Ghost Koil: A New Kind of Weird

Ghost Koil is our 20th library, and with its release, we’re taking a moment to reflect on the path that brought us here.

In February 2023, Triumph Audio launched with Ghost Cello. It was an immediate hit with composers because of its unique character, pitched patches, unusual articulations, drones, and performances. It wasn’t trying to replace the beautifully sampled cello libraries already in your collection. It was designed to sit alongside them and bring something different to the table.

Ghost Koil carries that same philosophy forward.

It’s a library designed to give your music a unique bowed edge.

Starting With Something Real

For Ghost Koil, I started with a handful of simple, unconventional instruments.

I bowed springs and saws that I found in my garage. I experimented with fish tape, the flexible metal tape electricians use to pull wire through tubes. When I flexed the fish tape while bowing it, it produced strange textures and unexpected pitched anomalies.

I also used a one-of-a-kind instrument called the Springzinger, built from a cigar box and springs.

After working with the Springzinger, it inspired me to take the idea even further. I wanted to build my own spring instrument and experiment with different springs, screws, and other attachments.

The springs on this instrument were lower, grittier, and a little nastier than the Springzinger. The screws were something completely different. When bowed, they produced almost heavenly, harmonic-like high pitches.

I spent a tremendous amount of time painstakingly recording each of these sounds, and the results became some of my favorite material in the entire library. From those performances, I was able to create both pitched and non-pitched instruments with an incredible amount of character.

And then there was the window spring.

This particular spring actually came from a window in my house. I mounted two screws underneath it, lifting the spring slightly and creating what was essentially a small resonating chamber.

Speaking of resonating chambers, I also brought out a large metal tub, the kind you might normally fill with ice and cold drinks.

Instead, I placed the various spring instruments on top of it and used the tub as a resonating chamber while bowing the springs and saws. It added another layer of resonance and character to the recordings.

None of this started with a complicated plan.

It started with curiosity.

From Raw to Unrecognizable

I recorded all of these performances in my main control room using two stereo microphones in a very dry, clean-sounding environment.

I wanted to capture the raw sound.

From there, I took those recordings in every direction I could imagine.

Some of the patches stay close to the original recordings. Others were heavily manipulated and processed to create the Mod FX patches that have become such a big part of the Triumph Audio sound.

I also transformed many of the original recordings into drones, pads, leads, and basses.

As I pushed the material further, something interesting happened. The organic source material began to move into territory that felt almost electronic.

You can hear the original character in the sounds, but they become difficult to categorize. Is that a cello? A giant bass? A piece of metal? Some strange new synthesizer?

Maybe none of the above.

The sounds are designed to live in their own space and be their own thing.

And many of the patches let you move between those worlds as you play. The mod wheel can take you from the more natural, organic character of the original recording into much more processed and aggressive territory, giving you control over just how far you want to push the sound.

That balance between the raw and the transformed is a big part of what makes Ghost Koil what it is.

These aren’t simply strange sounds or cinematic effects. They’re designed to become playable instruments that you can actually compose with.

Bringing In Our Collaborators

After my initial exploration, I shared the material with a handful of collaborators to see where they would take it.

Jake Weston focused on the original recordings and ran them through modular synthesis, creating an entire collection of pads, basses, leads, and atmospheres with a distinctly modular-synth character.

Fernando Cañedo took the material into his DAW and studio setup and created a collection of loops that are incredibly fun to play with, layer, and incorporate into music.

We also shared the library with several other collaborators who created engine-processed patches, basses, leads, and pads from the original material. Their contributions pushed the sounds in new directions and helped guide Ghost Koil into a fully finished project.

The result is a library that grew far beyond those original instruments.

7+ GB of Unexpected Sound

What started with a few simple instruments eventually exploded into more than 7 GB of material, including:

• Pitched Instruments

• Transposable Menu Patches

• Drones

• Pads

• Leads

• Basses

• Pulses created with the Triumph Audio engine

• Loops

• Engine Processed sounds

• Atonal & Events

• Bonus Material

• Modular Material

And while the sounds themselves can be pretty wild, the library is organized and labeled so you can quickly find your way through it.

That’s important to me.

Because Ghost Koil isn’t meant to be a library where you spend an hour searching through hundreds of strange sounds wondering what you’re supposed to do with them.

It’s designed so you can find something inspiring, load it up, play it, and start writing.

A New Kind of Weird

Ultimately, that’s what Triumph Audio has always been about.

Inspiration.

Finding something unexpected.

Hearing a sound and immediately wanting to write something with it.

Taking an idea somewhere you wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

Ghost Koil is our 20th library, but in many ways, it feels like the culmination of everything I’ve learned while creating the 19 libraries that came before it.

We started with Ghost Cello in 2023 with a simple idea: take something familiar and push it somewhere unexpected.

Twenty libraries later, that idea is still at the heart of what we do.

And Ghost Koil might be one of the clearest examples of it yet.

A New Kind of Weird.

Bold. Experimental. Cinematic.

-Kevin Manthei - composer & founder of Triumph Audio