Squeaky Gate
Clean-tone squeaky gate sound design
Ever opened a squeaky metal gate and thought, "I want to use that sound in my music"? Well, now you can! Various metal gate squeaks were recorded, cleaned and processed to make this genuinely useful sound-design sample library. Each sample is available as an instrument inside your choice of two free engines — Mirage or Floe (beta). You'll also find 40 presets, including plucks, pads, basses and leads, ideal for soundtracks, atmosphere or adding a unique edge to any genre. The resonation caused by the gate hinges produced a surprisingly clean and consistent tone — almost similar in character to a cello. Most of the samples were put through a granular synth to lengthen them. As part of this, it was possible to capture both soft and intense versions of the same sound. You can smoothly modulate between these 2 states using the engine's dynamics knob, allowing for expressive performances.
Beautiful sound design from a bizarre source
As a sound designer, sounds in your everyday life sometimes perk your ears up. A metal gate squeaking was one for me. I discovered that aspects of the sound had a very clean and consistent pitch. By employing in-the-box processing techniques, and the features of our sample-based synth engine, I wanted to see if it was possible to create a genuinely useful instrument from this single sound source.
The samples are wide and lush stereo recordings from a medium-sized string ensemble recorded in a church. It is not a deep-sampled and technical concert hall type library, instead, this library excels at strings for ambience and atmosphere. They are incredibly easy to use and fill that gap between detailed realism and smooth, rich pads.
Perfectly tuned and playable across the whole keyboard
Each recording was cleaned up and tuned to a musical pitch so that it could be used as an ‘instrument’. Some samples were also further processed with granular synths and effects.
Two kinds of gates were recorded, a small garden gate and a large, heavy farm gate. Both fully metal, including the hinges. By slowly opening the gate, long consistent-pitch squeaks could be drawn out; these recordings are the core of Squeaky Gate.
Intriguing instruments for IDM, soundtracks and atmospheres
Create playable string-like pads and textures, synthy plucks and resonating basses with Squeaky Gate. This tool is designed to be something genuinely useful that you can reach for when you want to add an intriguing organic-synth hybrid type sound to your track. The 40 included presets have been categorised and appropriately named – ready for you to instantly use in your production.
Videos
3 independent layers for blending
Mirage libraries are loaded from a side panel
Effects Rack of 10 effects
Presets are easily browsed and loaded
Powered by Floe or Mirage
Squeaky Gate runs inside your choice of two free sample library platforms: Floe (our new beta platform) or Mirage (our established platform).
Mirage’s capabilities include:
- 3-layer architecture: blend multiple sounds
- ADSR envelopes, filters, LFOs
- Rack of effects: reverb, delay, chorus, phaser, more
- CPU-efficient
- Preset browser
Floe is our successor to Mirage. It's still in beta. It offers all of Mirage's capabilities plus:
- VST3 and CLAP plugin formats (in addition to AU)
- One-click library installation
- Combine sounds from different libraries
- Enhanced browsing with tags and filters
- Increased voice count (256 vs 32)
- Open-source and actively developed
Both platforms are completely free with no login, hassle, or license keys required. No additional paid software needed — purchasing Squeaky Gate and installing your chosen engine is all that's required.
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