Look, I know everyone hates saxophones. And with good reason. Excluding Colin Stetsons amazing work, and Tom Waits of course, I also tend toward hating on saxophones myself.
But is it really fair to judge an instrument by its past misdemeanours ? Can the sax be rehabilitated and made sexy again ?
Here at Sound Dust we say HELL YES!
So, SAXOMAPHONIUM is a hybrid Kontakt instrument hewn from layers of baritone and alto sax plus two ancient wind powered reed organs. It takes un-cool elements, records them nicely and then re-imagines them into something entirely new.
Saxomaphonium GUI
Velocity and Round Robin control
Harmonium 2
Saxomaphonium GUI
THE COMPONENTS
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Looped baritone and alto long notes
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Tape treated, looped baritone and alto long notes
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Honking goose sax staccatos
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BPM synced looping harmonium hand pumped notes
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Deep wheezy foot pumped room organ
With a deep but manageable Kontakt engine the SAXOMAPHONIUM creates a new reed/metal/wood based palette that can cover a surprisingly wide range of stunning possibilities.
File under.
Michael Nyman post-baroque maxi/minimalisms, undulating cinematic Zimmer beds, Goran Bregovic Balkan wedding/funeral knees-up, pseudo orchestral epic sweep-scapes. Definitely not Baker Street.
What's Inside?
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Saxophone x 2 - 4 octaves of baritone and alto saxophone long looped notes - 6 velocity layers
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Tape Saxophone - 4 octaves of baritone and alto saxophone long looped notes - brutalized through Roland Chorus Echo RE501 for lots of wow and flutter - 6 velocity layers
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Honk - 4 octaves of baritone and alto saxophone staccato notes - 5 velocity layers
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Harmonium - binaurally recorded portable harmonium with looped BPM synced bellows pumping.
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Pump Organ - binaurally recorded church style pump organ.
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1140 24bit samples = 2.46GB with Native Instruments' propriety compression
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Note Jitter - randomises note on/off timing , velocity values and tuning between articulations
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Chord and Key quantise - selectable to fix scale and chord type across all keys
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Sample start and loop length control per articulation
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All controls fully automatable
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BPM synced pan and volume modulation per articulation
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BPM synced vibrato and chorus per articulation
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24 custom convolution reverbs per articulation
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4 insert effects - dirt, eq, rotor, phaser and master algorithmic reverb
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2 send effects - delay and algorithmic reverb
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Keyboard Velocity and Round Robin modelling page
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55 instrument snapshots
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Handy build in instructions in RTFM page
