Zebra Hyperion is the second Zebra soundset that I’m releasing that comes from a large collection of unused and unreleased ZebraHZ patches created during programming sessions for a variety of films, TV series and video games.

Those projects can include sounds I didn’t send to the composer/artist, or sounds made for a project that didn’t happen for some reason, and some of them come from music projects of my own.

The idea behind Hyperion came from some sounds created for a couple of projects that both exuded darkness and energy. Similar and complementary techniques with Zebra‘s reverb, distortion and compression effects were employed on both projects, and there was also plenty of use and abuse of the multi-stage envelopes – which are particularly great for percussion loops and synth sequences.

The soundset came together with a real energy. It’s very dynamic, very in your face but, also full of atmosphere and texture. Ideal for creating a really tense, expansive and dynamic score. It’s nice when the process of choosing sounds for a new library works this well.

The original patches were made with ZebraHZ, so in many ways, the true soundset is the Dark Edition. On this occasion (and increasingly so now) the Zebra2 version is the remixed and reworked version. This can bring its own problems, especially when the original ZebraHZ patch uses features that Zebra2 doesn’t have. This includes the analogue-modelling Diva filters, the extra comb filters (which I use a lot these days!) and the compressors.

When transferring to Zebra2 and reworking the preset, I have to be mindful of whether there are oscillators/filters/effects missing, which I usually do by making an Excel spreadsheet. You wouldn’t believ how much of The Unfinished is run via spreadsheet! Haha.

Another aspect of these patches originally having been made for film/TV/game scoring sessions is that often there’ll be numerous variations of a patch, as I work through the ideas in my head for the client’s brief.

As we’ve seen before with the Apotheosis Loop Expansion and the Refrakt II: Dark & Expanded version, I’m utilizing these extra patch variations to offer customers the opportunity to have some alternate takes of their favourite patches from a soundset. There’s an extra 96 bonus/alternate patches in Zebra Hyperion: Dark & Expanded. Who knows, maybe you’ll prefer one of the alternate versions of a patch more than the one I chose for the main release!

It seems to have worked so far and been reasonably popular. It’s also a helpful way of giving me an extra option to release the huge amount of unreleased Zebra patches I have created, before Zebra3 is released later this year (allegedly).

Having said that, it’s worth noting that even after Zebra3 is released, I will still continue to release ZebraHZ and Zebra2 sounds… until I’ve finally run out of them! It’s probably time for me to not make too many more though, apart from for bespoke work, of course.

So, I hope you enjoy Zebra Hyperion and look forward to hearing the music you make with it.