Harpsichord

About

The Harpsichord, a keyboard sensation from the 16th to mid 18th century, once ruled European music. This versatile instrument was a star in both Renaissance and Baroque compositions, shining both as an accompanist and a soloist. Distinctive in design, harpsichords typically boasted two or more sets of strings, each producing unique tones. The sound was amplified by a soundboard beneath the strings, which transmitted vibrations through a bridge. The strings were plucked with quills rather than struck with hammers, so a key could only produce one velocity. Harpsichords flourished across Europe, with production centers in Italy, Flanders, France, Germany, and England. These instruments varied in configuration, featuring different keyboard setups, foot pedals, and hand stops. Their cases were often exquisite works of art, adorned with inlays, paintings, and intricate surface decorations. The harpsichord's plucked strings offered a rich, clear sound that enriched the complex melodies of Baroque music. Nearly every Baroque composer wrote for the harpsichord, whether as a soloist or in continuo. We sampled a prestigious 18th Century Italian Bizzi Harpsichord belonging to Claudia Ferrero, an acclaimed teacher and renaissance performer in Europe. The instrument has been carefully recorded in order to preserve the unique sound characteristics of both of the instrument and the room. The warm studio is based in the beautiful countryside of San Raffaele Cimena, Italy. We've faithfully sampled every interesting sound we could get out of this instrument, with two stereo mic positions: Bridge and Soundboard. We captured the piano and forte registers, glisses, slides, percussive impacts, plucks, scrapes and taps. We've also included a wide selection of custom FX presets and plenty of our signature sound-designed ambient content, crafted from the raw acoustic source to give you complete creative freedom.

Contents

The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Our customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance. The interface is rounded-out by our modular FX rack panel, with 27 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 8 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes our favorite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. We’ve added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!

Product Specs