Glass Beach

About

Glass Beach is a unique sample library for composers and sound artists that combines experimental percussion and sound design with an oceanic sfx and ambient soundscape library. We explore a wide variety of different natural beach, bay, estuary, marsh and wharf environments in wide stereo with a richly-detailed quality that puts you right there in the scene. Glass Beach itself is a unique place on shore of the old village of Fort Bragg, on the northern coast of California. For decades during the last century, the town dumped its trash in the sea, heaping it into heaps towering 30 feet above the waves. “The Dumps” were finally shut down in 1967. After years of clean-up efforts, all that remains are the tons of broken glass too small and plentiful to pick from the sand. However, the relentless years of tide and waves have turned this glass into something magical. These millions of glass beads tumbling in the gentle surf create a remarkable effervescent sound you won’t find any other place on earth.

Contents

On our visit to Glass Beach, we captured a wide variety of tiny glass percussive hits, taps, clicks, steps and scrapes, perfect for sound design and creative rhythmic composition. We’ve also gone into the field to record sea and bay ambiences from a variety of coastal, bay, marsh and estuary environments, including crashing waves, lapping tide pools, busy wharfs, peaceful marshes, tricking waterfalls, drippy sea caves and even the strange “Wave Organ”, an aquatic sound sculpture located near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Lastly, we’ve created plenty of custom sound-designed atmospheric pads and custom FX presets to get your creativity flowing. And for users that prefer to work with the wavs directly, we’ve clearly named, categorized and catalogued them for easy browsing. We’ve packed the user interface with powerful controls to give you total flexibility. You have control over 4 sound layers, each with swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, tuning, articulation switching, cross-fading, layering and more. The advanced window provides arpeggiation, filters and LFO with multi-parameter modulation and routing options. The modular FX Rack window offers 18 DSP effect modules freely assignable to 10 rack bays. You’ll find reverb, phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb includes 139 halls, chambers, rooms, outdoor environments and special FX impulses to completely transform the sound and open up new worlds of creative possibility.

• 34 Grain bounce single clicks
• 24 Grain bounce multi-clicks
• 15 Grain bounce multi-clicks
• 23 Grain light, thin single hits
• 10 Grain light hits
• 10 Grain medium hits
• 10 Gain heavy, bassy hits
• 13 Grain pour effects
• 10 Grain light shake effects
• 10 Grain heavy shake effects
• 10 Grain light scrape-up effects
• 10 Grain heavy, bassy scrape-down effects
• 15 Glass beach sand boot footsteps
• 14 Sound-designed pads, textures and atmospheric synths
• 13 Ocean beach heavy wave and choppy surf ambiences from various distances
• 7 Ocean beach gentle wave ambiences from various distances
• 3 Ocean beach walking ambiences
• 8 Ocean tide pool ambiences with gentle water lapping in different environments at various distances
• 7 Fisherman's Wharf ambiences, with sea lions, seagulls, crowds and boat sounds
• 3 Small dock and pier ambiences in marsh and bay environments
• 4 Marina and boat ambiences
• 6 Bay shore beach wave ambiences
• 5 Marsh general ambiences
• 6 Marsh and sea wall water lapping ambiences
• 3 Wave Organ aquatic sound scupture ambiences
• 2 Sea cave waterfall trickles
• 3 Sea cliff water drips and trickles

Product Specs