Bolder Sounds has released Harmoniums of the Opera, a new 630 MB sample library for Kontakt 4+ that features two rare and contrasting harmoniums - an electric harmonium owned by the Metropolitan Opera and a acoustic foot pumped harmonium owned by the Juilliard School, both located at Lincoln Center in New York City.
The Juilliard harmonium is considered to be one of the finest sounding harmoniums on the east coast of the United States. It is a five octave keyboard instrument with one stop. Bolder Sounds also created an artificial octave couplet. This instrument has a bright organic breathing accordion-like quality. Flexible KSP scripting has been authored by Bo Clausen which includes the triggering of saved custom presets via keyswitch to emulate changing stops with filter settings and volume control. KSP Scripting also enables the user to control the pumping emulation of the harmonium either by manual pump or auto-pump.
The MET harmonium is a five octave keyboard instrument with seven different stop combinations that have been faithfully recreated to capture the original sound of the instrument. The seven stop options can be triggered by keyswitch or assignable CC#. You also have the flexibility of moving the keyswitch assignments for each stop to a different key if desired. This instrument also has a vibrato switch which is emulated on Kontakt's front panel and may be turned on or off. Even the blower noise from the fan was sampled and added as an option. The Met harmonium could be considered a virtual instrument restoration since the instrument at the time of sampling was no longer suitable for live performance
On both the harmoniums in this library, you can save banks of presets of your own creation for the effect panels which include Space IR, EQ, Chorus, Flange, Rotater, and Delay.
Pricing & Availability
Harmoniums of the Opera costs $59 but is currently available for the introductory price of $49.
For more detailed information, please download the .pdf manual at the bottom the product page. Video demos are available at the Bolder Sounds website.
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