Jules Tools

JUST ANOTHER NEW AUDIO SOFTWARE COMPANY?

NOT EXACTLY.

Kaptive Audio was formed out of necessity rather than a desire to start something; in trying to push musical boundaries and efficiency, I needed certain tools and (I learned) those tools would require a tremendous amount of effort to create. In the end, I considered these needs were probably not just my own and thought I should share these creations with others. I don’t know what this will become, I just know it starts here. Welcome!

OK SO, WHAT'S FIRST ON THE SOFTWARE FRONT?

CROSS-GENRE CANNONS WITH FULL “AT THE BOARD” MIC CONTROL.

Kicking things off is a Virtual Drum Instrument for Kontakt dubbed, “Jules Tools”. It is an artistically curated kit supplied and performed by esteemed drummer Jules Jenssen [Mad Midi, Tidus (Live), Transmute Accelerator] captured during a session for Dark City Agent’s album “The Witching Hour“. DCA requires a very unique approach to drum tones in that they need to have the massive body and transient punch of electronic music, but still sound real with a natural approach to feel and dynamics. The plan was to set ourselves up to have real-world example recordings of Jules and his kit to define the sound and processing approach in actual use on the record, then apply this to a hyper-sampled capture to create a “Virtual Jules”. I mixed his performances into final state for the tracks in context, applied this analog processing to the samples we took and assembled a Kontakt instrument. I made this for our own use with the DCA material and having a specific sound in mind, but to my surprise with the provided access to complete real-time control over all 17 mics plus a parallel crush channel, it wound up really being able to cover a lot of sonic ground!

.....WHY? YOU DID THIS ALL YOURSELF?

I’d be lying if I told you I’d done anything like this prior but as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of creation. The original need for Jules Tools in particular was so DCA could streamline their writing and tones while avoiding the cost of studio sessions for drum recording. I soon realized the massive undertaking I had just committed to; 17 phase-aligned mics + 11-piece kit + 3-4 round-robins per piece + 5-6 velocity stages = over 2000 hand-edited samples. This kit is 100% real and original, 100% DCA & Jules; 100% punchy and versatile.

It took well over 150 hours just in the recording, editing, processing and preparation of these samples, never mind how much time I’ve spent designing and learning how to code a GUI for Kontakt (yes, you read that right, coding…well over 3500 lines of code, to be exact; credit to Robbie from DCA for his contribution here) or dumping the 2000+ samples into the engine and setting up proper functionality…phew! I stuck to it and literally did this all in-house, learned along the way and I’m now better prepared for the next one I decide to cook up. It came out incredibly well but Kaptive Audio is a new name in this realm, so this one is on me! You can name your price and enter $0 to get it free, or if you’d like to help Kaptive Audio in its infancy and fuel whatever project is coming next, you can choose to make a donation of whatever these Kontakt Cannons are worth to you. 😎

.....WHY? YOU DID THIS ALL YOURSELF?

I’d be lying if I told you I’d done anything like this prior but as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of creation. The original need for Jules Tools in particular was so DCA could streamline their writing and tones while avoiding the cost of studio sessions for drum recording. I soon realized the massive undertaking I had just committed to; 17 phase-aligned mics + 11-piece kit + 3-4 round-robins per piece + 5-6 velocity stages = over 2000 hand-edited samples. This kit is 100% real and original, 100% DCA & Jules; 100% punchy and versatile.

It took well over 150 hours just in the recording, editing, processing and preparation of these samples, never mind how much time I’ve spent designing and learning how to code a GUI for Kontakt (yes, you read that right, coding…well over 3500 lines of code, to be exact; credit to Robbie from DCA for his contribution here) or dumping the 2000+ samples into the engine and setting up proper functionality…phew! I stuck to it and literally did this all in-house, learned along the way and I’m now better prepared for the next one I decide to cook up. It came out incredibly well but Kaptive Audio is a new name in this realm, so this one is on me! You can name your price and enter $0 to get it free, or if you’d like to help Kaptive Audio in its infancy and fuel whatever project is coming next, you can choose to make a donation of whatever these Kontakt Cannons are worth to you. 😎

THE COMPONENTS

19 ARTICULATIONS: Kick, Main Snare (center, rimshot), Side Snare 1, Side Snare 2, Tom 1, Tom 2, Tom 3, Hi-Hats (tight closed, loose closed, open, semi-open) Crash 1 (edge, choke, bell), Crash 2 (edge, choke, bell), FX Stack.

HOW DO I GET MY COPY?

Jules Tools is a virtual instrument designed to be used inside of Native Instruments’ Kontakt host plugin. You must have the full version of Kontakt 6 or later; it will not work in the Kontakt Player. As long as you’ve got that covered, then you’re in luck because Jules Tools is FREE if you want; you choose to pay what it’s worth to you or as much as you want to help fuel the next project! Simply name your price (even $0 if you want) & add it to the cart, create your Kaptive Audio account and checkout. That’s it!

If you need help with the purchase, download and/or usage of Jules Tools, please check the SUPPORT page for a helpful video which will walk you through the process.