Tonehammer has released the Whale Drum sample collection. Here's what they have to say about it...
The Whale Drum (aka Tongue / Slit drum) is one of the world's oldest known instruments. Tongue drums are found around the globe in various cultures spreading from Africa, Asia to South America. The drums were originally made from holly piece of wood, which were struck to make tones. It is one of the few instruments considered older the the human voice itself. Tonehammer decided to (re)visit this majestic instrument and deep-sample it once and for all. The end-result is a massive sample library containing over 3.000 samples following our standard 10/10 (10 velocity layers / 10 repetition). We sampled a high-end whale drum in a dry studio environment with mallets and brushes. We sampled its core notes (center based) and the more edgy rims of the drum. We sampled it wet in our epic hall and also made artificial patches from our custom convolution catalogue. We did every humane and inhumane thing with this ancient instrument resulting in the most comprehensive sample set ever done of any tongue based drum.
In addition we also sampled a smaller (baby) whale drum comprehensively and an additional small xylophone, which both compliment the larger whale drum in terms of texture and deep sampling. The library also contains an extra bonus section with delicate ambiences sculpted from original source material of the whale drums.
Tonehammer Whale Drum specs:

• Instruments/articulations
  • Whale Drum (dry & convolution) clacks
  • Whale Drum (dry & convolution) brushes
  • Whale Drum (dry & convolution) center based mallets
  • Whale Drum (dry & convolution) edge based mallets
  • Whale Drum (dry & convolution) crossfade center to edge mallets
  • Whale Drum (natural wet) mallets
  • Whale Drum (natural wet) sticks
  • Baby Whale Drum (dry & convolution) sticks & mallets
  • Small (Toy) Xylophone (dry & convolution) sticks & mallet
  • Bonus section of 8 whale drum based MW-controlled ambiences
• Extensive read me (.pdf) install, patch and hint documentation
• Listen to exclusive (.mp3) interview w/ Mike and Troels
• 53 instrument patches, 3.300 Samples
• 1.2 GB installed, XXX MB .rar download
• Sample resolution: 44.1Khz / 24Bit stereo .wav format
• Format(s): .nki and .wav
• Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 3 / 4 full retail versions required. Free Kontakt Player not supported.

Pricing and Availability:
$59 More information:

• tonehammer.com
  
  
  

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