Sam Thomas Music The Sound of Love Lost KONTAKT
The Sound of Love Lost is a truly unique instrument. A pitched synth/guitar hybrid that plays like an organ, it combines digital and analogue processing to create an effortlessly massive, harmonically rich field of sound.
Originally heard in the climactic moments of “Love Lost” by Isamaya Ffrench and Sam Thomas, this sound also appears throughout their album Mantle and across Sam Thomas’ wider body of work. What began as an aggressively dirty bass tone slowly crept up the fretboard, evolving over nearly two decades into its current form. It has now been meticulously sampled—13 velocity layers per note across a full 88 keys (7 octaves)—to fully capture its harmonic depth and the expressive range of its integrated, velocity-sensitive (or fixed) wah effect.
Each note offers up to 20 seconds of natural sustain, achieved purely through the power of the sound itself or with the aid of an EBow or sustain pedal. The result is a musical, uncompromising sustain with a natural tail at every velocity. Every note was recorded using a character-rich guitar, with guitar and pickup choices tailored to each pitch. From Sam’s signature pedal chain, the signal passed through carefully selected guitar and bass amplifiers before undergoing further harmonic enhancement via hand-picked outboard EQs and saturation/tape processing. As a final stage, the full spectrum was EQ’d, widened, and refined by Sam alongside mastering engineer and audio priestess Anni Abigail.
Sonically, it spans from a grounded, lo-fi, organ-like tone (Love) to a face-melting, beautifully relentless wall of sound (Lost). While perfect for huge ambient drones, it remains remarkably versatile—capable of delivering immense weight when needed, or softer, more ethereal textures by focusing on lower velocities, upper registers, or the onboard space controls.
Version 1 of TSOLL is intentionally clean and minimal, preserving the purity of the sound. Plans are in place for a V2 update featuring a dedicated sequencer page, designed to rhythmically vary velocity (and therefore the wah notch) across multiple instances of the same note to create dynamic sequences. In the meantime, similar results can be achieved by triggering the instrument from a drum pad. For situations where velocity-based expression isn’t desired, the wah can also be fixed to a chosen notch value—13 being full intensity.
A distinctive feature of Love Lost is its tuning journey: the track begins in standard A440 and gradually blends into A432, creating a subtle “sinking” sensation and wide phase effect. This behavior is built directly into the instrument. An A432 slider mirrors the A440 option with a lower tuning and inverted stereo field—automate it to introduce an Escher-like sense of movement and depth to the sound wall.
Requires Native Instruments Kontakt Player or Kontakt FULL v6.7.0 and higher!
