The story
Hi,
I’m Pierre Caillet, a French film music composer. During the Covid-19 pandemic in France we are all confined. All productions are stopped, recording studios and mixing facilities are closed. To be with my family, I’ve stopped to go daily In my own studio and days are long…
To do something, I’ve started to sample some instruments laying around at home. At first, I’ve managed to do a great Hand Pan for Kontakt and shared it with composers friends. Then, my friend Yan Volsy (also a French film composer) proposed me to record his Mustel Celesta to do a Kontakt program for Pianobook. He took the time to make a great record of this wonderful instrument, I then edited it and convert it into this Kontakt virtual instrument : “Confinement Céleste”
This is an original 4 octave Mustel Celesta, probably from the early 1900’s. Yan got it at a RadioFrance auction. It is old, rather abused, noisy, and its pitch is a bit high (the tuning was properly globally lowered in the Kontakt Instrument)
Recorded @ 48khz 24 bit with two pair of close microphones :
– Ribbon : Prodipe RSL (Blumlein stereo Ribbon microphone)
– Cardioid : Spaced pair with Aston Origin (left) and Lewit LCT540 (right)
All samples were denoised using Isotope RX
More or less chromatically sampled with 4 levels of velocity, key release noise and sustain pedal noise.
This Kontakt instrument gives control level for each pair of microphones.
An independent volume for key release noise and sustain pedal noise is also present.
No reverb as I prefer to use my own reverb in a mix, but Pianobook’s logo is included in the about page !
I’m not a Kontakt script programmer at all, so I was unable to keep note release noises when sustain pedal is on.
Anyone is welcome to correct this and let me know how to do it properly.
Should works with Kontakt Full 5.8.1 and up.
The “ConfinementCelesteV1.0_Kontakt” folder contains everything you need to use it with Kontakt (samples are lossless compressed by Kontakt)
The “ConfinementCelesteSamples” folder contain all the samples uncompressed as a Pianobook requirement, but this folder isn’t required for the Kontakt instrument.
No Soundcloud demo yet, I have to go back to my studio to get a proper 88 notes keyboard.
I hope I will be there soon !
Thanks for your great work with Pianobook and Spitfire. Also a special thanks to Christian for his great music and all those great videos.
Cheers
Pierre Caillet, confined composer
Reviews for Confinement Céleste
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
I like it!
Really nice sounding celeste. It has a lot of mechanical artefacts, but I like it. It is not for someone who wants a clean sounding instrument, but it is great!
Perfect Close sound
Seriously, this instrument has such rich mechanical sounds associated with the notes. If you like that sound that is almost as if the hammers--do celestes have hammers..?--are smacking your ear directly, this is just perfect. I like that sound so, very high rating, I will probably have this forever.
Sounds lovely !
This celeste do all you want a celeste doing. It's very delicate, with light hammer and pedal noises, a nice stereo and a great sound quality. A must have for lovely melodies.
Beautiful Mechanical Noises
I dont know if its an issue on my end or the instrument itself but i dont see a GUI when opening this instrument. There are 4 sliders there but the whole background is just a blank white color. with that being said i love both this and the celesta on pianobook. I think i like the tone of the celesta a touch more and that instrument also has a larger range but i love the mechanical noises on this instrument and the warm brightness of it if that makes sense. Maybe ill try redownloading and see if i get a GUI this time but overall this is a great instrument
My head is inside the celeste and I love it in here
Depending on the needs of a project and the character you're trying to create, you might want a magical sprinkly fairy dust coming from heaven and want to reach for the perfect pure special celeste library.
This is NOT that library. It is the sound of a celeste that we love, and is also a little noisy, clanky, close-mic recorded, and that brings it closer to a more earthly, human sound that we're often looking for, depending on the project.
I own a few paid celeste libraries, and yet, I keep using this one. Thanks :)
