Thank you for the Glaze: Native Instruments' holiday giveaway is a $49 Play Series instrument packed with free vocal samples for pop, hip-hop and R&B

"It's the most… wonderful… time… of the year," they say, and they say it because it has become the season of free music software. Yes, over the last few years it has become a tradition for some of the biggest software companies to give us all a present at Christmas, and this one is no exception.

Hot on the heels of Cherry Audio's Christmas giveaway – the Synthesizer Expander Module (based on an Oberheim synth) – Native Instruments is upping the freebie stakes with its $49-value Glaze Christmas gift.

Glaze is a Kontakt instrument in the company's Play series, and was originally designed specifically for pop, hip-hop and R&B vocals. It was developed in collaboration with engineers Curtis 'Sauce' Wilson and Rochad Holiday, who have worked with Ne-Yo, Ariana Grande, Will Smith, and Dr Dre.

The instrument uses vocals recorded by a diverse selection of singers, and can provide everything from upfront vocals for pop to processed vocals for trap. It comes with 148 presets across a range of folders to demonstrate just how diverse it can be.

Among these you get wide stacked chords, pads, leads, bass timbres, and more that can be used to provide backing for the vocals. You can even create vocal runs with combinations of samples mapped to a scale using Glaze's Riff & Run presets.

Hands-on controls include Warmth and Saturation effects, and there are several edit pages that enable you to adjust layers and dig deeper into the vocal tract of the instrument.

All in all, that's a pretty good offering for your Christmas stocking of a hard drive this year. Glaze is under a couple of gigs in size and you can grab it for free, for a limited time (so be quick).

To get Glaze, simply head to the Native Instruments Glaze download page and follow the instructions.