Distropolis has announced the released of a beta version of Glass Armanica, a sample-based recreation of Benjamin Franklin's rubbed glass instrument known as the Glass Harmonica or Hydrocrystalophone.

The samples were created by filling wine glasses with water and tuning them with a chromatic tuner to the appropriate pitches (drop by drop). Distropolis originally planned to recreate all three octaves of the real instrument, but ran out of sufficiently large wine glasses. An enhanced version of the Glass Armanica may be released in the future if this problem can be overcome...

Features:

• A single octave of samples running from MIDI note 72 to 84 (Octave 6).
• Amplitude ADSR controls.
• Reverb with width, size and mix controls.
• Hi-Cut and Master Volume controls.

Glass Armanica v1.0 beta is free and is available for Windows as a VST instrument plug-in.