Soniccouture

Soniccouture has announced that Glass / Works is finally available.

Glass Works is the first SC product to be packaged in Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player, meaning that non-Kontakt owners can enjoy the enhanced scripting and control that Soniccouture instruments have become renowned for.

Glass Works is a sampled collection of 3 instruments which generate sound from glass. Read more…

Soniccouture has introduced Glass Works, a set of 3 virtual instruments based on the sounds of glass.

The instruments include:

• The Cristal Baschet – A bizarre ’sound sculpture’ designed in 1952 by Bernard and François Baschet. It consists of about 4 octaves of chromatically tuned glass rods, which are rubbed with wet ?ngers. The vibration of the glass is passed to a heavy block of metal, which itself is tuned and in fact determines the ?nal pitch. The entire mechanism is ampli?ed by a large steel plate, called the “?ame”. There are also three small ?berglass cones that amplify the higher frequencies.
• The Glass Armonica – A musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones ). The instrument was invented by Benjamin Franklin, who called his invention the “armonica” after the Italian word for harmony. He worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.
• Cloud Chamber Bowls – The Cloud Chamber Bowls are Soniccouture’s recreation of an instrument built in the 1960s by maverick American composer Harry Partch. It consists of hanging “bowls” which are sections of 12-gallon glass carboys. Both tops and bottoms of the carboys are used. Partch had 14 (later 13) bowls hanging from a large wooden frame he called a “tori”. The name “Cloud Chamber Bowls” arose from the fact that Partch found the original tops and bottoms at a Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1950. The bowls were originally used for cloud chambers used in tracing paths of subatomic particles.

Glass Works is priced at £99 GBP / $159 USD.

Rekkerd has a nice review of Soniccouture Scriptorium, a collection of KSP Scripts, a sound library and set of tutorial videos for Native Instruments Kontakt 2 and 3.

Initially I thought Scriptorium would re-spark my interest in writing my own KSP scripts, but I realize that Soniccouture has done a far better job than I ever could. I will certainly enjoy playing with their excellent batch of scripts for quite some time before venturing out in the wonderful world of scripting myself.
So what do I think?

Scriptorium is a comprehensive and diverse set of tools for Kontakt. With 35 scripts you are not going to learn all of Scriptorium’s secrets overnight.

While there will undoubtedly be a few scripts you’re not likely to use, this collection has gems for every Kontakt user. And it’s these gems (which will be different scripts for different users) that already justify a purchase, since you’re not likely to find these tools anywhere else.

The Scriptorium is available as a digital download and costs £49 GBP. Check the Soniccouture website for more information and audio demo.

KSP scripts are like ‘plug-ins’ for Kontakt. KSP allows you to manipulate Kontakt parameters at a microscopic level, creating new behaviours, unique timbral characters or even generative sequences.

Soniccouture have released Balinese Gamelan, a new sampled instrument for Native Instruments Kontakt.

A Gamelan is an ensemble of instruments originating from Indonesia. The majority of Gamelan instruments are percussive, and most of these are bronze. They include xylophone-like metallophones of different sizes and pitch, tuned gong chimes, very large pitched gongs, and an assortment of drums and percussion. There are many types of Gamelan ensembles, but the two dominant types are Javanese and Balinese. Balinese Gamelan has a characteristic ’shimmering’ sound which is due to the detuning of paired instruments playing the same musical part.

Here are the details: Read more…

Soniccouture has released eBow Guitar – the first sampled re-creation of the unique sound of the eBow.

The ebow ( Energy bow), is a small, hand-held device that ‘bows’ the strings of a guitar using an electromagnetic field. It produces a unique guitar sound, with a very slow attack and infinite sustain.

Two guitars were painstakingly sampled, an acoustic and an electric. Both were sampled with the high and low power ebow setting, with vibrato and without vibrato. Several note off samples were recorded for every note, to make the instrument’s response as detailed and lifelike as possible. The level of the note-off sounds can be mixed to taste by the user. The acoustic was recorded in full stereo to give a natural, spacious image. Read more…