The story
After being a part of the Pianobook community for several years, I finally wanted to try and make my own sample instrument. In the end, I settled on a cheap Monochord that I had sitting around my studio. Having been designed to teach kids about the overtone series and the physics of strings, this instrument wasn’t designed with playability in mind.
So, I decided to try and sample and see if through technology I could make a non-playable instrument playable! Recorded with an AT-2020 closed mic-ed, the instrument comes with several short articulations as well as bowed and tremolo patches. The Tremolo and Bowed are separate because I felt their textural sound complemented each other and when mixed created a sort of swarm-like texture. Finally, I resampled Bowed samples through several effects in my DAW to create nine synthetic versions of the instrument. Hope you enjoy it and I’m excited to get feedback on it because I have a lot to learn when it comes to sampling!
Reviews for Monochord
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Rare instrument
This one has character. Really appreciate finding a new patch with such musicality and originality. Could be used to replace a violin or something along those lines.
One issue with sampled bowed instruments is that unless there is a sample for every note, then the bowing-lengths speed up as you reach higher pitches which make chords sound messy. I believe this patch consists of several samples so the re-pitching and bowing-length issue is not very noticeable with this patch.
I would love it if the samples were looped indefinitely. Since they only last a set amount of time, that limits their application.
Still a rich instrument that I'm sure I'll find very useful.
