Speeldoos Musical Box

{See video at top of page}

Sonokinetic is not new to sampling metal instruments, we have done the very large with 'Toll', the medium key-played with 'Celesta' and various sizes played with sticks and hammers with 'Mallets', the weird with 'Fe' ... and of course we did 'Sleigh Bells'. What we didn't do yet was the very small, and that is exactly what we set out to do with this new project 'Speeldoos'.

Who cannot remember the small iron concoctions with a little handle from their youth, the ones you would place on a chest, table or any, preferably hollow, object to amplify its sound (ours played Beethoven's Für Elise). There is something magical about these very simple devices that touches your heart and conveys emotion, even though the thing is purely mechanic. Maybe it's a Dutch thing, that also drew us to the mechanical organs recorded for 'The Carnival', but we cannot help getting thrown back to our youth playing this thing (preferably slightly uneven and at varying tempi).

We decided to name this Sonokinetic version of the Music Box by its Dutch name 'Speeldoos', as some of you might have already deciphered with a little help from our friends at Google.

Featuring in this product is an original Swiss made Music Box that we recorded with the highest regard for sound quality and authenticity. With the precision of a Swiss watch we assembled a unique recording setup to give us access to the minute teeth of the steel tuned comb, allowing us to record multiple round robins for each tooth with a pin pluck, in the process getting some more practise in the art of standing very still and holding our breath for prolonged periods.

'Reuge' is known for producing the best and most prestigious musical boxes in this field. Instead of recording an antique one that might cause tuning issues, we invested in a brand new perfectly tuned musical box of this brand.

Recorded at the MCO Jazz radio studio, a recording room with high ceiling and perfect acoustics, we placed the musical box on top of a Steinway grand piano for even better reverberation for the multiple microphone sampling sessions. (can't have a better 'amplification device' we figured)

'Speeldoos' offers a 4,5 octave range instrument for the full version of Kontakt 5.1 and higher.

Each note has been sampled at 44.1kHz 24-bit in ncw format with up to 5 round robins, and for the first time in musical box history it is possible to play this instrument with the original steel comb in three velocities. Musical boxes originally do not offer a multiple dynamic range due to the way the triggering of tones is done by a steel automated spring wound pin cylinder, somewhat similar to how a harpsichord or spinet triggers their strings. Nevertheless, we found a way to trigger tones by hand with a sharp tweezer and record P, MF and F tones for this brand new Sonokinetic sample library.

Demos

https://soundcloud.com/sonokinetic/sets/speeldoos