Kalimba v2.0 KONTAKT

AUDIOSTRiKE | 15/04/2015 | 1.19 GB

The Kalimba is a modernized version of the ancient African Mbira, also often called a thumb piano. It has a humble, melodious percussive plucking sound with a marimba-like warmth and tonal body. It is often used in conjunction with pianos and other tuned percussion instruments to add a sharper attack and playfulness to the sound. Our instruments were made of wood and coconut shell, with hammered steel tines suspended over their sound holes. The notes span about an octave and a half for the smaller of our two instruments and over two octaves for the larger kalimba. We recorded kalimbas in 3 different environments: Close and Dry in our studio; at medium distance in a small bright chamber; and in a large, long linear hall, at both close (1 meter) and far (15 meters) microphone distances. We call the space “The Bunker”, because that’s exactly what it really is – a deep underground World War 1-era artillery bunker. You can also shape the room decay time easily with integrated Release control, turning the massive hall into a tight room with the twist of a knob. Each tine was sampled with up to 11 dynamic velocity layers with up to 10X round-robin variations each to give these instruments a truly life-like sound and playability.