The story
In the summer of 2022 I went back to my home country of the Netherlands. While staying in my parent’s camping house, I felt tons of inspiration to do something musical, but as I didn’t have access to any of my gear I couldn’t do much. I did, however, find a little handmade flute in one of the cupboards. After inspecting it and trying to play it, I noticed it was usable, if a little bit pitchy…
As I’d taken to doing long jogs in the forest every other day, I thought to myself how nice it would be to attempt to record the flute in the Dutch national forest, De Veluwe. Though the samples had to be cleaned up a lot with Izotope RX, I did manage to capture birdsong in the samples as well, which gives the flute a mystical sound. Besides this, I also had to pitch correct the flute due to my lack of steady breath and the fact that this flute was likely made by a hobbyist.
While playing it, I noticed that the sound echoed/reverberated off of the trees in a very pleasant way. Though I couldn’t quite capture this with just my phone as the recording device, I managed to emulate the sound by recording the flute in 3 different locations. I then panned the different samples Left, Center, and Right to give a wide sound, like it is all around you in the forest. After this, I used Decent Sampler effects to get the “treeverb effect” by combining Reverb with a tad of Delay. I’ve set up the instrument to automatically have this factored in, but you can turn it off if you want to.
I hope you can get some good use out of The Forest Flute!
Contributors
dekoningtan
Recording, cleaning up audio, programming the Decent Sampler instrument, GUI.
Interface
Reviews for The Forest Flute
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Nice woodland flute
Downloaded this and I'm really glad I did. Its an unusual effort but it adds a nice dimension to my audio palette.
Excellent sound!
I love the sound of this flute! It is too bad that it can play only on one octave. It would have really been nice to be able to extend the range.
Limited but delightful flute sound
This library has its limitations - a narrow range of an octave or so, a slightly lo-fi feel with its inclusion of ambient bird song etc. but these are exactly what gives it such a lovely, unique character. Floaty waltzes for instance sound quite heavenly (at least to my ears) and the overall sound might just be what a particular application needs.
Technically it all seems to work fine although I wonder if the "random"appearance of the birdsong might become obvious if a particular note got repeated too often if you see what I mean?
Overall it is a delight to use reflecting the care and sensibility that went into its making.A really Fun, and different Flute
A very inspiring story, and to me this Sample library is the essence of Pianobook. For a phone recording, it's good and I love the bird song in the background, it really adds to the character. Thanks for sharing.
I created a short video going into a more detailed review and walking through the instrument: https://youtu.be/2USsjmHBXf4
Found sound!
For a homemade flute found in a cabin and recorded with a phone outside, this is pretty decent (lol, sorry). I particularly like the short notes as I could imagine more scenarios where they could be used. I often find the sustained sound of hobbyist flutes a little ear-piercing, so it's nice to have the filter knob on board. Cheers!
