Download Royalty Free Marimba loops, wav samples, oneshots, hits, sounds & audio. Vibraphone or Marimba or Xylophone, piano or organ (98) Vibraphone or Marimba or Xylophone (90) Vibraphone or Marimba or Xylophone, piano (52) Percussion Ensemble (32) Vibraphone or xylophone or marimba, piano and/or guitar or organ (24) Marimba (22) 2 marimbas (11) Duet Vibraphone, Marimbas or Xylophones (10) Marimba and Piano (9).
The marimba is a pitched keyboard percussion instrument(similar to a xylophone) that resides in symphonies, percussion ensembles, orchestras, commercial music, and more.
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Finding an excellent-sounding marimba VST isn’t a walk in the park — many sound cheap. Not to worry, as I have discovered five exceptional libraries that I will share with you today.
Table of Contents
- Things to Consider When Looking for Marimba VSTs
1) Vital Series: Mallets (Paid)
I’ve already mentioned Mallets in a previous post (xylophone VSTs), but it happens to fit perfectly with marimba VSTs.
Vital Series: Mallets is an excellent pitched-percussion plugin from Big Fish Audio, the creators of Electri6ity, Mojo 2, and Apollo: Cinematic Guitars.
The plugin includes patches for marimba, xylophone, bells, chimes, vibraphone, and others.
The sample quality is incredible — when I listened back to my studio monitors, I felt like I was listening to real performers.
Vital Series: Mallets comes with multiple mallet types allowing for more flexibility and better dynamic emulation.
Mallet types included are as follows:
- Soft
- Medium Soft
- Medium Hard
- Hard
- Rods
- Bow
Vital Series: Mallets is available at Plugin Boutique.
2) Marimbaphonic (Free)
For all the composers and producers looking for a free option — rejoice. Marimbaphone is a surprisingly decent-sounding free marimba plugin.
The instrument contains 122 samples from the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios public domain library.
The most disappointing flaw in this marimba VST is the limiting two velocity layers(hey, what can you expect, it’s free?).
Here are Marimbaphone’s main features:
- 122 mono 24-bit samples
- Two velocity layers
- Release time control
- Amplitude dynamic range control
- Basic reverb
3) Short Marimba VST/AU from Flintpope (Free)
Here’s an interesting (and free) marimba VST from a website called Flintpope.net.
Fl studio free 808 plugin. The Short Marimba is a cool-sounding free instrument that won’t stand up to significant orchestral recordings but does work for many styles like pop and hip hop.
Have a listen below:
4) Soniccouture Grand Marimba (Paid)
I have a hard time distinguishing between Grand Marimba and Vital Series: Mallets’ marimba. They both sound so unbelievably realistic.
Grand Marimba is a fantastic marimba VST that features a 5-octave Yamaha 6100, designed with the legendary Keiko Abe.
The 6100 is a flagship instrument with precision tuning, Honduran Rosewood bars, and welded resonators (rattle-free).
Grand Marimba is a Kontakt Player instrument, meaning you do not need the full version of Kontakt to use it in your DAW.
5) Marimba by Frontline Producer (Paid)
Marimba by Frontline Producer is a great-sounding, and very affordable, marimba VST from Producer Loops.
The significant difference from the others on the list: it includes loops. Frontline Producer includes 343 marimba loops at tempos between 100 and 127 (which can be warped to your liking).
In addition to loops is a software sampler patch, which you can use to create your parts and melodies.
Marimba by Frontline Producer is available at Plugin Boutique.
6) Fine Mallets Bundle from Cinematique Instruments (Paid)
Fine Mallets is an armory of seven mallet percussion instruments including marimba, vibraphone, metallophone, glockenspiel, kalimba, and more.
The marimba patch sounds much dryer than others I have previously listed in this article.
There is also much less sustain, but I think it still sounds excellent and has commercial production potential.
The articulations included for the marimba patch include hard mallet, felt mallet, and big-soft mallet.
Note: the full version of Kontakt is required to use Fine Mallets.
Fine Mallets is available at Plugin Boutique.
Things to Consider When Looking for Marimba VSTs
Depending on your production, you may pick a different plugin. Some digital audio workstations even have marimbas and other percussion instruments included with the software.
Using Marimba VSTs in Pop and Hip Hop Music
Because you’re working in pop or hip hop music, you may not need the highest quality samples. A free option may work just fine.
I use Cubase, and it comes standard with Halion Sonic SE 3 — a VST sampler and sound creation system.
Halion Sonic SE 3 isn’t the full version of Halion, but it does come with some decent marimba patches. The included presets work fine for pop and hip hop music.
Check if your DAW includes some free virtual instruments and see if they’re any good!
Using Marimba VSTs For Orchestral and TV/Film Composition
Composition for film, TV, and video games requires next-level libraries — your competition will be using them.
Blowing away music supervisors right from the get-go is imperative, as you may only get one chance.
Using high-quality instrument samples is, unfortunately, a must when working in the TV and film industry.
For orchestral music, quality is also crucial. Unless you plan to hire out an entire orchestra to play your piece and record it, you may want to save up for the best virtual libraries you can afford.
Compatibility of Marimba Virtual Instrument Plugins
Most digital audio workstations today support VST (virtual studio technology) — VST is the most common format today.
However, if you use a DAW like Pro Tools, you may have to use a format known as AAX or RTAS. There are workarounds, but they are obnoxious, requiring you to use Reaper inside Pro Tools to host VST plugins — a total headache.
Fortunately, most plugins today come in different formats.
- VST (Virtual Studio Technology)
- AU (AudioUnits)
- AAX (Avid Audio eXtension)
- RTAS (Real-Time Audio Suite)
- TDM (Time-division Multiplexing)
Read your DAWs manual to see which format it supports.
Conclusion
Vital Series: Mallets remains to be my favorite mallet VST plugin bundle, though I have to say, Grand Marimba is coming in at a close second.
My best piece of advise when working with any plugins and instruments is to keep amassing them until you have an extensive library — like a painter’s color palette.
The “best-sounding” marimba VST may not always be the best application for a given style of music, like hip-hop, lo-fi, or pop.
If you’re interested in recording and production, specifically relating to drums and percussion, check out some of my other roundups:
Have you tried out any of the marimba VST plugins I’ve listed here? What do you think? I’d love to hear from you in the comments down below.
Please share this article with your producer friends if you found it helpful.
Thanks for reading.
PSI Marimba is a 52-note virtual instrument , 10,221 samples, 6.2 GB (compressed 3.2), playable in the full version of Kontakt 4.2.2 and higher.
Phase equalization of the sound was important for the sound to provide a focused tone, this had to be done for each note. The end result is an audiophilic, but at the same time characteristic world-class game.
Please note: full version of Kontakt 4.2.2 or higher is required. Not for Kontakt Player.
MICROPHONES
To do justice to this 6 foot long Marimba we felt it was necessary to capture its sound using 5 microphone positions. Only this would convey its full tone and feel and also allow for endless acoustic possibilities in the mix.
Using the faders on the GUI the user can create the optimal blend of ‘Center’, ‘Stereo’, ‘Wide’, ‘Ribbon’ & ‘Room’ mics for their purposes.
Close Mics
• Center (Neumann TLM 103)
• Stereo (Neumann KM184 pair)
• Wide (AKG C414 B-ULS pair)
Ambient Mics
• Ribbon (Coles 4038 pair)
• Room (Neumann u87 pair)
ROBERT VAN SICE ARTIST MARIMBA
Each note of a Robert Van Sice Artist Series 4 & 1/3 Octave Rosewood Marimba was intensively sampled in our cinematic live room to recreate the authentic sound of this beautiful instrument, using 9 microphones and with up to 23 velocity levels.
INSTRUMENTS
There are 2 main instruments:
• ‘Main’ with felt beaters (contains rolls and straight hits)
• ‘Soft’ with softer beater (contains rolls and straight hits)
• There are also 2 patches which contain the rolls without the standard hits, for times when you need just the roll.
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The Main instruments also have a ‘Less Stereo Width’ version with a narrower stereo field- for situations where the natural width of the instrument needs to be reduced.
There are also 5 bonus patches which have aa hard rubber beater, drag strokes with a felt beater and 5th, Minor 3rd and Major 3rd intervals also with the standard felt beater.
BEATERS
We also wanted to represent the varying tones and effects created by different beaters and hitting techniques, and so have created nkis featuring Felt beaters, Soft Felt beaters and Rubber beaters, plus straight hits, rolls and drags.