Tonehammer has announced the release of Zitherette, a new sample library for Native Instruments' Kontakt.
Zitherette is a simple 8-string fretless zither, roughly 12 x 20 inches in size. Zithers are a broad family of hollow-bodied string instruments common throughout all of Europe and Asia. Variants range from the dulcimer to the Koto, with countless other flavors unique to each region and culture. Common to each of them is the arrangement of multiple strings over a neck-less sound box. The oldest known variant of the zither family dates back to 4th century B.C China, while new additions continue to spring up to this day.
Tonehammer's particular hand-held zither has a smooth, dark tone, with a clean biting attack and long, natural decay. At its softest, it has a pristine, almost harp-like sound, while the hardest notes bend deeply at the attack, with a pronounced twang. Tonehammer chose a pluck articulation and captured it very close and dry, in wide stereo. Tonehammer sampled the little zither extensively. Each string has an average of 8 velocity layers, with 4 round-robin variations per layer. Tonehammer also captured palm mute release triggers, with 2 velocities and 4 round robins per note. Tonehammer created a variety of presets in several different tunings, to allow maximum flexibility and intuitive playability.
Tonehammer also created an array of custom sound-designed fx patches and ambient drones, all of them user-sculptable to extend the creative possibilities even further. Lastly, Tonehammer created a "wet" version of most of the core patches, using custom-captured convolution impulses. A selection of these impulses are includes in the library, compatible with most major convolution plug-ins.
Zitherette has an MSRP of $39.
Native Instruments Kontakt 2+ full retail version required. Kontakt Player is not supported.
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