Cinematique Instruments has released Concert Zither for Kontakt.
The Zither is a stringed instrument, having many strings stretched across a thin, wooden sound box. It is played by strumming or plucking the strings, either with fingers or with a plec.
The strings on the Concert Zither are arranged as follows: 5 fretted melody strings, placed above a guitar-like fretboard, then 14 unfretted "accompaniment" strings; followed by 11 unfretted "bass" strings and finally 6 "contrabass" strings. The concert Zither has a rough and raunchy sound often described as "mellow".
Here's what Cinematique Instruments did:
"We treated the Concert Zither very hard. We plucked, stroke and strummed all the strings to get every possible sound, noise and articulation the Zither can make. Finally we assembled 6 different patches. Firstly there are two the main patch with all the 36 strings recorded in 4 round robin variations and several (up to four) dynamic layer. We additionally recorded the 31 accompaniment strings in a muted variation.
All these notes were recorded with two different types of microphones: a large-diaphragm condenser pair as well as a classic dynamic microphone. By turning a corresponding mic balance knob you can infinitely mix between these two different sound properties. Finally - in order to shape the sound - we added a complex script to achieve lots of different variations of the Concert Zither. By moving the mod wheel you can fade between vibrato and non-vibrato notes.
Beside the main complex patches we provide another 4 useful FX patches, separated into textures, strokes & hits (with dynamic layers) and weird noises. Here you find a great assortment of rare and exceptional FX string sounds."
The Package contains 6 patches:
- Concert Zither Natural.
- Concert Zither Cinematique.
- Cacophony Textures.
- FX (glissandi and noises).
- CZ FX Percussive.
- Cacophony Dead.
Approximately 2GB; more than 2,100 Samples. Kontakt 4.22+ full version is required.
Price: €38.