Wheel Of Strings

Wheel of Strings is a virtual instrument for composers. It's built from the sound of master luthier Guido Falke's hurdy-gurdies, but it's not a strict 1:1 hurdy-gurdy recreation. Instead, Wheel of Strings is designed as an expressive pad and texture instrument: evolving drones, airy harmonic beds, subtle movement and organic grit. Plus more synth-like tones and plucky, bright sounds that work beautifully for arpeggios. All captured purely from the original hurdy-gurdy recordings and made playable as a modern scoring tool.

Main Page

Wheel of Strings runs on the same two-layer engine you know from Spiral Strings. It's divided into Layer A and Layer B with identical controls per layer, so you can design contrasting timbres and morph between them fluidly. Users of Spiral Strings will feel instantly at home, load, play, and start sculpting without a learning curve.

Movements & Modulation

Shape evolving textures with our flexible modulation system: three LFOs, two Step Sequencers, and cross-modulation options let you animate drones, bow-noise, buzz, and synth-like sounds. Route modulation to key parameters on both the Main and Effects pages to move from steady underscore to restless motion in seconds.

Effects

Polish or push the sound using the built-in processing chain, filters, distortion and tape-style saturation complement the raw instrument tone. The highlight remains our true-stereo convolution workflow, placing the gurdy in characterful spaces for intimate, cinematic depth.

True stereo convolution

We captured premium IRs, from selected hardware, rooms and landscapes, and optimized them for musical playability. The result is a convincing sense of size and space that enhances detail without masking the nuanced bow and wheel articulation.

More

• 12 play styles: select 1 of 10 articulations. Independent Drone and Trompette layers are permanently mapped to the lower and upper keyboard ranges, respectively.
• The same as in Spiral Strings, No pre-recorded phrases, fully playable.
• Wheel of Strings was sampled note-by-note. What you hear are long, expressive sustains with rich overtones, wheel noise and subtle movement, not locked riffs. Because the material isn't bound to fixed phrases, you can play any key, any scale, and sculpt textures in real time.
• Three round robins of 10-25 second long files.
• Three microphone positions – recorded with low-noise sounddesign mics and vintage and modern Hi-End gear grails.
• Uncommon True Stereo Reverb engine with our own crazy IR's.

SPECS:

System Requirements

Intel CPU i5 or better recommended.

Mac OS X 10.12+ (64-bit), 6 GB RAM.

Windows 8 – 10 (64-bit), 6 GB RAM.

File Size

5112 samples.

Over 28 GB disk space required during install.

Full version of Kontakt required

Full Retail Version Of Kontakt 6 Or Later Required.

Not Compatible With Free Kontakt Player.

Equipment List

Microphones:

Close:
Mics: Schoeps MK41 and MK2 with digital preamp CMD 42, Sennheiser MKH8040 and 30.

Body:
Mics: 2 x Trance Audio The Inducer, LOM Geofon.

Room:
Mics: 2 x Sennheiser MKH 8020 and Sennheiser MKH 8090 Mixed.

{See video at top of page}

YouTube.com/watch?v=8IfRRtGksS4