The story
Another treasure brought back from one of my Mum’s holidays, I believe from a market or possibly some kind of ren-faire stall. The instrument has a sweet, mellow tone, but huge intonation issues which rendered it unusable – until now! The mellow tone remains, but the intonation issues have been, I hope, mostly repaired in the process of sample instrument generation. The garklein is the smallest member of the recorder family, smaller and higher-pitched than a sopranino recorder. This particular instrument is pitched lower than what is apparently customary for a garklein, but at roughly hand-size it is definitely smaller than a sopranino. So the jury is out on its true identity. Garklein, sopranino, or just a tiny toy recorder; I hope you enjoy the instrument, which hopefully will be the first of a series of ‘Winds of the World’ generated from my odd collection of folk flutes.
Garklein Demo
Reviews for Garklein
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
True legato!
I know it's not a popular thing to admit, but I'm a recorder geek. I'm even subscribed to Sarah Jeffery's "Team Recorder" YouTube channel. There. I said it. Laugh all you want. However, it makes me all that much more excited to get my hands on Eamon's excellent Garklein sample library. It's well played, in tune, well recorded, and well edited. There aren't many legato instruments here on PB. This is now one of the few. It's cool for all of these reasons, but the best thing about it has got to be the sound. It just sounds great. It's super playable. You can use it as a lead in lots of different place. It's one of the greats on PB!
Lovely flute
As a recorder collector here too, this is the first time I've heard of the Garklein. This has a really great tone, is sampled very well and just fun playing it. Thanks for this!
A premium-like instrument?
I am always a sucker for wind instruments, and this one exceeded any expectation I had for a free one. The tone is awesome, the dynamics are nice, the sampling is pristine, but most importantly... LEGATO!
There are also full ADSR settings to help you deal with anything you might not prefer. Oh, there is also a keyswitch that turns the samples into ornamented ones, so that's a bonus. And did I mention there is also a polyphonic patch?
The instrument needs 3 things to become absolutely perfect:
1) it should be just one patch with polyphony/legato as a keyswitch instead of a different patch.
2) Controlling the dynamic layers via the modwheel
3) A custom GUI.
But it's a must download even without those!Great work and LEGATOOOO
Im amending my original review because i said it didn't work for me. I didn't realize i had the trills key switch on so i was only getting trills and not melody notes. Eamon kindly messaged me on soundcloud and let me know where i went wrong. It seems like so much work went into this library, theres probably more tweak able options than I've ever seen on a pianobook library. The fact that theres legato is also amazing which is understandably rare on free instruments. I think the legato sounds really good too. Im not a huge fan of recorders but i think this one has a pretty sweet sound, especially the lower notes. It also handles fast legato transitions fairly well. The more i play with this the more i like it. It sounds really mellow and beautiful. Great job
The recorder I never knew I needed
I've never had the need for a recorder in my library but when I do, I'll be reaching for this one. I love the legato patch and the addition of the trills. It's very playable and easy to dial in the sound I could imagine I would need. A custom GUI would be great if you get a chance to update this!
