Sansation

Little Pump Reeds demos by T. B. Folmann & S. Tavaglione

"…There is no reality – only perception…" – Dr. Phil

This collection explores the smaller side of hand-held reed-based instruments. It includes fine quality hand-crafted traditional Indian Shruti Boxes,  a mini accordion and something we like to refer to as The Plastisax. We even found a 2-note paper and cardboard concertina. As always, we've sampled each instrument lovingly and thoroughly. We took them much farther than they were ever designed to go and found sounds surprisingly rich, full and playable. In the end, we just decided it was high time somebody give these little misfit toys the respect and attention to detail that they truly deserve.

The centerpiece of this collection is the Shruti Box. This traditional Indian instruments is similar in nature and tone to the harmonium. It's most commonly used as a drone to accompany voice and other solo instruments in Indian classical music, as well as a growing variety of new age and Celtic folk music. It's a flat wooden box, played upright, with a hand-pumped double-bellows system inside to drive a series of 13 reeds. While they are normally intended to provide a smoothly sustained drone instrument, we've sampled and programmed ours to be quite playable as a melody instrument, much like a reed organ or harmonium.

Our mini accordion is actually quite the little giant, with 14 keys and 4 bass drones. With a warm, fat tone and plenty of body and bass that belies it's humble size, this little instrument is a real diamond in the rough. The Plastisax is vaguely like a child's plastic soprano saxophone, but sounds more like a crisp, clear harmonica crossed with a reed organ. It has 13 keys, spanning roughly 2 octaves. With it's rich, warm, playful sound and expressive playability, it's ideal for children's music and programming, or even layered with woodwinds or organs.

• $49
  
• Core instruments/articulations
  • Shruti Box 1 (soft attack/release)
  • Shruti Box 1 (hard attack/release)
  • Shruti Box 1 (modwheel tone/expression control)
  • Shruti Box 2 (soft attack/release)
  • Shruti Box 2 (hard attack/release)
  • Shruti Box 2 (modwheel tone/expression control)
  • Baby Accordion (natural / tight)
  • Baby Accordion (auto-pump / natural / tight)
  • Baby Accordion (modwheel tone/expression control)
  • Plastisax (clean / tight / natural)
  • Plastisax (dirty with natural key finger-click sounds  / tight / loosely played)
  • Plastisax (modwheel tone/expression control)
  • Paper Squeeze Box (single note / auto-pump / hand slap percussion)
• Extensive read me (.pdf)  install, patch and hint documentation
• 59 instrument patches, +999 samples
• 1.36 GB installed, 1 GB .rar download
• Format(s): Kontakt and .wav
• Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 3 / 4 full retail versions required.
• Note: Free Kontakt Player will only work for 30 minutes with this product. Full version required to remove this restriction.

Lakeside Church Organ demos by Bach & T. B. Folmann

The Lakeside Pipe Organ is a part steel pipe and part electric organ that produces most of its sound by venting mechanically compressed air (wind) through resonant pipes. Each pipe produces sound of one fixed pitch, so they are provided in sets with one pipe or more per note, each set or stop having a common timbre and loudness throughout. The Lakeside Pipe Organ has multiple sets of pipes of differing timbre, pitch and loudness which the player can employ singly or in combination. The actual organ is made from three keyboards, played by the hands, and a pedal board for bass notes, played by the feet, each of which controls its own group of stops.

We carefully recorded our organ at the Lakeside Temple of Practical Christianity (Oakland, CA), with master organist Don Sears.  We captured it a variety of different stop settings and combinations, allowing you to control the timbre of the organ. We recorded five different settings comparably from PP to FF. The majority of this library focuses on the classic steel pipes only, although we also opened up some of the organ's vintage electric stops for a little extra low-end reinforcement on our high 5th setting. All settings recorded at two microphone positions (close/far), so user have ultimately flexibility between 10 different organ settings. Every note was captured for up to ten seconds and all release-triggered samples were captured individually.

Additionally we realized that many other organ sample libraries use noise reduction, which gives a more polished/clinical or even garbled sound to the organ. We decided to take the opposite approach and allow all the air sounds in the library, since the "noise" is the air produced by the bellows and pipes that drive the instrument. This means that the organ has a more clearer, brighter, fuller, much more life-like and airy sound (especially in softer settings), giving it a more emotionally expressive and natural quality.

Tonehammer Lakeside Pipe Organ Facts:

• $59
• 5 Different Organ Settings (Equivalent to PP, P, MP, MF, FF)
• Close and Far microphone positions for all settings
• All notes on organ sampled (no interval sampling)
• All notes sampled with release triggers
• Acoustic recording without noise reduction
• Additional foot basses in forte patches
• Additional bell/chimes included
• Additional session recordings, FX, live organ demos and hall sounds
• Extensive read me install, patch and hint documentation (.pdf) (download here)
• 15 instrument patches, 1,584 samples, 1,75 GB installed, 978 MB .rar download
• Sample resolution: 44.1Khz/16Bit stereo and stereo .wav format
• Format(s): Kontakt, EXS24 and .wav
• Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 2 / 3 / 4 full retail versions required for Kontakt instruments.
• EXS-compatible host/sampler required for .exs instruments
  
• Note: Free Kontakt Player will only work for 30 minutes with this product. Full version required to remove this restriction.

Didgeridoo demos by T. B. Folmann

The Didgeridoo (aka Didge) is an Australian Aboriginal wind instrument dating back over approx.1500-2000 years. The instrument is made from Eucalyptus logs hollowed out by termites and is widely regarded as one of the oldest woodwind (aerophone) instruments in existence. Tonehammer recorded two different Didges for maximum user flexibility. The first one was is an original Eucaplyptus log and the second one is modern version made from PVC pipes.

The library contains over approx. 500MB of samples and programs contain modwheel controlled time-stretching and sample offset options allowing users to get more flexibility out of the samples. The Didges come at two different mic (close/medium) distances and a far mic for our dual-didge FX group. Didge 1 is close mic and Didge 2 is medium mic.

Tonehammer Didgeridoo Facts:

• $49
• Close, Medium and Far Microphone recordings
• Didge 1 Percussive (with- and without modwheel time-stretching control)
• Didge 1 Sustain (without modwheel based variation in tone/rhythm)
• Didge 1 Sustain (with partial modwheel based variation in tone/rhythm)
• Didge 1 Sustain (with full modwheel based variation in tone/rhythm)
• Didge 2 Sustain 1 (with modwheel based variation of tone)
• Didge 2 Sustain 2 (with  modwheel based variation of tone)
• Didge 2 Performance 1 (with modwheel based sample-off for user control over sample start/end)
• Didge 2 Performance 2 (with modwheel based sample-off for user control over sample start/end)
• Dual Didge FX and session recordings
• Extensive read me install, patch and hint documentation (.pdf) (download here)
• 11 instrument patches, 429 samples, 483 MB installed, 266 MB .rar download
• Sample resolution: 44.1Khz/16Bit stereo .wav format
• Format(s): Kontakt and .wav
• Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 2 / 3 / 4 full retail versions required.
• Note: Free Kontakt Player will only work for 30 minutes with this product. Full version required to remove this restriction.