Yes, the Internet moves fast. Just hours after Native Instruments announces a free soundpack, it’s already popping up on Twitter – AudioGeekZine reports happy times with the new Compilations Volume 1 soundpack from Native Instruments.

Here’s the story: because Native Instruments uses the free Kore Player for its soundpacks, you can make use of the included sounds without owning Kore, on Mac or Windows. Soundpack Compilation Volume 1 is packed with nearly 100 MB of 100 Kore Sounds and 800 variations thereof, curated from the various soundpacks they’ve released this year. That includes synths designed in Reaktor, FM8, Absynth, and Massive, percussion, effects, and more. Aside from the variations, you get quite a bit of timbral control over the sounds with pre-assigned parameters, even without owning the software with which these were developed. (In other words, no need to use the presets as-is in recognizable form!) If you own any of the products, you can edit the sounds.

KORE Soundpacks: Free Compilation Vol. 1 [Native Instruments]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Volume 1 suggests more may be coming.

Since it works with everything, I figured it was worth putting here instead of our kore.noisepages.com minisite. Let us know what you think of the pack, and if anyone else has freely-available sounds for the holidays.

And in other news, I suggest being as arcane as you possibly can on social networking services like Twitter and Facebook. For instance, “Peter is … jumping with joy because he’s found exactly the right granular size parameter for his new SuperCollider effect.”

People will think you’re about to cause the end of the universe, along with that Large Hadron Collider. Actually, excuse me while I Tweet that.

Amidst the social networking crap, there are gems offering real resources. Nextcat lies somewhere between LinkedIn and MySpace, offering places to connect with professionals in a range of fields. The site was founded by two Berklee College of Music alums, an alma mater for a number of our readers. I’m guessing "modeling" applies to very few of you, but music is included, and now the games industry, as well, including music and audio for games and related careers. (Our own W. Brent Latta broke into that field while writing for CDM.)

Nextcat seems to do a pretty good job of attracting serious people; there are some useful looking folks already in the gaming section. And as far as I know, this is one of the few places that people in the industry can network. With gaming increasingly alongside industries like film, and music — as always — interfacing with all other art forms, I think this shows some real promise for future resources, as well.

Nextcat