Last year we looked at the new Edward Foleyart instrument from Tovusound. Well they are back with 2 new instruments Edward Ultimate Footsteps and Edward Ultimate Clothes and Props which can also be found together in the Edward Ultimate Bundle, which Mike Thornton from Pro Tools Expert reviews in this video.

The Edward Ultimate Bundle is a foley instrument designed to work in the full version of Native Instrument's Kontakt and Tovusound have designed this so that everything is available in the one window so lets take a quick tour round the window.

There are two 'decks' each of which can have a different type of shoe in it from the drop down menu. Each deck has its own volume, mic mix from a Sennheiser 416 to a Neumann KMR81 and a control to vary the pitch. Below you can select the surface the shoe is walking on.

In the middle, between the two decks, there are two controls that enable you to change parameters using the Pitch Bend and Modulation wheels on your MIDI keyboard. This enables you to change the performance direct from your MIDI keyboard without having to use the mouse.

For example in a scene the character might be walking across two different surfaces so you can change surfaces using Modulation wheel. To do this you can set the two decks up so that they have the same shoe but on different surfaces, say carpet and parquet. You can play the keyboard and change from one to the other just using the Modulation wheel.

Further down the window there is a guide as to how the different footsteps are laid out on the keyboard and notice they are colour coded now on the Kontakt keyboard too.

You can also use the mix control to get a different sounding shoe, perhaps having the same surface on both decks but different shoes, or for a hybrid surface by having the same shoe but two surfaces and mixing to taste.

With the pitch bend wheel you can set different footstep types to the top and bottom of the wheel, perhaps Stair at the top and Jump at the bottom. This way the character can run to the stairs, then down the stairs and jump the last few and carry on running all without having to jump around the keyboard.

There is also a convolution reverb so you can set the footsteps in the appropriate space and there a good number of spaces to choose from as well as being able to adjust the size and distance.

But Ultimate Footsteps is only half the story. There is also Ultimate Clothes+Props which enables you add the sound of clothes rustle and other props like a rucksack in sync with the footsteps.

For example in the scene in the video we have a lady running down an underpass, and we can choose boots as the footwear, concrete as the surface and then a windbreaker coat and rucksack in Clothes+Props. As she is in an Underpass we can choose the Factory Tunnel and then adjust the Size and Distance to suit.

So we need some heels, she is running, and she has an anorak and rucksack on. So on Deck A I am going to put a set of heels and then on deck b some shoes and use the mix option to get the balance right. We need to see the in the underpass so lets use Tunnel and adjust the distance to suit

Final Thoughts

I was impressed with the original Edward and these two Ultimate packages could live up to their name. Ultimate is a jump in price from the original foleyart instrument but it is a completely different animal. You do really need both of these to do the full job and Tovusound have recognised this and offer a bundle which saves you $100. As well as the foleyart instrument there is Edward Extended which is similar to Ultimate but only has one deck and not as many samples.

The care and quality of the sounds and the thought and design that has gone into the interface is excellent, like the use of the pitch bend and modulation wheels to make it even easier to use. 

You will need to factor in the price of Kontakt if you don’t already own it and at the moment you will need a full version of Kontakt. However they have a signup on their site and if they get more than 100 people requesting it, they will develop a version to work on the free Kontakt player.

If you are doing foley work and you cannot afford a real Foley artist in a real foley studio then Edward is well worth checking out.