Announcing: Spotlight Collection: East Asia

A collection of 38 melodic and percussive instruments from China, Japan, and Korea, played by renowned performers.

Recreate the timeless, nuanced sounds of EAST ASIA, from the delicate melodies of the Guqin to the breathy chords of the Shō. Add layers of character and tradition to soundtracks, or elevate contemporary tracks with unique melodies and rhythms.

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Sound demos and all the info: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/spotlight-collection/east-asia/

 

Of course... the moment I'm out of my home studio for a day you guys do this to me.. releasing something potentially awesome and I can't play with it just yet. No fair!

This was a no-brainer for me, insta-buy. And for very good reasons too...

My girlfriend happens to be Japanese and she loves dozens of the Asian instruments within Komplete and Maschine. Her absolute favorite though are the Taiko ensembles. I don't know the exact name from mind (I do know it's a Kontakt instrument) and she can easily get lost in time playing that. I often fire up Maschine, put it on my 2nd monitor after which she plugs a headphone into Maschine and just has fun behind it.

So yah.. knowing how highly she values these instruments I simply insta-bought this, can't wait for her to look into it upcoming weekend

Oh... btw... I just discovered that owners of the Yangqin instrument are entitled to the upgrade price of E 20,- off, awesome! ... so I treated myself to a Maschine expansion

 

I'm waiting for Jamaica.. We have Cuba, West Africa, now East Asia.

Where is Jamaica?

 

I couldn't agree more, if they ever release something like that it would also be an insta-buy for me

Now, there are some alternatives already available. These are not necessarily instruments but more like sample collections. Even so, they're honestly quite good (IMO anyway) so yah, figured I'd mention them:

Expansions : Caribbean Current | Komplete (native-instruments.com)

and:

Expansions : Black Arc | Komplete (native-instruments.com)

Both are Maschine expansions (as you can see) but the samples themselves are easily accessible for use in other environments as well (like, for example, a DAW like Reaper or such). Caribbean is a more general approach to, as I like to call it, "Island music" whereas Black Arc is much moe geared towards reggae.

Figured I'd share

 

thanks I own both and bought them the week they were released.

 

Sorry NI,
I don't know these east asian cultures good enough to treat their instruments in a respectful and appropriate manner.
So I won' t misuse them.

=> I vote for caribbean or scandinavian sounds.

 

As a fan of the sounds from asian instruments, this would be an insta-buy for me!

I do wonder... If you buy the Upgrade, will the original YANGQIN product (that we once got as a holiday gift) still be available separately? I know the instrument itself is included in East Asia along with all the other instruments, but it would be cool to also have it available separately/solo.

(Does it make sense what I said? ^^)

 

2x yes:

1. Yes your questions makes sense
2. Yes Yangqin stays avaialble as a separate library in Kontakt

 

I hope the East Asia price of $99 is not an intro pricing and it will be always available for $99?

 

Correct, the 99 USD price is the normal price, just like the other libraries in the Spotlight Collection: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/catalog/komplete/spotlight-collection/

 

Thanks, Mick.

 

Thank you very much for your reply!

 

Hi there,

i had a question about that too. I downloaded east Asia today and installed it to the documents folder where native access wants to place the library’s normally. Than I drag the folder to my common folder where I place my whole library’s and relocate it. Everything works so far but in the East Asia Library in Kontakt I can only see one yangqin nki and in the drop down menu in Kontakt there is only a Little empty with dot. No variations of yangqin like in the solo instrument. In the walkthrough video of native instruments I see the yangqin inside the east Asia instrument with all its variation like in the solo yangqin. How do i get all variations from the solo instrument in this new east Asia library?

cheers,
Andy

 

Why didn't you just install it through Native Access? That way everything will be set up automatically and you don't have to worry about things not working all of a sudden.

There's certainly no need to drag libraries around.

 

I installed the library trough Native Access, like I did that always and I have no technical problem. And to drag a library to a other space on my PC or maybe a external drive, like many other user do is not causing any problems.

 

Aaah, my bad, I see I glossed over the actual question. Sorry about that!

Let me try again...

So, just to make sure I got it right this time, you're wondering how you could access the presets from the individual Yangqin instrument:



... but this time using the East Asian instrument, which also has a Yangqin instrument. Right?

Well, short answer: I don't think you can. In fact... it seems to me as if the only setup which is included with East Asia is the "Autumn wind" preset which was already available in the solo instrument (as shown above). This is what I mean:



See? So, the only way to get access to those other presets would be to use the solo Yangqin instrument instead of the East Asia "collective". However, there are some variations / presets which you can use (classic, modern, vintage, etc) which when combined with a specific scale setting can provide for more variations, but that's about it as far as I can tell.

To be honest I prefer it this way because while this instrument does provide a large range of customizations it also doesn't render the previous instrument completely obsolete either.

Hope this could help.

 

Well, in the mean time I got to do a ton of experimenting with this and... you're missing out!

See, this instrument has 2 modes of operation (though this isn't really made clear IMO): it can automatically play a collection of pre-made patterns or you can play the whole thing manually. While playing patterns you can even apply customizations on the fly.

This instrument goes a lot deeper than you may realize. Even if you don't know how to play you can still get some solid results which won't sound too automated. And if you can play... well, I dunno. I'm sure my gf is bound to give it a try

 

Hi again,

now you hit the nail. This is exactly the answer I was looking for. Your pictures shows what I meant and don’t understand. Normally a upgrade should have the same amount of one piece as the original thing, but however that’s not the case here.
Thank you for your efforts.

cheers,
Andy

 

Hi,
I have Discovery Series China (Yangqin), Indonesia (Gamelan), Cuba, Africa, India, Middle East. I really love those Instruments so bad.
Recently I also post a 3 minutes song "I Surrender All" using all the music in Discovery Series combine with West Sound in Komplete Ultimate 13 that I just bought last month.
I hope everyone can enjoy it
Here is the link:

 

@ShelLuser I'm thankful for the images!

In hindsight, a better/simpler question from my side probably would've been "If I buy the Upgrade from the holiday gift YANGQIN to East Asia, do I keep YANGQIN in my NI library or will it go away/get replaced by East Asia?". Your post also shows that the latter won't happen - phew.

Again, thank you Mick @ NI and ShelLuser All is clear now!