from underwater sounds to ghosts and more. Nice filler material, although probably the smallest part of the Instruments section.

There is a good selection of percussion available, from rain sticks and shakers to some great Darbuka samples. In addition, you will find the crumbling sound of seashells, the flutterings of cabasas, shakers, crotales, talking drums, and other percussive elements. Again, some rare instruments make an appearance, such as the caxixi shaker, along with various effects.

A few of the drum elements go beyond the general interface for other Instruments, and include an arpeggiator, shown below.

This arp is pretty special as far as Kontakt scripted arps go. Loaded with features such as randomization of single elements or everything at once, the ability to create and save your own sequences, velocity and octave control, and more. The picture tells it all pretty well. It's complex, and I wish it was included in more instruments than just a few. All that work on a wonderful arp and not many patches actually take advantage of it.

Going along with the percussion is a very wide selection of wind chimes, bells, and ethnic bowls. Many of the bowl sounds include multiple keyswitches to give a more random feel to the patterns included. The bowls are typically played in a non-rhythmic "phrase" style.

Rounding off the instrument collection are other instruments like the kalimba, a nice multi-sampled harp(complete with glissandos), war horns, the sound of bubbles, and even the sound of the wind(yes, really, and lots of it). Many hybrid instruments have been made to combine bells and pianos and wooden flutes and more, all meshed together into one ambient instrument.

You'll have fun playing with the Instruments. They are wide and varied, and include so many instruments that you probably have never heard of. I know I enjoyed it.

Put It All Together And You Get……A Landscape!

So the third part of the library is where the fun begins(or continues, at least). This is where the first two sections are combined into multis, and thus creating what Bela D refers to as a "Landscape".

There really isn't anything new here from the rest of the library. But instruments and drones are combined to create a theme. You may find a deep forest pad with some distant flute FX and a rainstick brought in using the mod wheel and/or expression pedal. The key concept here is layers.

Playing just one note in these Landscapes can give you entire complex sound creations that could be used all by themselves as part of a film soundtrack. Nothing else needed. You can have voices and percussion and ghostly gurglings, all thrown together into a single Landscape and ready for you to bring various elements in and out as you wish(using the controllers). It's a very cool experience, and it takes the emotional aspect of the drones that I spoke of before, and takes it up a notch. Sometimes melodic, sometimes just a massive wash of sound, but most of the time pleasing.

As with the drones, you aren't left out in the dark about what the Landscapes contain. There is always an empty patch included in every Landscape that gives you useful information such as what controllers bring in which sounds. You will also find key ranges for various elements in the sound so you know where and how to trigger them. Very helpful indeed.

Though the Sampled Landscape library is pretty deep and high quality, it's not without it's faults. Many patches contain only a few samples, sometimes as little as a single sample. And the worst part is that some of the coolest patches in the library suffer from this fate.

The biggest area where this is evident is in some of the vocal sounds. Now, there are a LOT of vocal samples and loops in the library. But in many cases, these are just one-off samples. So the samples either get stretched over multiple octaves, creating a vast slowing down or speeding up of the samples(chipmunk effect, anyone?), or they are assigned to a single key and you don't get multiple pitches offered. Both of these can be a problem when you are playing a pad in a higher or lower register. You end up with a vocal playing behind it that sounds unnatural, or the specific loop you want just isn't available in that register at all.

You can tweak the patches yourself inside of Kontakt if you really need something moved to a higher register. But for many users, this won't be a favorable option.

Another problem is that some patches are sampled in multiple velocity layers, but the samples are spread over the entire keyboard. So you get layers, which is good, but no key ranges, which isn't as good. Some pads have a single sample spread over all keys and velocities. And some patches sound better than others in this case.

As a slight disclaimer, this library was never meant to be like a traditional instrument library. The idea is purely to create soundscapes. So Bela D only sampled what was needed to get the sound desired from each patch. I just wish that some patches allowed elements such as the vocal loops to be played in more areas of the keyboard so they fit with the quality of the other instruments in that register.

The problem isn't just with the vocals, but that's where it's most noticeable. And not all of the library is like this. It would be nice if the Kontakt Time Machine module would have been used to at least keep the speed of the samples at an equal level as you go up or down the keyboard. Now, this is nowhere NEAR a deal breaker as the samples themselves sound fantastic and unique. You are bound to find many, many usable samples despite these minor shortcomings.

Sampled Landscape is dark, at times VERY dark. I've noticed that Bela D highly favors the darker side of sampling, so I'm sure they smile if a library of theirs causes you to freaked out. More than once, with my monitors turned up, I swear I could feel the hair on my arms rise. These samples can give you the creeps or make you feel all utopian inside. When playing these patches, it's almost too easy to envision a film scene to match the sounds. You've heard sounds like these before, but you may not have known how to get them for yourself. Now you can.

Final Thoughts

Sampled Landscape is definitely a unique library. But unique in a way where the sounds remain usable. Very usable, as a matter of fact.  The lack of detail in many of the sounds can be a little frustrating, but that doesn't take away from the quality that presents itself in Sampled Landscape. The textures and ambiences inside are sure to cause one of those "wow, cool!" moments.

Sampled Landscape has the ability to really throw you into any dark-ish ambience that may be called for. There may not seem like there is that much included in the library if you just go by the number of patches. But when you take into account the extra sounds introduced using the mod wheel and expression pedal, there is plenty of content to search through.

If you love atmospheres and have any interest in film or video game soundtracks, do yourself a favor and at least check out Sampled Landscape. I think you just may find the sounds you need to dial in just the right "mood". And your listeners will be in for a treat.

BRandall