David Hilowitz, the creator of Decent Sampler has released Tape Violins, a recording of his favourite violin using a Tascam 4-track recorder that was given to him by a stranger on the street. Tape Violins js available at the intro price of $20.00, increasing to $40.00 after the promotion.
Tape Violins expansion includes the lush sound of a Swiss violin recorded on a 4-track recorder then processed through a range of outboard effects. Available for the free Decent Sampler plugin.
The story
It was made in about 1910 by Alfred Fallet, an award-winning luthier who lived in a tiny village in the mountains of Switzerland. Dave love this violin–it was the first really high quality musical instrument he ever owned, and he’s wanted to sample it for ages. Of course, he wanted his recordings to be a bit different from everyone else’s. In hus work as a composer, he’s been doing a lot of experiments with hand-held cassette recorders. As part of those experiments, he’s recorded this violin on and off throughout the last summer on a whole range of different devices. As charming as he found the results, the project sat on the back burner, until one day about a month ago he was met with a stroke of luck: he was walking down the street and happened to bump into someone who was in the process of getting rid of an old 4-track recorder.
Dave brought the recorder home, cleaned the tape head, and quickly discovered that the machine provided exactly the sound he had been looking for. The next day, he recorded a series of samples which became the core of this library. These can be found in the series of “Tape Violin” patches. Once those basic, long notes patches had been recorded and re-recorded several times, he continued the experiment by passing the results through a series of outboard hardware effects (Habit, Microcosm, Generation Loss), the results can be found in the 13 experiment patches–each of which actually consists of two unique sample sets which can be adjusted to taste.
What’s included:
- Tape Violin 01 – Solo Violin (modwheel): The main long notes patch. Control the dynamics using the modulation wheel (MIDI CC#1)
- Tape Violin 02 – Solo Violin (velocity): The main long notes patch. Control the dynamics using the MIDI velocity.
- Tape Violin 03 – Solo Violin (legato simulated): A “simulated legato” version of the main long notes patch.
- Tape Violin 04 – Trio: An ensemble patch consisting of three different violin takes played at the same time
- Tape Violin 05 – Ensemble: An ensemble patch consisting of nine violins at once
- 13 “experimental” patches, each contain two unique, matched sample sets. A morph knob allows the user to seamlessly fade between the two sample sets. These were created by taking the output of the four-track and putting it through several different outboard effects.
Tape Violin is available for the freely available Decent Sampler which itself available to PC, Mac. Linux and iOS users (VST2, VST3, AU, AAX ad AUv3).
For more information on Tape Violin and Decent Sampler, click here:
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