The story
This harmonium is older than my mum and that’s pretty old. I bought it about 2 years ago from a church in São Paulo.
The tape machine belonged to my friend’s grandfather and I am babysitting it for a while.
I had the idea of running the harmonium through the tape machine to add some nice texture and variation to the sound, sometimes totally overdriving the signal or just taking advantage of the bad condition of the old tape.
The main instrument is one high note played twice, I put one performance on the left, one on the right.
This simple single note created a lovely sound when stretched all the way down the keyboard.
I took a few other samples from the tape and made some extra instruments:
Stereo Bass – A harsh, distorted bass sound.
Tape Harmonium Sliced – A sample starting with a quick attack and with 2 separate recordings controlled with the modwheel.
Tape Synth – My voice recorded onto a very wobbly piece of tape.
Broken Synth – The same sample as the Stereo Bass but treated differently within the Kontakt sampler.
I made this with Kontakt 6.4.1 but each instrument is just 1 or 2 samples stretched all the way down the keyboard, so should be fairly easy to throw the sample into your sampler of choice. Sample.
Make it make something.
Good luck
Christopher
Reviews for Tatak – Tape Harmonium
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Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Saturation Goals
Borderline overdrive maybe, this thing is deliciously crunchy. Not too complex of a patch but a delightfully complicated sound over the course of one note. Playing this feels like going through memory loss in reverse, after it's already happened and you remember it happening. Download it, now!
Distorted but beautiful
Ive always thought this instrument was super cool. It sounds very realistic, creaky and distorted. The slow attack time works really well in conveying the emotion of the instrument. I do wish we could control the distortion cause it gets really piercing in the high end and would just be handy in general to have a cleaner option as well. The Mid and lows provide a much more gentle sound while still being distorted which is really interesting. Overall this is a really realistic and cool instrument and i can't wait to try it out in something
This harmonium can get really creepy
Like, it is seriously gritty and heavy. The higher registers seem that came out straight from a horror film right before, after, or during a screamer scene. Damn! The lows can be a little more atmospheric, without losing the gritty character though. The very first notes though though are very interesting. Sadly there are no dynamics, filters or any settings to control the sound at all, so you will need to figure that out on your own.
Dirty Boy
As lofi as you get. Grungy and noisy but reacts well to a low pass and reverb. Try it in the lower register
A not so harmonious Harmonium...
This is a cool sounding library that can give you fat, thick and dirty pads. I've found its not as playable as other harmonium libraries on PB and in that sense works best for drones/texture. But in terms of sound this is a great instrument and well worth downloading!
