On Friday, December 20, Arturia launched the Augmented Mallets Play virtual instrument and made it available for free download until January 2, 2025. 

The Christmas freebie is a macOS and Windows plugin for VST, AAX, AU, NKS (64-bit only), and standalone formats.

Arturia states that the free license is valid until January 2. 

After that date, it’s not clear whether the plugin will be transferred to a paid format, simply removed from availability, or perhaps even part of a wider release. 

Arturia has us covered with a trio of tuned percussion instruments, including marimba, vibraphone, and celeste.

The dev has embedded audio demos featuring all the above instruments on the product page and six demo songs in various styles. 

There’s also an official playthrough demo on YouTube, along with several user-made demos. 

I must admit this type of tuned percussion is not something I’ve spent a huge amount of time implementing into my productions.

However, listening to the demos, it’s clear that these instruments can cover quite a wide range of sonic territory, with pop, trap, neo-soul, lo-fi, and more being featured. 

Arturia describes Augmented Mallets Play as a dynamic hybrid mallet instrument.

This refers to the fact that there are two sound layers in each preset and two sound sources per layer. 

You get 50 presets to work some percussive magic with. Each instrument has pure, bowed, and prepared articulations, and various techniques have been explored, such as using coins, damped, tremolo, and more. 

Arturia has also included a Morph control, which moves between the two layers, interacting with up to eight parameters per preset. 

There are also seven macros to work with, namely Time, Color, Motion, FX A, FX B, Reverb, and Delay.

As you can hear in the audio demos and the playthrough, these effects can produce some stunning and even surprising sounds from the featured instruments. 

The way Arturia’s Matt Paull interacts with the macros in between playing on the YouTube playthrough really highlights what the plugin is capable of. 

To get your hands on Augmented Mallets Play, you’ll need to create (or login to) an account on Arturia’s website. 

This required quite a bit of a process, including a mandatory signup for the Arturia newsletter. 

Arturia then emailed me straight away, and after confirming my email address, I was linked to a page where I could add the license to my account. 

You’ll also have to install the Arturia Software Center and log in. Then, you can activate and install the plugin. 

Check out the deal: Augmented Mallets Play (FREE until January 2nd – Arturia account & Arturia Software Center required)

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