Soniccouture has announced the release of its latest product, a collection of rare instruments entitled Glass Works. This is the first Soniccouture product to be powered by Native Instruments' Kontakt Player, meaning that non-Kontakt owners can enjoy the enhanced scripting and control that Soniccouture instruments have become renowned for.

Glass Works is a sampled collection of three instruments which generate sound from glass:

Le Cristal: A bizarre 'sound sculpture' designed in 1952 by Bernard and François Baschet. It consists of about 4 octaves of chromatically tuned glass rods, which are rubbed with wet fingers. The vibration of the glass is passed to a heavy block of metal, which itself is tuned and in fact determines the final pitch. The entire mechanism is amplified by a large steel plate, called the "flame". There are also three small fiberglass cones that amplify the higher frequencies.

The Glass Armonica: A musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones ). The instrument was invented by Benjamin Franklin, who called his invention the "armonica" after the Italian word for harmony. He worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.

Cloud Chamber Bowls: The Cloud Chamber Bowls are Soniccouture's recreation of an instrument built in the 1950s by maverick American composer Harry Partch. It consists of hanging "bowls" which are sections of 12-gallon glass carboys. Both tops and bottoms of the carboys are used. Partch had 14 (later 13) bowls hanging from a large wooden frame he called a"tori".

The name "Cloud Chamber Bowls" arose from the fact that Partch found the original tops and bottoms at a Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1950. The bowls were originally used for cloud chambers used in tracing paths of subatomic particles.

Availability and Pricing

Glass Works is available now on DVD and Download, priced £99 / $159. As it is powered by Kontakt Player it is available for Windows and Mac OS X in VST, AU and RTAS instrument plug-in formats.