![]() Reducing those articulations and shifting the balance in favour of Bow Long, Bow Med (medium) and Bow Sus (sustain) softens the sounds. Favouring articulations like Pluck, Pick, Chop, Chop Rattle and Rlse (release) Noise gives sounds more of an urgent, percussive feel. Whichever interface is selected, its initial sound can be modified quite considerably by changing the articulations and their levels. In contrast, African Lute has a coarser texture, and a wonderful resonance that seems to work with any effect that's applied. ![]() All of the effects are so simple to use that they only offer two control options, apart from the delay, which has a tempo‑sync function and delay time setting, as well as level and feedback controls.Īudio titled Modwheel A Psaltered Zither by Sound On SoundĪs for the sounds themselves, obviously they all possess the characteristic twang of a zither (a sound that sits somewhere between a harpsichord, harp and lute), but there is a fair amount of variation in the source instruments and the way that Modwheel have bowed, plucked and struck them.įor example, the interface called Zithereens sounds very much like a hammered dulcimer and is reminiscent of the Hungarian cimbalom sound used by John Barry for the theme to The Ipcress File. These include an amp simulator, rotary speaker, low-pass filter, phaser, chorus, tremolo, reverb and delay. There are also eight effects that can be applied individually, or all at once. Standard across all the interfaces is a 32-step arpeggiator, offering control over rate, duration, swing, note order and pitch shift. Modwheel don't offer any means of adjusting the presets, other than a level dial, but as there are plenty of options across the four menus to choose from, this isn't really an issue. It is in the final folder, called Atmos, that denser and longer‑lasting atmospheric reverbs are found, which are obviously indented for soundscape creation jobs. A selection of very useable reverse reverbs are included in the third folder, but most of these are fairly short and unobtrusive. The Sync presets (which slave to the host DAW's tempo) are more abundant, and these include all manner of rotary, delay and distortion processes. The presets that can be found in its Non Sync folder are the most straightforward, even though quite a few feature pitch-shifted notes. Variants such as chopsticks rattle appear on some interfaces, and there is even one interface that's dedicated to percussive noises.Ĭommon to all, however, is a convolution reverb called Scatter Box, the exact workings of which Modwheel wish to keep a secret. The articulations themselves are things like release noise, harmonic resonance, plucking, picking and long and short bowing. The majority of the interfaces offer either six or seven articulations which can be turned on and off independently and have their own pan, attack, release and transpose controls. Most share almost the same set of controls and processors, but there are subtle differences from one to another. What's more, by retuning the strings at the far ends of the scale, the note ranges of the zithers have been extended to cover six octaves.įor this release, Modwheel have created 10 Kontakt interfaces, so it is up to the user to find one that best suits their project. In fact a total of six zither-like instruments were sampled by Modwheel, some of which its product notes describe as "unfretted folk instruments", so what we're dealing with here is a hybrid. Modwheel's A Psaltered Zither should make it much easier for musicians to include zither playing in their compositions, although, as I'll explain later, its effect processing options and multi-articulation selection facilities make it more of a sound‑design tool than a virtual recreation of an instrument. Given that zithers are notoriously difficult to play to a high standard, I suspect the latter is most likely. If I try to think of examples of a zither being used prominently in a famous piece of music, other than in the theme for the film The Third Man, few immediately spring to mind, which suggests that either I am unaware of its common usage, or it isn't an instrument that finds its way into commercial recordings.
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