The story
There happens to be this old east german accordion sitting around in the Studio at work. To be honest, I am unsure whether it is a Weltmeister, but the name just has a good ring to it.
As I wouldn’t consider myself to be the greatest accordion afficionado, I was surprised how much I enjoyed playing it one day I had a few hours of waiting to do. Thus the idea was born to record some samples of quiet long notes and if I had the time, different lengths/types of swells.
I ended up recording quiet longs and two types of swells for every key in the lowest register with generally 4 round robins (when I managed to count).
I’ve recorded through a Neumann RSM191 about a metre away from the right hand chamber; all the recordings were made with the side signal boosted by about 3db through an RME Babyface at 192kHz.
Sadly the Studio is rather noisy, thus a lot of the airy breathing quality is lost with the required level of noise reduction (not necessarily a bad thing as it gives it a different quality).
As I have a lot of other editing work to do, I don’t quite have the time to make anything beyond a few very rough patches; thus my hope is that some people here will be able to complete the project beyond the level I could achieve on my own.
I’ve completed one hybrid patch which takes the very sweet sounding top octave from the instrument and pitches it down for the two sub octaves; this patch encapsulates for me the essence what I was trying to achieve and why I’ve made certain choices. Also, it’s at 48kHz so it doesn’t take a year to download
Finally there are also my prototype patches available as well as the raw sample pool (in separate downloads) due to file size at 192kHz.
Reviews for ESC Weltmeister (Accordion)
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
So beautiful
i was not expecting this to sound so subdued and mellow. It sounds so awesome and realistic. I thought it would be bright and annoying but its really inspiring. Its a really unique and recognizable texture. You can really hear the way the note is triggered and kind of ramps up. The sample start time has delay which some might find annoying but i think it adds to the realism and forces you to incorporate that into your playing. I wasn't expecting to love this but i really do.
The sweetest accordeon I've heard!
I honestly don't like accordeons. Their sound kind of messes up my ear. But this is by far the best and sweetest one I've heard. It almost sounds like a clarinet to me, but not really. I would love to include this somehow in my next projects. The samping is great, the character is simply lovely, and the only thing that I can mention is that it's very soft attack is something that I'll definitely have to get used to, but I will, because I love it!
Muted Accordian
I really like this one but the sound is hard to pin down. It's almost like an harmonium or even a vintage synth. Great for putting under other tracks for an organic quality
Accordion Pads
This is a lovely, if dark sounding pad based on an accordion. It fits nicely in mixes, but there's often close to a second between the time in which you play the key and the moment you hear the beginning of the sample, so it tends to be the most useful in ambient situations.
Not really useful
There is no GUI, notes are not levelled, balanced and doesn't sound like an accordion at all.
Could be useful as some background pad
