Orange Tree Samples

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Fri Sep 05, 2014 6:49 pm

Orange Tree Samples is proud to present Paradise Marimba, an extensively-sampled five octave marimba with a gorgeous tone.

We collaborated with Chris Poehler of Lujon Audio to produce Paradise Marimba. While many other marimba libraries tend to sound very percussive and bright, we specifically selected this marimba for its warm, full sustain. The lowest two octaves of the marimba was so rich-sounding that we sampled it with softer bass marimba mallets as an alternate option to the standard mallets. These bass marimba mallets work excellently for ambient, cinematic music.

Paradise Marimba accompanies our Pure Jazz Vibes sample library, also recorded at WaterSound Productions, in Studio City, California. As with the vibraphone library, Michael Aarvold engineered the session.

We always aim to recreate the playability of the real instrument as closely as possible, which is why we included realistic playable rolls. These scripted rolls recreate the same way a real marimba player divides the notes between mallets when playing a roll, plus make it very convenient to incorporate into your playing using the mod wheel. The velocity and speed of the rolls can also be dynamically changed in real-time. Additionally, there are repeat keys available on the keyboard which simply repeat the last note or chord you played--that way you can essentially play your own rolls.

Paradise Marimba also includes an articulation that we've never seen available in any other marimba sample library: staccato hits. That’s when the marimba player hits the bars of the marimba and holds the mallets against them in order to quickly mute them, creating a staccato effect.

Audio Demos:
Demo #1: Oasis Reggae
Demo #2: Alpha Cat

Features:
- 3.9 GB of 24-bit samples (compressed to 1.4 GB using Kontakt's lossless NCW compression)
- Up to 11x round-robin with four dynamics, chromatically sampled
- Realistic playable rolls
- Separate close, mid, and far mic signals for mixing flexibility
- Alternate bass marimba mallets, muted hit articulation

Format:
Due to the extensive scripting, this sample library is available in KONTAKT 4 / 5 format only. The sample library requires the full retail version of KONTAKT 4 / 5, so it is not compatible with the free KONTAKT Player.

Price:
$79 USD (regularly $99), instantly downloadable purchase. This $20 OFF introductory discount expires on September 30th at 11:59 PM PDT.

Downloads:
Paradise Marimba - User's Guide (PDF)

Visit the product page here: Paradise Marimba sample library for KONTAKT

Or you can click here to order Paradise Marimba directly

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 11:31 pm

This instrument sounds very natural and organic from the demos. Congrats on the new lib!

Decades ago I played live with a marimba player that astonished me with this particular technique: he could do soft rolls with such subtlety that you lost the feeling of the repetitive strokes and it sounded just like a sustained pad, and he controlled the swelling and receding of this as he moved through different voicings and chords. I've been waiting for a long time to see if anyone would come out with a sample library that could do this. Although it's really nice, I'm not entirely sure this one can; but then, this was a very special technique.

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 1:46 am

Breeze wrote: Decades ago I played live with a marimba player that astonished me with this particular technique: he could do soft rolls with such subtlety that you lost the feeling of the repetitive strokes and it sounded just like a sustained pad, and he controlled the swelling and receding of this as he moved through different voicings and chords. I've been waiting for a long time to see if anyone would come out with a sample library that could do this. Although it's really nice, I'm not entirely sure this one can; but then, this was a very special technique.

He was doing 4-mallet rolls, right? I bet I can reproduce this effect in Paradise Marimba--the mod wheel makes it easy to sustain out chords like this, and change voicings during the roll.

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 1:58 am

Gregjazz wrote:He was doing 4-mallet rolls, right? I bet I can reproduce this effect in Paradise Marimba--the mod wheel makes it easy to sustain out chords like this, and change voicings during the roll.

That sounds right. But no FX! I'm all ears...

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:34 am

I'll let you know what I come up with

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:48 pm

Here's it is: http://orangetreesamples.gregjazz.com/d ... ollPad.mp3

This is basically just playing at a very low velocity, and slightly moving the mod wheel up and down to increase and decrease the dynamics of the hits. I also automated the roll speed to adjust that a little bit, too.

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 1:56 pm

That's not bad; obviously you get what I'm talking about. There's too much high tone in the percussive hit, which reveals the repetitive hits, but that likely comes down to a choice of mallets and technique. Like I said, it's a very particular niche effect, not something the marimba is typically used for at all. I think it would need to be sampled played that way for it to work through dynamic layers as well. I really appreciate your putting this together, thanks!

Gregjazz · Post by **Gregjazz** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:04 pm

There's also an "attack" control in the interface, that you can use to smooth out the mallet hit noise. Also, the bass mallets would work well for lower notes since they sound a lot softer/smoother.

Orange Tree Samples

KVR Audio

Paradise Marimba - NOW AVAILABLE!