Grand Harp

Silky Symphonic Nylon

Besser bekannt als Konzertharfe, handelt es sich bei der Grand Harp um eine große moderne Harfe, die vorwiegend in klassichen Kompositionen zum Einsatz kommt. Der Tonumfang von sechseinhalb Oktaven, C 1 bis G 7, sorgt für einen sehr ausgeglichenen Klangcharakter. 

Das Team um Cinematique Instruments legte bei den Aufnahmen zu Grand Harp Library großen Wert darauf das Instrument und dessen besonderen Klang so realistich und organisch wie nur möglich einzufangen. Insgesamt 6 Artikulationen & Presets mit klassischen und eher ausgefallenen Spielweisen stehen dem Nutzer zur Verfügung.

Weitere Details in englischer Sprache:

Articulations

The normal and typical way to play the Grand Harp is to play it with the fingertips of the first four fingers, but there are a lot more kinds of playing techniques available. In this version of the Grand Harp CI concentrated on six different articulations which are:

• Plucked: Plucking the strings with the fingers is the principal technique.

• Fingernail: That articulations creates a sharp and slightly penetrating sound. You produce that by plucking the strings with fingernails.

• Prè de la Table: Prè de la table produces a dry and nasal sound. The sound is sometimes compared to that of the Japanese koto or the guitar. To produce a pré de la table sound the fingers pluck the string in a normal manner but close to the soundboard.

• Xylophonique: Xylophonique is a muted sound with a clearly distinguished pitch. It sounds wooden dry and percussive. To produce xylophonic sounds one hand mutes the strings by pressing them with the fingers close to the soundboard. The other hand plays the strings normally.

• Prepared: This prepared articulation produces a dissonant and percussive sounds which is best suitable to produce avant-garde or experimental sounds and noises. We prepared all the the strings with brackets and paper which had the effect that the sound was muted as well as a weird vibrating noise was added to it.

• Harmonics: The Harmonics (flageolet) gives a very warm and gentle sound. It is a popular effect in harp music.

The Content

As always CI set a high focus on capturing the notes in a very realistic and organic way, thus they recorded the Grand Harp with several big condenser around the instrument. All main articulations are provided in four times round robins and up to 5 velocity layer, recorded in stereo 24 Bit. Only the Harmonics articulation was recorded in one round robin. The Grand Harp comes up with a very gentle and warm feel. It sounds realistically and inspiring.

Cinematique Instruments included all six articulations in one patch so that the user can easily and quickly change the articulation. You can do that either by mouse or keyswitches. Furthermore they added reverb and sustain control sliders as well as a tiny but powerful arpeggio with a separate voicing options and a very useful glissando mode. Finally CI added an auto-velocity button which sets the note length automatically. This is extremely handsome.

Grand Harp requires the full version of Kontakt 5.6