Project SAM Lineage Percussion

A striking new sample collection brings SAM’s orchestral percussion bang up to date.

Stalwarts of the cinematic sampling scene since 2001, Project SAM enjoy a well‑deserved reputation among orchestral sample users. The Utrecht company’s enduring popularity stems from its brass and big band libraries, the long‑running Symphobia series and two powerful True Strike percussion collections released in 2003 and 2006 respectively, both of which were successfully moved to the Kontakt platform in 2021.

While True Strike 1’s musical content is still highly rated, its creators felt it was time to move on. Company co‑founder Vincent Beijer explains: “We wanted to redo True Strike for a long time. True Strike 1 was recorded after our SAM Horns, Trombones, Trumpets and Solo Sessions back in 2003. After our endeavours recording orchestras and big bands in the Symphobia and Swing! Series, we felt like going back to orchestral percussion and applying our knowledge and experience to a new take on True Strike. Lineage Percussion marks the start of a new era of instruments from Project SAM.”

SAM’s new baby was recorded at the Broadcasting Music Centre, Hilversum, the same concert hall used to record the Symphobia libraries. Though adopting a broadly similar approach to True Strike 1, Lineage Percussion (henceforth LP for short) is a much larger, all‑new library with an expanded instrumentation consisting of 70 individual instruments, 10 sets (combinations of instruments from the same family) and 14 kits that combine a variety of instruments. Also included are two kit builders you can use to build your own instrument ensembles.

Rather than clogging up users’ hard drives with dozens of listening perspectives, the samples were captured from conventional close, stage and far microphone positions with an additional stereo mix created by the production team. When selected, this ‘premixed’ channel temporarily deactivates the other mikings, enabling you to conserve RAM — a sensible compromise would be to use the premixed audio while programming, then switch to the three live mic positions to fine‑tune your final mix.

The library is available in two versions: Lineage Percussion Pro (51GB installed) contains 70 instruments, while the 8.3GB Lineage Percussion Core offers 45 essential instruments, fewer articulations and a single premixed mic position. It also omits the kit builders, but it costs a lot less and the sound quality is identical! Both versions run exclusively on Kontakt and Kontakt Player version 6.6 and up.

Presentation

It’s funny (and mildly horrifying) to recall that the original version of True Strike 1 ran on Nemesys Gigastudio, a ghastly piece of software which nevertheless heralded a new age of unlimited sample disk streaming. Today’s sample players offer facilities undreamt of in the Giga era, and SAM have taken full advantage with LP’s newly designed Kontakt engine.

The XY Stage, a 360‑degree virtual performance space which allows you to quickly alter the panning and miking perspective of up to 15 instruments.

Owners of the Pro version can set up mixes on the XY Stage grid, a 360‑degree virtual performance space which allows you to alter the instruments’ panning and miking perspective: move an instrument horizontally to pan it left or right, or vertically to make it sound closer or more distant. The Kit Builder patch accommodates up to 15 instruments, each with its own mix settings. The premixed mic position is used by default, but if you prefer you can select the ‘Custom Mix’ tab and adjust the close, stage and far microphone balance. You can also use the built‑in convolution reverb to add an epic, cathedral‑like ambience to the global instrument mix.

First introduced in Symphobia 4: Pandora (reviewed in SOS in June 2020), SAM’s Adaptive Sync feature intelligently time‑stretches crescendo rolls and swells so that their climax occurs on an upcoming hit point (surprisingly difficult to do manually). It has four sync modes: Sync to Downbeat calculates the amount of time left until the next bar, Sync to Beats stretches the crescendo over a specific number of beats, while Sync to Seconds sets the crescendo length in milliseconds and is not tempo‑dependent. Sync Off bypasses the time‑stretching and lets you choose one of the five original recorded crescendo lengths.

Last but not least in this parade of technological wonders is the Note Stacker, a thoroughly entertaining pitched‑instrument tool which allows you to play custom chords with a single key press. You stack up notes by clicking on intervals above the root note of C in an on‑screen display, thus creating a chord which can be played with one finger at any pitch you desire. I found playing the chorus melody of Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ on parallel atonal chords to be a gratifying musical experience, but SOS readers will no doubt dream up saner uses.

Lineage Percussion’s Performance view shows the instrument’s microphone mix, articulation/mallet switches, sample mapping keyboard, amplitude envelope and effects controls.

Tuned...