W-Harpsichord
The Instrument A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed. It was widely used in Renaissance and Baroque music. During the late 18th century it gradually disappeared from the musical scene with the rise of the fortepiano. But in the 20th century it made a resurgence, used in historically informed performance of older music, in new (contemporary) compositions, and in popular culture. You can see pictures of the instrument sampled...
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The Instrument The Marxophone is a fretless zither that has four sets of chord strings to be strummed with the left hand and two octaves of double melody strings, which are struck by metal hammers activated by the right hand. The hammers are mounted on spring steel and produce a mandolin-like sound from repeated bouncing on the strings, hence the name mandolin-guitar-zither sometimes applied to the Marxophone. The sound of the Marxophone is also reminiscent of the various types of hammered dulcimer in music traditions...
read moreOld Tape Piano
The Instrument Always wanted to sample a grand piano, but what’s the point? The market is oversaturated of piano libraries, and making another one is pointless unless you make it differently. We sampled a grand piano in mono using a low quality cassette recorder. When I say “low quality” I mean “very low quality”. Unlike other libraries availabe, the piano used was new and tuned, just the recorder was old. It has a lofi vibe to it, but without sacrificing dynamics. Don’t expect a clean sound, it’s...
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The Instrument Organ pipes are made from either wood or metal and produce sound when air under pressure (“wind”) is directed through them. Pipes are arranged by timbre and pitch into ranks. A rank is a row of pipes mounted vertically onto a windchest. An organ contains two actions, or systems of moving parts. When a key is depressed, the key action admits wind into a pipe. The stop action allows the organist to control which ranks are engaged. We sampled a Pipe Organ built in the year 1850 in...
read moreW-Honky
The Instrument W-Honky is our favourite instrument by de moment. It is the imitation of the “Mrs Mills” sound, a piano from Abbey Road Studios with which The Beatles, Elliot Smith, etc, recorded some of their tracks. We’ve achieved this sound with the combination of two different sounds. One is a vertical piano (Kawai from 1984) mixed with a digitally processed metal sound for the attack. The signal is slightly detuned to achieve the honky tonk sound. Sounds amazing to us, very usefull for the “old...
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