Cymatic Habitat is a new sound pack for Sensory Percussion 2 full of lush, flowing, twisted acoustic and electro-acoustic tonal patterns, drones, and many new melodic sounds and ideas for you to iterate, ideate, warp and compose with!
The eclectic pack is filled with drag-and-droppable and sequence-able tonal drum mappings, built using new and exciting Sensory Percussion 2 techniques.
This pack is free for Sensory Percussion 2 users!
The Instruments
Cymatic Habitat also includes detailed multi-samplings and many Sensory Percussion 2 mappings of the following instruments:
- 1978 Rhodes Electric Keyboard
- Clarinet
- Classic, crunchy-jazz electric guitar
- Pedal-warped electric guitar
- Duduk (an Armenian double read instrument)
- Tenor Sax
- Trumpet
The Recording Process
The instruments were first recorded in home studios during the height of the pandemic lockdowns, and then later at Sunhouse HQ in 2021 and 2022. Like fine wine, the best sounds are aged at least a few years before being enjoyed.
One such collaboration included Ford Combs of Dinosaur X, who recorded the crunch electric guitar tones at his home studio in Washington D.C.
To get the classic, biting jazz tone, Ford ran his Danelectro 1952 Silvertone U-1 through a Peavey Classic 30. Like many of the instruments in Cymatic Habitat, the U-1 was recorded using a deep multi-sampling technique developed by Sunhouse with a drums/percussion use-case in mind, but now expanded to tonal instruments.
The Sets
Prototyping for the sets began immediately, and the sets went through many different iterations before morphing and evolving into their current form: 27 sets of cymatic dreamscapes intricately controlled by your drumming.
Chordal Control
Many sets have the option to toggle control methods: often the set will have its tonality advance by metro generator OR by striking the snare rim. If the set is in metro→ mode, then you can adjust the chord ∆ rate knob to increase or decrease the rate at which the chords change. If the set is in snareRim→ mode, then simply strike the rim of the snare to advance the progression. The Sonic Herbarium sets follow this schema.
Accent Control
Other sets, such as Lurching Cymatic Amalgam gradually morph their tonality, one-note-at-a-time, with each accent that you play. That means that you can play quiet notes across the drums and hold the chord that is playing, but when you strike an accent, the tonality will shift one note forward in the sequence Wachet Auf, ruft uns die Stimme (a take on the Bach piece) and Tines Lurching Tonality are both further examples of this kind of set.
Step Control
Then there are the sets like Cymatic Dorian Steps that make use of the new Random | Steps modulator, especially its remainder function.
Delay and Octave Control
Many sets throughout the pack have a top-level “delay” on/off toggle, sometimes for both percussion and tones, sometimes combined into one macro. Many of the sets are soaked in delay, and so we thought it would be nice for you to be able to turn it on/off.
And many sets are octaved with timbre center-to-edge assignments (lower octave in the center, higher octaves as you play out to the edge). Often the sets are additionally octaved by which drum you hit. Often the Snare is octave 0, Tom 1 is octave 1, Tom 2 is octave -1, and Kick is octave -2.
Enjoy exploring and building with Cymatic Habitat!
