| Each key has a plastic claw
that plucks on small strip of metal which produces an almost sinusoidal
ringing sound. The instrument was made at the Czech factory Delicia
but it is unknown how many pieces were made. Suffice to say, there
can't be too many of these outside of which, at the time, was referred
to as 'the Eastern Bloc'. This is one very rare instrument which
is exclusively available to Hollow Sun.
As you can see from the photo (supplied by the donor) it has a
three-octave range from F2-F5, I am unsure whether the original
is velocity sensitive - given the mechanism, I doubt it. The instrument
also featured a simple tremolo effect.
I have received this excellent donation from Czech Petr Axmann
who was given this as a gift! As a fan of Hollow Sun, he thought
I might be interested in this rarity - damned right I am!!!
It's a lovely sound - very pure and 'innocent' (sounding somewhere
between a glockenspiel and a musical box) and its bell-like quality
will stand out in a mix. However, given the vintage of the instrument
and its tube circuitry, it is a bit noisy but various sample editing
techniques have been applied to minimise this. You might like to
apply some corrective EQ and/or filtering if you find the noise
obtrusive.
I am extremely grateful to Petr for this very interesting donation.
Petr has multi-sampled the sound extensively, (with full-length
samples) over the original's three octave range and so must sound
pretty authentic. Quirky but I hope it will find a place in your
work.
Thanks again, Petr! |
