The story
In 2019 I bought this instrument on ebay, with absolutely no idea how it should be played, but just for the sake of recording it, sampling it and then seeing what I could come up with.
Unfortunately I have no information about the manufacturer or the year of manufacture, the only thing you can read is the writing inside: Konzert-Salon-Harfe.
Said that, I started recording both single notes and some textures played with a cello bow and the result is what you can find inside this sample pack: it is basically a series of drones, which do not refer to any specific tonal context, characterized by a low register and a very slow evolving that was pre-recorded before mapping in Kontakt. In my opinion, the key to having fun with this instrument and trying to make the most of it lies in playing with the dynamics: for each drone there are in fact six dynamic layers, which allow you to obtain dark and warm sounds with distant metallic echoes, if you play softly, and instead, if you play strong, you can get saturated and aggressive tones that can be further emphasized if you go to increase the resonance of the filter.
Interface
Reviews for Zither Soundscape
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Near-atonal thrill!
This is an instant-thrill machine! With incredible timbre that is made by a near-atonal evolution of sound, every single key is able to create the perfect ambience in a matter of seconds.
Everything sounds crystal clear and very intimate, and the sampling is deep, offering a huge pool that covers 7 full octaves with a total of 60 samples. All that is packed in a nice minimal GUI that offers everything the average user will ever need for such an instrument.
Something that I personally don't like in any plugin or vst, is the horizontal knob movement, which is counter intuitive for me, since most plugins use a vertical mouse movement instead.
Other than that, even if it's a 1,6GB instrument, it is highly recommended you try it out!
Eerie and dramatic
Quite eerie and dramatic. The obvious use would be in thriller/horror type scores. Hold a key down and the sound will do a lot of heavy lifting for you. I have to admit, this isn't usually my kind of thing, but what I like about this one is that is has a warmer sound to it than you might expect.
Amazing, and dramatic soundscapes
Today I learned that zithers can make INCREDIBLE cool soundscapes. These soundscapes are very eerie and dramatic, which is very cool. For soundscapes, they are really really detailed, maybe even a little overkill, with a whopping 1.6GB of samples. Definitely a great library with some awesome samples, I just feel like it costs a bit too much storage for what you get.
