The story
This simple Kalimba has been sitting around our home for a while and I kept thinking of sampling it. After my wife got really sick at the end of 2020 it has become a way for her to relax finally giving me the emotional push I needed to sample it.
This being my first time sampling an instrument I did my best to do it in the most detailed way possible. I sampled each note (going in thirds) with three dynamic layers and five round robins at 24bit 96kHz. The sound was captured with a Rode NT2-A as top mic and a Rode NT-5 as bottom mic.
Along with controls for each mic level, the Kontakt instruments has two knobs to control a Room and a Hall reverb (both convolution reverbs from Kontakt itself). The Hall can give it a nice “American Beauty” style sound, while the Room helps giving the Kalimba a space to live in since it was recorded completely dry.
I really hope you enjoy.
Reviews for AB Natural Kalimba
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Beautiful in every way!
This little baby was the first Pianobook Kalimba I tried and I was blown away by pretty much everything. From the sampling quality to the GUI and the settings, this allows for no complains.
You kind of need to be careful of not pushing many mics too high at the same time because it can get really loud at high velocities, but remember that for achieving maximum feels, a marimba should be played with elegance, so be gentle! I have to add though that there were some problems setting it up, but after I solved it I saved it as a new patch and everything seems great now.
Cheers!Really Organic Sound.
i dont think i was able to access the full extent of this instrument because of the file and programming issues mentioned. If somebody could message me on instagram or soundcloud and let me know how they resolve these issues that would be great. Apart from that this instrument is really nice. The large amount of dynamic layers and round robins provides a really realistic and organic sound. The recording itself is excellent and theres so many artifacts from the scrape noises of the finger on the metal and the resonance of the instrument that add so much character. The GUI is very simple but cute. I think this will be my new go to kalimba patch. It sounds great. I think kalimba is one of those instruments that sounds exactly like the real thing if sampled this well. After hearing this i dont think theres any reason to record a real kalimba. You can also play chromatically which isn't possible on any kalimba ive seen
Best "raw" kalimba out there
It's the best Kalimba out there, it has velocity layers, round robins, and a good sound that preserves the natural plucky attack of a real kalimba. With 2 mics and a nice range. 0 complaints and I've looked all over the internet trying to find something like this and wasn't able to. I can't really give the UI 5 stars because it didn't load, however it's absolutely not needed, and going into the kontakt back end is not as scary as it might sound. Amazing work!
Great little Kalimba
This is a well recorded kalimba. For whatever reason, the higher notes seem to have less resonance than you might expect. I wasn't able to access the custom UI when I loaded this patch. The patch had lost track of some of the files. Perhaps that's a great reminder to all of us samplists of the importance of having our friend beta test our instruments before we share them here. It's so easy for something that works great on our machine to have problems elsewhere.
Simple revisions needed...
There wasn't any GUI when I opened the instrument, but I think there was supposed to be one. There was also some issues with the directories with the samples and one that remained missing even after the others got resolved. Nice instrument, but it needs some revisions to keep it competitive with the plethora of other kalimba samples.
