Wavelet Audio have recently released EDDA, available at the intro price of $119.00, increasing to $139.00 after the promotion.
EDDA is a library of Nordic tagelharpa strings and epic shamanic percussion that authentically captures the raw, organic atmosphere of Nordic musical traditions. It’s perfect for cinematic folk and viking-style pagan music, but works perfectly in any genre – adding a sense of natural imperfection and raw emotion to your mix.
The main instruments in EDDA are fully playable without the use of pre-recorded phrases, which gives a wide range of performance possibilities. We sampled every note and every possible transition, even dissonant note combinations, almost any melody and harmony can be played.
Wavelet Audio built a brand new sequencer with advanced features and MIDI drag-and-drop functionality to DAW or computer. Sequencer has a 5 patterns. Users can load and edit preset sequences, or create their own from scratch and save it.
Edda offers flexible microphone settings to sculpt and shape the sound. With a range of presets and individual controls for each microphone’s volume, panorama, and stereo image, the sound can be balanced to fits any mix.
The Big Tagelharpa has two microphones, with separate controls for the melodic and burdon strings. The burdon strings can also be pitched down, making it a powerful tool for sound design. Doubletrack can be applied to either the microphones or the strings.
EDDA offers several types of legato: Rebow Legato, Portamento, Fast, and Trill. Instant Legato ensures that legato is triggered immediately on note changes, without waiting for the next rhythmic step. Restart Seq immediately resets the sequence on a note change and starts the sequence from the beginning. If both Instant Legato and Restart Seq are turned off, the engine will allow the current step to finish before switching to legato.
Wavelet Audio have included many ready-to-use phrases to speed up the workflow. They are all sorted by tagelharpa type and bpm.
In EDDA, Wavelet Audio used various complex sampling approaches to accurately capture all aspects of the tagelharpa like performance sampling and rebow and attack morphing techniques to achieve highly realistic performance and smooth legato transitions. Special attention was given to maintaining a natural dynamic balance between different bowing repetitions without over-compression, especially to blend the natural variations in bowing repetitions and dynamics.
Noise reduction is minimal for sustain and attack samples. Noise reduction is moderate for release samples. Of course, clicks, pops, and rare breath sounds have been completely removed. But musical noise and small artifacts are left untouched. These small artifacts are a direct result of the performance sampling approach and subjectively sound more natural. But the team understood that it’s important to keep the balance and make sure they’re not repetitive and too noisy.
Aggressive stretching and pitching can be (!!) very destructive to the tagelharpa. Keep this in mind when aggressively editing the instrument. When using phrases, try to find and use the phrases that are closest to the original bpm. If the phrases are beat machine based, then the phrases are not stretched and this point is not important. Remember that you can always double the speed up or down. So, x2 75 equals 150.
After much experimentation, the team found that sampling the strings in groups rather than individually produces the most natural and authentic sound. Due to the inherent tuning instability and subtle tuning fluctuations of the tagelharpa, recording the strings individually would have required extensive phase alignment and autotuning, resulting in audio artifacts and huge phase issues. But (!!) on the second, large tagelharpa, they were able to sample the burdons and melodic strings separately without any phase issues. This allows you to control, bypass or adjust the tuning of the burdon strings.
The tagelharpa by it’s nature is limited in tuning, and the range and number of possible tunings is limited. In the standard DAD tuning it is of course possible to play in other tunings, but it’s most comfortable to play in D minor and D major (quint-quart). If your song is in, let’s say, C major, you can still play in D tuning (it works well in most keys) or pitch down the instrument and make it CGC (two semitone tuning sounds very good in most cases). This makes the Tagelharpa perfectly tuned for C minor and C major. Do not forget that in EDDA there is not only the quint-quart tuning. You can tune the tagelharpa in DGD and the sound will be more traditional.
Features include:
- 4 Legato Types
- Multiple Round Robins
- Multiple dynamic layers
- Multiple microphone settings
- WAV phrases included
- Advanced rhythm sequencer
- 24-bit / 48 kHz lossless NCW format
EDDA requires a free or full version of Kontakt 8.1.0 or later.
For more information on EDDA and to compare prices, click here:
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