Impact Soundworks’ “Koto Nation” Unveiled with Behind-the-Scenes Video

Posted on Jul 23, 2010 in News | 2 comments

One of my big projects over the last year has been the creation of a new sample library for Impact Soundworks. While Shreddage, my electric guitar library, has been a big hit, I’ve had an even bigger project in the works: Koto Nation: Classical Instruments of Japan! Check out some of the behind-the-scenes work on this project at the YouTube video below, and more info after the jump.

I’ve always found traditional Japanese music to be extremely beautiful in its tonality, as well as the instruments used. Many of my tracks have extensively incorporated sampled Japanese instruments, such as Flying Heaven, The Koto Chill and Bushido Blade. I noticed that while such samples existed as part of larger collections, they were all lacking in detail, and very few dedicated collections existed.

Koto Nation is a spiritual successor to the classical Indian instrument library I co-designed, Sitar Nation. Incorporating koto, bass koto (never before sampled) and jiuta-style shamisen, this new library includes thousands of recordings performed by master koto player Masayo Ishigure, who worked with John Williams and Yo-Yo Ma on the score for “Memoirs of a Geisha”!

I’ll be posting more about this massive project over at ImpactSoundworks.com as well as VI-Control and KVR Audio, but I’ll post here again when it is to be released in August!