The Instrument Column - Native Instruments Absynth 5 Reference Manual

13.1 The Instrument Column

The Instrument column acts as the starting point for your search and describes a sound's
basic instrumental quality:
The first thing you probably did was to click on Synth to find a sound, as ABSYNTH is a
synthesizer. You'll wonder why we've included so many acoustic instruments as Attributes.
The practice of imitating acoustic instruments has a long history. Synthesizing brass, wood-
winds or strings in analog synths has become so familiar to sound designers, that sounds
like Mellow Strings or Fat Brass have become familiar preset names for synthesized sounds.
On the other hand, there are sounds that are clearly based on acoustic instruments, yet they
don't sound anything like the acoustic original. For example, you might have an ABSYNTH
KORE SOUND, which uses a sample of an acoustic flute as material for granular synthesis.
Clearly, this sound is only possible with digital synthesizers, but the origin of the sound is still
an acoustic instrument. So you'd choose Flute in this column to look for such a sOf course
there are many sounds that have no connection to any acoustic instrument, so you'll probably
find these sounds categorized as Synth, Soundscapes, Sound Effects or Other. Also, don't
worry if you're looking for Pads or Leads, and can't find these Attributes under Instruments.
You can specify this in the Articulation column, letting you distinguish between, for example,
String and Synth Pads.
ABSYNTH 5 Reference Manual – 180