Soniccouture Team Up With N.I. for Balinese Gamelan: Discovery Series
24th September 2009
We are very pleased to team up with Native Instruments for this special edition of our Balinese Gamelan library.
Titled 'Balinese Gamelan: Discovery Series ', the new product is packaged as a Kontakt player library, meaning that anyone can us it as a plug-in without needing to own the full version of Kontakt.
Balinese Gamelan - The Instrument
The instruments in this release were sampled from the London Symphonic Orchestra's Semara Dana Gamelan Ensemble in exacting detail. The lengthy process ensured that the living, breathing sound lost none of its realism thanks to the painstaking recording of numerous velocity layers - a true labor of love by Soniccouture. This instrument features three essential elements of the larger Gamelan ensemble, focussing on compact versions of the tuned instruments, the big gongs, the paired metallophones and the kettle gongs. The instruments can be categorized thus:
The Core Instruments Responsible for the basic structure and melody, the Core instruments are made up of the Gongs, the Jegog, the Calung, and the Penyacah. This instrument includes both the upper and lower groups of these detuned pairs, with easy control over volume and panning from the kontakt interface. The Gangsa The Gangsa is made up of paired metallophones, including the Ugal, Pemadé, and Kantilan. These are the busy elaborate instruments that decorate the melody with fast interlocking patterns. Again, simple access via the KONTAKT interface is available for adjusting the volume and panning of these detuned pairs. The Kettle Gongs The third element in BALINESE GAMELAN is the Kettle gongs that include the Trompong and the Reyong. These instruments have various functions depending on the type of Gamelan in which they're used. Sometimes they are used for melodic decoration or solo passages, other times they can be used for very quick elaborate parts, similar to the Gangsa.
Powered By Kontakt
BALINESE GAMELAN perfectly utilizes the flexibility provided by the free KONTAKT PLAYER and KONTAKT. Switch between two different pitch versions - "Original", for classic Balinese gamelan tuning, and "Concert" for a more western-friendly tuning, enabling the easy layering of Gamelan instruments with western sounds. An optional "synth" version opens up the potential to tweak various parameters within the instruments, so as to manipulate the instruments beyond their natural sound. The Jammer function works like an arpeggiator creating rhythmic arpeggio patterns easily manipulated using the parameter controls, while also included is a function for simple control over volume and panning for the two detuned elements of the Gangsa or the Core instruments.
sean crownover
1 October 2009
06:38am
This thing sounds awesome. Will have to buy it eventually.