Modern form of the ancient African Mbira
About
Tiny Thumb Pianos is a modern form of the ancient African Mbira dating back to 1000 BC, also called a kalimba or sanza. The Mbira has been used for poetic storytelling, often accompanied by a Hosho (gourd shaker), and played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and social gatherings. These wooden instruments from Zimbabwe have a gentle & melodic percussive plucking sound with a marimba-like warmth and tonal body.
We recorded each tine of Tiny Thumb Pianos in wide stereo, close and dry, performed in unison and solo. The Duo and Solo plucks were captured with 10 round-robins per velocity layer, with an average of 8 velocity layers per note. After that we sampled percussive hits, slides, taps, glisses, and other FX to enhance realism and make it feel like you’re dual-wielding tiny kalimbas IRL. We also rounded out the library’s natural tones with 20 ambient organic soundscapes and 20 custom FX presets to kickstart your creative journey. In short: this artifact is all you need to become a master musical storyteller.
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. We’ve also included 20 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.
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 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 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
requirements:
mac:
ram: 2
disk: 1
version: Mac OSX 10.9 or higher.
internet required: no
plugins:
VST-2
VST-3
AU
AAX
STAND-ALONE
windows:
ram: 2
disk: 1
version: Windows 7 or higher.
internet required: no
plugins:
VST-2
VST-3
AAX
STAND-ALONE
trial: no
notes: This product is built for the full version of Kontakt
feature: One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format
Thumb Piano duo & solo plucks, percussive hits, taps, slides, glisses, FX
20 Ambience patches created from the source content
24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples
20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
1,805 Stereo WAV files
1.35 GB installed
Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments
platforms: mac
windows
38865 1337-1055
