The story
I decided to sample this instrument as does have a nice tone to it, however, the tines are tricky to tune. So my idea was to sample as much as possible for a consistent sound and then tune them and make a playable 2 octave instrument. This was also a first attempt at using Kontakt 6 and also applying a Picture to the UI.
Interface
Reviews for Al’s Kalimba
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Simple and beautiful!
If you are looking for a very simplistic yet great sounding Kalimba from the get-go, this is it! It has this lovely and very playful sound to it, and it also comes with a room echo that sounds beautiful as well. You can't alter it by any means, but it's really okay, because I really believe this is what it makes it unique.
Great Tone and recording but left wishing for dynamics
The tone and recording of this is really great. It has a mellow and fun sound but it still has that high end "scrape" from the nails or fingers sliding on the metal. This is a really nice effect which i sometimes feel is missing from kalimba libraries. If this were more dynamic it would probably be my favorite kalimba of pianobook. One dynamic layer just doesn't do it for me though. This is a great start and i think three dynamic layers would make this truly outstanding. Espicially since the range of the instrument is pretty small. I imagine it would be a-lot more of an undertaking to record more dynamic layers for something like a piano. I know pianobook is working on letting people upload updated versions of instruments and id definitely be interested in an updated version of this
Great little Kalimba
Really great job of taking a difficult to use instrument and turning into a brilliant sample instrument. The recording has a lovely tone to it - good balance of "note" and "overtones". Yes, it's only a single dynamic layer but I really don't see this as a problem for this kind of instrument. If you want it to "play" in a slightly more dynamic kind of way that's any easy fix: click on the spanner in Kontakt and look towards the bottom of the browny/grey section, more precisely the "Mod" section of the "Amplifier" tab; in the row that starts with the "velocity" drop down box move the slider from its starting point of 39% to wherever you prefer - for me about 60-70%. Now the sound is more "dynamic" to play. To "enhance" this even more just add a dynamic filter using something like AutoFilter in Logic so some of the top end is filtered off as the sound get quieter. Great job.
