The story
Some unforeseen incidents in this year caused me finding myself in a beautiful and very old house behind the dike in a very small village at the Dutch coast of the North Sea. In the parlor next to an old closet taken from a ship I found an old harmonium, build by the company “Liebig” from Zeitz in Germany. After interpreting some old western songs, which, backed by the harmonium sounded like chants directly from hell, I decided to sample that instrument.
Although I just have some really inexpensive microphones (cheap LDC + SDC) which are also not suited well for a stereo recording in the end I’m quite happy with the results. I decided to record every note, just because all of these beautiful imperfections, broken reeds and detuned notes. I wanted to bring them all home. I also recorded with each two round robins two dynamic layers, which differ from each other by air pressure and the use of different registers or stops and which you can blend with an expression pedal.
For further informations about functions and controls you may read the included README.txt. Please feel free to alter the Kontakt patch, export to other formats, try more interesting effects, create a GUI (images included) and a better way of MIDI assignments.
Reviews for Harmonium van Dijk
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Character For Days
This was the perfect reed based sound for a theater project I'm scoring, and the creaks are a big part of its charm and timbre. That said, if there was one thing that would be nice, it'd be to dial down the noises. Still, a great instrument, unlike any of several other reed-based sounds I already have.
Very poetic!
Very poetic harmonium with characteristic sound. It works on itself in recording.
It's very easy to get lost in it's sound.
There is only one minor problem - loud click at attack part of sound. This can be overcome with lenghtening the attack but it's not that fast reacting after that. But this is only minor problem otherwise it's great.Great work!
Deeply emotive sounds which will bring the Gurdjieff out in anyone.
Squeaky Goodness
This instrument is beautifully sampled. It plays great and it seems like alot of time went into this. It sounds extremely realistic and is fun to play. Im a huge fan of all the sqeaks and mechanical noises although it would have been nice to be able to control the amount of noise added. I also wish there were more dynamic layers. It seems like there might be a softer dynamic layer there but it seems to only activate if you touch the key for a second. If you hold down a note no matter how softly it plays the same volume sample. Great Instrument Overall
A charactertistic harmonium.
Its well sampled, works well in a lot of contexts and has a distinct coastal sound to it, that is warm and intimate and cold at the same time, leading to an interesting effect in the context of a larger composition. Would recommend, thanks for the amazing effort !
