Moonkits

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INSTALLING YOUR SONICCOUTURE PRODUCT 3

LIBRARY SPECIFICATIONS 4

MOONKITS: CONCEPT 5

THE MOONKITS 7
KIT 1 - Adam Falkner 7
KIT 2 - Adam Falkner 8
KIT 3 - Evan Jenkins 9
KIT4 - Evan Jenkins 10
KIT5 - Adam Falkner 11

THE KONTAKT INSTRUMENT 12

SNAPSHOTS 12
BUILT-IN HELP 12
BRUSH SWEEP LOOPS 12
THE MAIN PANEL 13
SELECTING A DRUM 13
THE MICROPHONE KNOBS 14
EDITING A DRUM SOUND 15
EDITING INDIVIDUAL MIC CHANNELS 16
THE SETUP PANEL 16

THE MIXER 18
THE CHANNEL STRIP 18
THE MASTER CHANNEL 20

THE BEAT TOOLS 22

THE BEAT-SHIFTER 22
EUCLIDEAN BEATS 25
POLY BEATS 27

SUPPORT 29

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT 30

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INSTALLING YOUR SONICCOUTURE PRODUCT

If you do not own Kontakt, you can install the free Kontakt Player

If you have an earlier version of Kontakt, click here

1. Open NI Kontakt in standalone mode.

2. In the Libraries tab, click Manage Libraries

3. Click Launch Native Access : Login or create an account if you don’t have one.

4. Click Add A Serial (find it in your SC account with the product download).

5. Copy and paste the number in the box and click Add Serial

6. Navigate to the downloaded product folder and select it

7. Click INSTALL to complete the process.

NOTE: The login for NI Native Access is not the same as your login for the Soniccouture
site. You must create an account with Native Instruments if you don’t already have one.

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LIBRARY SPECIFICATIONS

• 16GB Library
• Up to 116 velocity layers per drum.
• 5 complete drum kits
• 3 Beat Tools drum sequencers
• 24bit 48khz Stereo Sampling
• Brushes, rods, mallets, sticks.
• Brush sweep performance loops
• Kontakt Player / NKS compatible

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MOONKITS: CONCEPT

Moonkits was born out of a desire to make some quirky, different-sounding acoustic
drumkits, avoiding drumsticks and focussing mainly (but not only) on brushes, and not just
about jazz styles, but sounds that are as much suited to urban or cinematic styles.

Another key concept for the sound of the instrument was that most drum samples seem
to be played really HARD. Whereas in reality most drummers don’t whack the drums
really hard, and certainly for jazz / funk / hiphop / percussive type styles, the drums are
played pretty softly. For this instrument we really wanted to capture lots of detail with the
soft to medium end of the dynamics.

We looked for a nice, small / medium drum room. Konk, Ray Davies’ studio in North
London came up in conversation, and indeed it has a very nice acoustic to it, as well as
the interesting duality of the heavily treated Dead End. So, you can get the best of both
worlds - a nice room sound with tight close mics. Perfect. A Neve console previously used
on any number of classic albums, including Dark Side Of The Moon was the icing on the
cake.

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We worked with two different drummers, to get more than one take - everyone has their
own idea of ‘quirky’, after all.

Adam Falkner a previous Soniccouture collaborator, a creative and open minded

drummer who has worked with a huge number of artists: Dido, Babyshambles, Danny
Goffey (Supergrass), Duffy, Nitin Sawhney, Colton Avery, Strawbs, Mark Owen, Judie
Tzuke, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Candi Staton, Beverley Knight, Ed Harcourt.. and
more.

Evan Jenkins: drummer for Neil Cowley Trio, and a guy with fantastic jazz chops, he has
played with Mick Jagger, Ronnie Scott, Eric Clapton to name a few.

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THE MOONKITS

KIT 1 - Adam Falkner

• Floor tom: 1950s Stratford Besson 18”x12" mounted unported bass drum with original
hyde heads.
• 1923 Leedy 15”x 8" snare drum used as rack tom.
• Kick - Yamaha Maple 18”
• Snare: Pearl Sensitone Steel Shell 13"x5" snare.
• Zildjian 13 Remix Jungle Hat
• Zildjian, 22" Constantinople Medium Ride
• Zildjian A 18" Breakbeat ride ( with chain)

Tools used: Brushes, sticks.

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KIT 2 - Adam Falkner

• 1971 Rogers Holiday kit

• 20x12 kick, 12" rack tom and 16" floor tom (dampened).
• 1970s olive badge Ludwig Acrolite snare.
• 15” Zildjian Avedis Hi-hats
• 22" Zildjian Avedis Ride

Tools used: Brushes, sticks, Bundle rods, Beater-Brushes

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KIT 3 - Evan Jenkins

Gretsch 1954 Kit

• 20” bass drum

• 12” rack Tom
• 16” floor Tom
• 14x5.5” Gretsch snare drum.
• 20” C&G company crash ride
• 22” Zildjian Kerope ride.
• 14” Zildjian New Beats 1970 Hi-Hats

Tools used: Brushes, Bundle Rods

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KIT4 - Evan Jenkins

1964 Ludwig Super classics

• 22” bass drum

• 13” rack Tom
• 16” floor Tom
• Ludwig 400 snare drum
• Zildjian K 14" Dry hats
• 21” K Zildjian special dry ride
• Cymbal and Gong co. 20” thin crash/ride.

Tools used: Brushes, Percussion Mallet

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KIT5 - Adam Falkner

Mongrel Kit

• 24” Slingerland Kick

• LP Brass timables
• 10” Sabian AA Mini Hats
• Dampened Acrolite snare.
• Zildjian K Dark Ride

Tools used: Sticks, Percussion Mallet, Tea Sticks (Timbales)

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THE KONTAKT INSTRUMENT

SNAPSHOTS

Kontakt stores presets as Snapshots, and we’ve provided a selection of different kits and
grooves as Snapshots. To access them, click the ‘camera’ icon at the top of the Kontakt
window and you’ll see a drop down menu. The Factory section contains the ones we’ve
made, and your own will be stored in the User section.

BUILT-IN HELP

If you activate the Info pane in Kontakt, you can hover over any
control in the instrument and a short note will appear in the Info pane
at the bottom describing what that control does.

BRUSH SWEEP LOOPS

A common brushed drum technique is the ‘sweep’ or ‘stir’ - swooshing the brush around
the surface of the snare drum in a continuous rhythmic motion. We have included a set of
different sweep performances by the drummers for each brushed snare drum recorded.
These are found on the upper range of the keyboard. In the cases where a non brush
snare is selected, the sweep loops are still available should you want them. After all, a
drummer can hold one stick and one brush.

They can be triggered using the keys and also by the Beat Tools.
Adding a hit sets the start point of the loop, and the duration of
the loop can be set in divisions / multiples of a bar ( 4/4 being 1
complete bar).

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THE MAIN PANEL

The main panel features two main work areas, the MIXER and the DRUM EDIT panel.

SELECTING A DRUM

1. Click on a drum in the picture, or

2. Click on the Mixer label (kick, snare etc) or
3. Activate SELECT BY MIDI at the bottom right corner of the mixer,
and play a note from your MIDI controller or DAW.

Once you have selected a drum the right-hand EDIT PANEL will change to show the
settings for that drum.

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You can then select different drums & drum

tools from within that category in the drop
down menu shown here.

THE MICROPHONE KNOBS

Each drum features a number of different

microphones that can be mixed to create
different sounds.
Some drum types have 6 mic knobs, some have
5 or 4, depending on how they were recorded.

MICROPHONE MIXER ROUTING

Each drum features 3 stereo ambient / room

mic controls. You can choose to route these
either out through the same channel as the
other mics for that drum (‘drum channel’), or
through one of two assignable Bus
channels. In this way you can have a
traditional ‘Overheads’ or ‘Room’ channel if
you wish to process all mics together.

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EDITING A DRUM SOUND

Below the mic knobs you have several knobs that help you shape the sound of the
individual drum you have selected.

PITCH: Tune the drum, +/- 1 octave

ATTACK: Adjust the start of the envelope from fast to
slow.
HOLD: Adjust the amount of time the maximum level
of the envelope is held for.
DECAY: Adjust the time it takes for the end of the
sound to die away.

VEL: Adjust how much the volume of each hit

responds to velocity (how hard the key or MIDI note is
pressed). Higher values mean a greater range from
quiet to loud. A value of zero means all hits will be the same level.

SWITCH to the second set of controls using the 3

buttons below the knobs.

HPF: A high pass filter, which removes low frequencies

fro the sound.
LPF: A low pass filter, which removes high frequencies
from the sound.
ATK CURVE: Adjusts the curve of the ATTACK control
from convex to concave. The centre position is linear.
This control only features on Kick, Snare and Hi-hat.
SWEEP: Adjusts the level of the snare sweep loops
independently of the other snare hits. Snare only.
OH DECAY: Adjusts the decay time of the open hi-hat
independently of the CH DECAY knob. Hi-hat only.

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EDITING INDIVIDUAL MIC CHANNELS

If you want to get really in depth with a drum sound,

you can also apply the same edit controls to each
microphone channel independently.
Why might you do this? Well, perhaps you want to
shorten the decay of all the mics except the ROOM
mics, which you want to decay fully as a natural reverb
effect.
Or perhaps you want to filter out all the high
frequencies from the Kick FRONT mic, to create a sub-
bass kick mic, but leave the other mics sounding
natural.

All these things are possible using the grid of small numbered buttons just below the mic
knobs. Each number relates to the knobs above e.g. Button 4 selects Mic knob 4:
Overheads.
Select the mic channel you want to eat using the corresponding number switch, and then
any changes to make to the EDIT knobs will only apply to that mic channel, until you
deselect it, or choose another mic channel for editing.
NOTE: The controls will by default display the settings for Mic Knob 1 unless another is
selected.

THE SETUP PANEL

Click the COG icon to display the setup controls,

which mainly relate to Velocity.
These are simple but very powerful options that can
help you create incredibly natural sounding drum
patterns.
LIMIT VELOCITY: Sets the range of samples which will
respond to incoming velocity values. e.g.: if you limit
the high range to 90, you will not hear any samples
above that value in the velocity mapping of that drum.
This is very useful if you want to create a soft sounding
pattern, you can simply remove the harder sounding
samples from triggering.

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RANDOM: This randomises the incoming velocity values. If you set a RANDOM value of
10, then the incoming velocity will be randomised within 10 values of that hit. In practice
this means you can make a much more natural sounding sequence as you get a range of
different sounding hits around the same area, as you would with a real drummer.

CURVE: Adjust the shape of the velocity response curve: convex curves increase the
number of louder samples across the velocity range, concave shapes do the opposite and
increase the quieter samples.

MENU: This gives you different options for each drum:

POLYPHONY: Sets the number of whole drum hits that will be able to ring out freely (not
related to the number of mic channels you are using in each drum hit). Setting this to 1
means that overlapping hits will cut each off, a setting of 2 means that 2 hits can overlap
but a third will cut off the first.
This helps manage CPU resources with busy patterns.

ROUND ROBIN: Toggles our Anti-repeat system. If switched on, you will not hear an
identical sample twice (known as ‘machine-gunning’). You may want to switch it off if you
want a more machine-like groove, for example perhaps in urban styles.

SWEEP LOOPS: This sets the speed of the time-stretching used to tempo-match the
snare sweep loops. For example, if you set a very low tempo and the sweep loop sounds
artificial, you may want to try setting this to ‘Half Speed’. Mostly you can leave it alone
and not worry about it.

CHOKE (Snare Only): This causes the scrape samples to be cut off by the snare hit
samples to create a certain natural performance effect, if desired.

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THE MIXER

The Moonkits mixer is a conventional 8 stereo channel mixer with 2 assignable buses and
a master channel. Each channel features a volume fader, pan fader and solo / mute
buttons.

The PLAY button will activate the current BeatTools pattern.

THE CHANNEL STRIP

by clicking this button you launch the channel strip for the selected
channel. Each channel has its own set of processors. Each module can be
switched ON/OFF using the black/white square in the top right of each
box.

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FILTERS: HPF plus multimode filter; click the drop-down menu to choose from many
different types of LPF, BP ( band-pass) and HPF filter.

COMPRESSOR: Kontakt's Pro compressor module. Very precise and versatile for shaping
and tightening up drum sounds.

TRANSIENT: A very useful simple module for quickly shaping the ATTACK and SUSTAIN
of an individual drum. Often useful to simply reduce the SUSTAIN setting to get a
punchier sound.

EQUALISER: Kontakt Solid BUS EQ - an SSL channel EQ emulation. Shelved High and
Low sections ( watchable to a Bell curve) with 2 parametric mid-bands.
TIP: with acoustic drums you will often get good results cutting boomy/boxy room sounds
in the mid-range from 300 - 800hz.

SAT: A saturation effect. Gentle harmonic distortion can give your sound more presence.
Better used at low values.

STEREO: Increases or decreases the width of stereo signals. Will not affect mono sounds.

OUTPUT: here you can route this channel

out to a separate channel in your DAW if
you wish. Note that you will need to setup
Kontakt’s outputs to what you want first.
You can do this in the Outputs pane in
Kontakt:

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THE MASTER CHANNEL

The MSTR channel of the mixer features 4 nice processors for mastering the output of
Moonkits, and you can get some very nice results here. Two modules can be displayed at
once using the tab system.
NOTE: If you route individual drum channels out into your DAW mixer as outlined in the
previous section, you bypass these processors.

COMPRESSOR: This can be switched between Feedback mode and Bus comp ( SSL)
mode. Both types have a MIX control for parallel compression techniques.

TAPE: A tape emulation effect. Drive the GAIN knob until you hear an effect, then back it
off a little way. Subtle, but has a nice rounding effect on the bottom end, and the HF
ROLL is nice for giving beats a vintage feel.

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EQUALISER: The same SOLID EQ as on the individual channels.

LIMITER: Useful mainly for stopping the output of Moonkits clipping. Set and leave it
alone.

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THE BEAT TOOLS

THE BEAT-SHIFTER

BASIC CONTROLS

PLAY: The Beat Shifter is enabled when the play arrow is pressed (bottom right). If
Moonkits is running within a host DAW, the host transport will control the start and stop of
the beat. There are 8 tracks that have identical controls. Firstly, using the drop down
menu on the left, you can choose which sound in the current kit you want to trigger with
that row, here the first row is set to KICK. The table allows you to draw notes at varying
velocities, which will be triggered by the cursor as it moves across the screen.

MIDI DRAG: On all Beat Tools if you drag this icon into your DAW window, it
will make a MIDI file of the beat you have created.

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BEAT SHIFTING

Where things get interesting are with the five small sliders along the bottom of each track,
which are labelled SHIFT, STEP, DIRection, RANDOM, and CHANCE. These introduce
changes that evolve the pattern while it’s repeating.

SHIFT controls the likelihood of the hits in that track moving shifting to the left or right
(earlier or later) in time. When it’s at zero, all the way left, the pattern hits stay exactly as
you drew it, and no shifting will happen. The further right the slider the higher the
chance of a SHIFT, the more likely it is that the hits will shift on each repeat. When the
pattern SHIFTS, it moves your programmed beat to other positions on the grid, thus
altering and evolving the beat based on what you started with.

STEP size tells the generator how far to shift, if a shift is to happen. If STEP is set to 1,
then a note can only shift one grid position at a time. If it’s set to 2, then if a note shifts, it
will shift two grid positions, etc. Note that if you set STEP to even numbers your beat will
evolve in more naturally rhythmic ways than if you set STEP to odd numbers.

DIRECTION tells the generator in which direction to shift the beats, if a beat is to be
shifted. When it’s in the middle (default), the chance of a hit moving to the left or to the
right (i.e. earlier or later in the bar) is equal, so beats can move in either direction. If the
DIRECTION is set all the way to the right, then beats will ONLY move to the right (later),
and if set all the way to the left, beats will only move to the left. Note that hits will
“wrap” from the end of the bar to the beginning, or from the beginning to the end, if
moved beyond the beat LENGTH.

VELOCITY slider introduces small amounts of randomicity to the velocity of the played
notes if you want to introduce some more human feel.

CHANCE OF slider sets the percentage chance of a hit happening.

If CHANCE is at 100%, the beat will play as you see it, if CHANCE is
at 50% then about half of the hits won’t play at all.

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There are 2 more Chance sliders hidden behind the drop-down menu. All are active at
once.
CHANCE MISS: If you set a value here, it will increase number of ‘miss-hits’; a hit on the
key next to the intended one.
CHANCE ROLL: increase this slider to hear occasional rolls. works well with snares. Set to
100% and all hits will be rolls.

BEAT SHIFTER SETTINGS

EXPORT BARS: here you can set the length of the

MIDI file you drag into your DAW.
If you have setup a shifting pattern using the controls
outlined above, the shifts that occur on each new bar
will be included in the resulting MIDI file, meaning that you can export up to 128 bars of
continually evolving beats!

FREEZE sets all SHIFT sliders to zero, freezing the pattern as it is, and stops it
evolving on the next repeat. This is useful if you suddenly hear a pattern you
like, and want to keep it. You can assign a MIDI note below the FREEZE icon to
trigger the FREEZE function if you like.

REVERT sets the pattern to how it was the last time you hit STORE

STORE stores the current state of the pattern

SAVE saves the pattern to disk, so you can share it with other kits

LOAD loads a pattern from disk

SWING adds swing to the rhythm of the beat.

STEPS is the number of steps in the pattern.

SPEED sets the duration of each step.

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EUCLIDEAN BEATS

Euclidean Beats are a way of thinking about rhythm that has become popular over the last
few years. Essentially the basic idea is to take a number of STEPS (say a bar of 16 steps)
and evenly distribute a number of HITS within those steps. If you use 16 STEPS and
evenly distribute 4 HITS, you get a very basic 4 beat bar, since the most even way to
divide 4 HITS in 16 STEPS is to put one HIT every 4 STEPS. So far so disco.

It gets more interesting when the numbers are less even. For example, 3 HITS in 8 STEPS
gives you a nice funky rhythm that’s quite commonly heard in a lot of different musical
styles.

Another thing you can then do to those HITs is SHIFT their position. The default is always
to start with a HIT, so the first HIT will typically occur on STEP 0. However if you SHIFT
earlier or later you get a slightly different rhythm, even though it will still be built from
same basic ratio of 3 HITS to 8 STEPS.

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TRACK CONTROLS
There are 8 tracks each with identical controls.

STEPS sets the length of the pattern

HITS sets the number of times to strike that drum during those STEPS. You cannot alter
how those HITS are distributed within the STEPS, they are always evenly distributed
(Euclid’s algorithm).

SHIFT moves the position of the hits earlier or later.

ACCENT lets you add a certain number of accents to the hits. ACCENTS are evenly
distributed among the HITS using the same algorithm used to distribute the HITS among
the STEPS (Euclid again).

GLOBAL CONTROLS

PLAY Clicking on this PLAY control starts the beat pattern. Clicking again on it will stop
the beat pattern. Within a DAW the generator will start and stop with your host transport.

RATE is the sync note value (from 1/4 note to 1/32 note), and is always calculated in
relation to the host tempo. SWING adds a shuffle to the beat.

LOOP forces the pattern to restart after a certain number of steps. This might not be
obvious at first, but you can potentially create a pattern with odd numbered steps
needing several years before the sequence would naturally repeats at the beginning
again. To force those kind of things into a usable musical time-frame you can set the
LOOP as you like. (You can also set LOOP to NEVER if you don’t like to dance.)

MIDI DRAG You can drag the pattern as a MIDI file to your DAW using the
MIDI drag button at the top right.

If you’d like to read more about Euclidean beats and why they’re getting so much
attention, Google Godfried Toussaint, he wrote an original paper that started the fad
some years ago.

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POLY BEATS

Poly Beats is a way to divide the bar into arbitrary subdivisions, or polyrhythms.

(This is distinct from the polymetric behaviour of Euclid, which loops different tracks after
various numbers of steps, but in which the steps are all the same duration. In a
polyrhythm the overall pattern length stays constant, and the duration of the steps is
adjusted to fit the required steps into that pattern length. The pattern length in Poly
Beats is always one bar.)

Polyrhythms can quickly sound very strange and unnatural, this is definitely the beat
programmer for the left field composer.

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CONTROLS
There are 8 identical tracks.

ON / OFF VEL VELOCITY MENU LOCK GRID SIZE

DRUM TYPE

Drum type and On/Off switch at the far left of each track. On the far right the large knob
with the numerical is the divisor. If you set this to 8, you will divide the bar into 8th notes.
Note that you are only adjusting the GRID size… where you choose to draw your beats is
still up to you, the velocity etc is still editable.

VELOCITY FADER offsets the velocity values of the entire track

VELOCITY MENU contains quick tools for populating the steps with different patterns.

LOCK Any track with the padlock shut will be excluded from the RANDOMISE function,
see below.

GLOBAL CONTROLS

PLAY starts or stops the sequence. If you are in a DAW the host transport control will also
start and stop the sequence.

RANDOMISE randomly changes the grid size of each track, and notes occurring on that
track. To the right is a menu with some choices about how to randomise the polyrhythmic
grids, choosing only powers of 2 or 3, even, or odd values.

MAXIMUM STEPS The maximum grid size that randomise can create.

MIDI DRAG You can drag the pattern as a MIDI file to your DAW using the
MIDI drag button at the top right.

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SUPPORT

If you have any problems or questions relating to the use of this product, please feel free
to contact us. You can email us at :

http://www.soniccouture.com/en/support/

We will always endeavour to reply to any enquiry within 24 hours. We are based in the
UK, so please bear in mind differences in time zones.

While you are waiting, you will find lots of answers to common questions in our FAQ.

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END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

PREFACE: This End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you and Soniccouture
LTD for the Soniccouture product accompanying this EULA, which includes computer software and may
include associated media, printed materials, and online or electronic documentation ("Software"). By
installing, copying, or using the software, you agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA. If you do not
agree to the terms of this EULA, you may not use the software.

The software is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual
property laws and treaties. The software is licensed, not sold.

Soniccouture Ltd grants the Owner of a Soniccouture product the right to create finished musical works and
performances using the sounds and software that comprise the Soniccouture product.

The making of sample libraries in any form, commercial or otherwise, using Soniccouture audio or software
(be they single hits, loops, fully mixed audio clips, or scripts) is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN without express
written agreement of Soniccouture Ltd, and violations will be prosecuted to the full extent of international
and local copyright law.

The ownership of all title and copyrights in and to the Software (including but not limited to any images,
photographs, animations, video, audio, music, text, and "applets" incorporated into the Software ) is fully
asserted by Soniccouture Ltd.

The Owner may only install and use Soniccouture libraries and software on multiple computers strictly under
the following conditions: where multiple computers comprise part of a single composition workstation for a
composer; or where the Owner has two non-concurrent sites of work, for example a studio desktop and a
laptop for live performance.

The Owner may not transfer, modify, rent, lease, loan, resell, distribute, network, electronically transmit or
merge the Software.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: The software is provided "as is" and without warranty of any kind. The entire
risk arising out of the use or performance of the software and documentation remains with user. To the
maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Soniccouture further disclaims all warranties, either express or
implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular
purpose, with regard to the software, and any accompanying hardware. To the maximum extent permitted
by applicable law, in no event shall Soniccouture be liable for any consequential, incidental, direct, indirect,
special, punitive, or other damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business
profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or other pecuniary loss) arising out of this EULA
or the use of or inability to use the software, even if Soniccouture has been advised of the possibility of such
damages.

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