Sample Libraries For Meditation And Relaxation

Recently I started composing meditation music for my wife’s guided meditation sessions and one of the more challenging issues I stumbled upon is that there are not many sample libraries available out there for this type of music. And I am seeing an increase in popularity of meditation and relaxation music especially in these troubled times we live in. What I had to do was to look around and purchase various meditation bowls, bells, chimes, rainsticks and other instruments for music therapy in order to create the music that was needed. As fun as it was it really is peculiar to me that these sampled libraries are very rare. So if any sample library developers are reading this, now is your time to get on this boat and if any composers out there are interested in diving into this type of music, these are the libraries our team was able to find.

Best Service (Eduardo Tarilonte) – NADA

Eduardo Tarilonte is considered to be the alpha and omega of ethnic instrument sampling and sound design, and it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. This is an amazing collection of sounds and instruments for meditation, new age and relaxation music. It’s THE LIBRARY for meditation, period. There is a plethora of instruments and sound design elements that will open up all of your 7 chakras.

There are strings, woodwinds, percussion, pianos, human and synth voices, as well as synth pads and textures. Here is just a fraction of the sampled content: harp, koto, bamboo flute, bansuri, hulusi, shakuhachi, bells, glasses, bowls, meditation bells, cymbals, gong, rainstick, tingsha bells, upright piano, overtone singing and a whole ton of soundscapes and textures.

What’s great about all the libraries by Eduardo Tarilonte is that all of them are compatible with one another and if you already own some of the ERA libraries, or Epic World, NADA will fit right in as a great expansion of sounds as it is not only suitable for meditation and relaxation music, it’s also great for world and epic fantasy music. The experience of composing with this library is a meditation in itself. NADA comes with almost 10 GBs of samples at a price of $199.

ZenPad – Mantra

Mantra is a diverse selection of sampled content and sounds designed for new age, yoga and meditation music created for Ableton Live. Featuring well over 350 clips, loops and samples, this versatile collection of both acoustic and electronic sounds is perfectly suitable for quickly creating some great background meditative music. You also get 9 live sets and 3 drum kit presets to get you started.

So what’s included in this collection? The vast collection of instruments includes African and Indian drums and percussion patterns, bells, gongs, flutes, bapang, harps, sound-designed FX, didgeridoo, electronic loops, male and female vocals singing mantras (hence the name), as well as nice collections of pads and atmosphere textures. If you are an Ableton Live user, for a price of $79 and 2.9 GBs of content, you’re opening a door to a world of creativity.

Impact Soundworks – Meditation

Well if there is a sample library more obvious than this one, we haven’t found it yet. This is really an affordable collection of acoustic mallet instruments, gongs and glass sounds combined with a truly wonderful additive synthesizer scripted for Kontakt. You get 21 sound sources combined with 3 waveforms, all nicely curated into 60 presets. But fun doesn’t stop there. This library may seem a little bit limited compared to NADA for example, but having these sound sources combined with the additive synthesizer, will open up a whole new world of meditative sound design.

Some of those sound sources include instruments like crotales, gamelan ensemble, glass gong, glockenspiel, kenong, koto, marimba, water glasses and many others. For a price of only $49 and a size of 1GB, there’s not much to argue here.

Impact Soundworks – Sonic Forest

This one is a really obscure instrument that will plant the seeds of curiosity into everyone interested in granular sound design. It features a truly unique sound set that takes mallet & bowed timbres, and turns them into evolving electroacoustic textures, all with the help of a custom granular ‘forest’ engine. And the GUI is simply beautiful to look at! You can also import your own samples and use the forest granular engine to create something beautiful out of them.

The concept is truly remarkable and you have to see it and hear it in order to believe it. What blew our minds is how easy it is to use and how fast you can get some really amazing results by fiddling with a few of the controls.

This is how the developers from Impact Soundworks describe the forest engine:

“As you play with the various articulations, pressing the Plant button captures the last played sample and stretches it across the keyboard. Then, as the Grow knob is increased, the granular forest effect is introduced. The Volume knob can be turned down completely to leave only the beautiful, evolving forest sound in its place.

The evolving granular sound is shaped and altered using the rest of the knobs in the center of the UI. For instance, Blossom adds grains that are pitched up to 2 octaves above the original sound. Flood washes out the forest with lush, purely wet convolution reverb. Tangle increases the speed and intensity of the granulation effect, and Wither puts a gradual envelope on the sound to fade it out over time.”

It requires only 500MBs on your hard drive, but you need a full version of Kontakt to utilize this instrument and it has a bargain price of only 20$, which is amazing. The great thing about it is that 25% of the sales are donated to charity, so if you want to help out and get a truly unique instrument in return, here is your chance.