The Foundry: Cinematic Sound, Made for Music Makers

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Hello Friends,

I've been working on a little side project for the last ten months, and I'm finally ready to share it.

It's called The Foundry.

The Foundry is a new line of instruments, sounds, and production tools from Rareform Audio, built for composers and producers. A lot of what we're making comes directly from the kinds of sounds and techniques I use in my own work across film, trailers, television, games, and records.

I've been making music for about 20 years now, and I've spent the last 11 or so composing for film, TV, and trailers. Somewhere along the way, I got really into building my own instruments and sounds.

I've always liked the idea of making the tools myself.

Not because there aren't already great libraries out there, but because there's something fun about starting with a sound you like, recording it, messing with it, cutting it up, processing it, and eventually turning it into something you can actually play.

That's basically how The Foundry started.

Ten Months of Building

I've been working on this mostly in the cracks between everything else I do.

Early mornings, late nights, weekends, whenever I could find the time.

There's been a lot that goes into it that I honestly didn't expect when I started. Recording and editing the sounds is one thing. Then there's building the Kontakt instruments, programming everything, designing the interfaces, making the graphics, figuring out the website, and trying to make the whole thing feel like it belongs together.

I've also had help from my team along the way, especially when it came to creating and organizing the sounds.

It's been a fun project to work on, and I'm pretty happy that it finally has a home.

Where It Started: Echelon

The first release was Echelon: Cinematic Synths & FX.

At the time, The Foundry didn't even have a name yet. It was basically just a collection of sounds I had been working on and wanted to turn into something more useful.

Echelon is built around the kinds of sounds I've spent a lot of time making for trailers and cinematic music: aggressive pulses, distorted basses, braams, impacts, textures, risers, downers, and other weird little sounds that tend to find their way into my sessions.

The first Echelon release includes 127 Serum presets, matching WAV renders, and a collection of trailer-focused effects.

There are 275 sounds in total.

Explore Echelon: Cinematic Synths & FX →

Then came Echelon: Drum Hits.

I've been using and building trailer drum sounds for well over a decade, so this one felt pretty natural to make.

These aren't meant to sound like realistic drum recordings. They're big, aggressive, layered sounds built for trailers and cinematic music.

The library includes 11 Kontakt patches covering everything from trailer toms and stomps to metallic impacts, hybrid impacts, deep impacts, and other heavy hits.

There are also 264 standalone WAV files, so you can use the sounds outside of Kontakt as well.

Explore Echelon: Drum Hits →

Then We Went Modular

The other side of The Foundry is Origin.

This one is a little different.

I've been obsessed with modular synths for a long time. I love the unpredictability of them. You can build a patch, hit record, and sometimes get something that you wouldn't have been able to come up with by sitting in front of a keyboard.

So I started recording my own Eurorack setup and turning those performances into instruments.

That's where Origin came from.

The first bundle includes three free Kontakt instruments:

Mod-Perc is built around modular percussion, unstable pulses, loops, and rhythmic textures.

Mod-Keys takes a modular piano and turns it into four playable voicings, ranging from cleaner sounds to more processed and cinematic tones.

Mod-Tones is made up of granular pads, drones, loops, and tonal textures created from Eurorack performances.

All three started with real performances from my own modular rig. I recorded everything at 96 kHz, then edited, processed, and programmed the sounds into playable instruments while trying to keep some of the character and weirdness of the original recordings.

And Origin is free.

Download Origin Bundle v1 →

What's Next

The Foundry is still very much a work in progress.

There are more Echelon releases in the works, more free Origin instruments, and some completely new ideas that I'm already messing around with.

I don't really know exactly where it's all going yet, which is probably part of what I like about it.

The original idea was simply to make some instruments and sounds that I wanted to use myself.

Now there's a whole place for them.

If you're interested, you can check everything out at thefoundryaudio.com.

Thanks for checking it out.

-Nathan

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