TuskFang

Overview

I wanted an instrument that makes elephant noises, and that stays playable once it does. TuskFang has six calls, each built on the mechanism a real elephant uses: rumbles and roars come from a larynx through a vocal tract, trumpets and squeaks from buzzing lips into a trunk resonator, snorts from an air jet through the trunk, and stomps from an impact model. Size runs from a calf to a mammoth on its own knob, separate from pitch, so one animal plays across the keyboard. Breath, Pressure, Rough, Growl, Brass, Wildness and Air shape the voice; a second call can morph in (rise, fall or swell); and Rumble Octave drops the rumble one or two octaves into infrasound. A Blend slider mixes the model with a sample layer of real recordings: elephant trumpets, rumbles, roars and trunk sprays, a Samburu savanna herd, and the hippos and rhinos that share the watering hole. Herd plays up to four animals per note with spread and scatter. Three Warps move pitch, size and growl, and the FX chain is the RatTubes one: EQ, saturation, compressor, OTT, chorus, delay, shimmer reverb and a ducker. The Watering Hole draws your elephant at sunset, sized and posed by the parameters. Twenty-four presets cover snorts, grunts, Brass Trunk leads and sections, basses and full beasts.

Features

• ▸Six calls: Trumpet, Rumble, Roar, Squeak, Snort and Stomp, each on its real mechanism
• ▸Size from calf to mammoth, separate from pitch, plus Trunk/Mouth, Register and Rumble Octave (down to infrasound)
• ▸Breath, Pressure, Rough, Growl, Brass, Wildness and Air shape the voice
• ▸Second call with Rise, Fall and Swell morphs
• ▸Blend the model with recorded elephants, savanna, hippos and rhinos (CC0 and credited CC BY sources)
• ▸Herd: up to four animals per note with spread, scatter and size spread
• ▸Three Warp modulators and an 8-module FX chain with shimmer reverb and a ducker
• ▸The Watering Hole: an animated elephant drawn from the parameters, 24 factory presets

Listen