After spending two whole weeks being far more obsessed than I should be with the band, Clown Core, I decided it was time to acquire some clown horns of my own. I bought two from Amazon and recorded them in various stages of honkiness: from gentle, apologetic parps to very stern warnings. These were then edited, loaded into Ableton Live’s Sampler and pitched over 18 notes, with 8 velocity layers per note.
So here we have it, the classic dual honk of 2 genuine clown horns, ready to play live as a Sampler Instrument!
Unlike most clown horn sampled instruments (and, some may say unsurprisingly, there are very few!), this doesn’t just play the whole ‘dual honk’ sound whenever you play a note. What’s unique here is that the second ‘honk’ only sounds when the note is released. So you can easily achieve the comic timing required for a suspenseful pause between honks by playing / recording it live rather than having to manually chop up samples.
Honk to Help the Homeless!
This instrument / sample pack is free with an option to ‘pay what you want’. If you choose to pay, 100% of proceeds (once PayPal and Gumroad have taken their cut) go directly to my local homeless charity: https://www.archerproject.org.uk
What you get:
- Example project file (shown in video above) with Clown Horn Sampler instrument included (Live 12 required).
- 32 individual clown horn samples in 24bit 44KHz .wav format. Two horns, each recorded at 8 velocity levels, with separate samples for the honk ‘out’ and honk ‘in’ sounds.
Tips:
- Use sparingly. Remember that not everyone will appreciate its comedy value.
System requirements:
- MacOS 64bit / Windows 10/11.
- Ableton Live Sampler (included in Live Suite or purchased separately).
- Ableton Live 12 (required for Sampler Instrument and example project). Individual samples are provided in .wav format for those without Live 12 or Sampler.