Sonokinetic releases sounds of "The Carnival" for Kontakt 4 and 5

21st March 2014 - KVR Audio News

Sonokinetic has announced the release of The Carnival for Kontakt 4 and 5.

Here's what they say: "Ever since we recorded and produced 'Carousel' several years ago, we've been hearing so many positive reactions about it, and about the need for 'couleur locale' like this. Loving Carousel as much as we do, we decided to do an encore, a sequel if you wish. We infused this new instrument with a lot of the things we've learned and perfected over the years. We added an ingenious script to glue it all together and make it feel and play as it should in proper Sonokinetic fashion."

For the recording Sonokinetic went back to Hilversum in the Netherlands and booked the same studio they used for Celesta. They teamed up with A.W. de Vogel, who comes from a long lineage of prolific organ-men in the lowlands. He brought along two of his most cherished barrel organs, a small hand operated one, and a larger one powered by an electric motor, that they barely got through the studio entrance.

Sonokinetic continue: "The organs made some waves in the 'Muziekgebouw van de Omroep'. These instruments have a tremendous ability to move people. Maybe it's a Dutch thing, I don't know, but it was very interesting to me how such a 'mechanical' instrument turned out to invoke so many emotions in so many different people. There is a certain kind of magic that radiates from the wooden dolls, the creaky mechanics, the lacquered cardboard piano rolls and the skilfully painted front. These instruments are meant to bring joy… and that they did."

"In order to help convert this joy to a Kontakt instrument we tried to adapt some of the functionality of the original instrument to the digital equivalent. We thought of the mechanical runs that permeate proper barrel organ music, and found a way to do that with the pitch wheel, and trills with the mod wheel, which all felt very natural to us. The 'melody double' function makes it very easy to play your melodies in octaves, and for the large organ we recorded the original tremolo effect."

The Carnival features:

470 MB sample pool, 850+ samples.
Big and Small organs with 4 registers respectively.
Organ percussion and sampled Tremolo for the large organ.
Octave Doubling.
Automatic Tempo-synced trills (major and minor).
Tempo-synced runs in 5 scales.
'The Carnival' Bespoke Reverb.
Sampled Bellows Noise.
Custom designed interface.
Open Kontakt format for complete user customisation (Kontakt 4.2.4 or 5 Full version only, NOT compatible with the free Kontakt Player).
Royalty and copyright free content license.
The Carnival Reference document (PDF).
Artwork: "The Carnival" DVD cover. Designed by Sonokinetic.
All files in 44.1 kHz, 24-bit NCW format.