The story
KALIMBA SANSULA – Version 1.0
Date: 5 January 2023
By: Scott J Mason (SJMusic)
Included Formats:
– Kontakt 6.7.1
After years of experiencing terrible and cheap kalimbas, my wife bought me a proper one from the world music store in Christchurch NZ. Of course I had to sample it.
As it was a simple 5 note pentatonic kalimba, I have stretched out the notes to make an acceptable chromatic octave and a half (B3 to G4).
The top 3 knobs are the different groups of samples (with 5 round robins each), and the bottom knobs affect the output from these groups. I’ve done something slightly different and included a room/chamber reverb as a set of samples, to be used with the close mic’d group.
So, it goes something like this:
CLOSE – The dry and close mono recording of the kalimba.
ROOM – A 100% room reverb based on the samples from CLOSE. Best used with CLOSE.
TAPE – The same samples run through some tape plugins to give a wider, slightly wobbly and saturated sound.
VOLUME – The overall volume/expression of all output.
PHASIS (FX) – Gives a lovely faux stereo dreamy feel to the CLOSE samples. Best used with CLOSE.
HALL (FX) – A big hall convolution reverb that works best with the CLOSE and TAPE groups.
Please tip if you like it and use it 🙂
Thanks!
Interface
Reviews for Kalimba Sansula
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Dreamy Kalimba!
I've played around with about 7-10 different kalimba sample packs and this one is by far the dreamiest. I love it! But you can also get the samples super dry. This makes this a very flexible instrument: It can do the mysterious and magical melodies and also the rhythmic/percussive stuff. Great work. My only criticism is the fact that the knobs drag left/right instead of up and down, which I find harder to do with my computer mouse.
Not your average Kalimba!
The Kalimba Sansula differs from its 'stock' cousin by the addition of a big resonating chamber, and the effect is apparent in this library! Scott's Kalimba has a beautiful mellow tone, which can be further sculpted by the different mic / group knobs, as well as some effects. It has a limited range like the original instrument, but this helps to keep the tone sounding even and consistent across every note. With multiple RRs, it sounds very natural, but I would've loved to have some different velocity layers to make the instrument even more responsive. Throwing the Factory arpeggiator script on it also provides a free extension to the playability.
I'd also advocate for the up/down knob(/slider) functionality mentioned by dekoningtan, for consistency with general knob behaviour in Kontakt.
