The vibraphone adds a constant modulation to its resonator tubes with the use of motorised fans. These cover the top of the tube and spin in unison, effectively opening and closing the resonator in a circular motion. The resulting tone is the famous tremolo effect; shimmering, golden and wobbly. The main instrument panel features the Tremolo modelling control section, as well as lowpass and hipass filters, with envelopes for amplitude and filter modulation.

The resonator tubes of the vibraphone. Instruments that use global modulation (the Hammond C3/leslie is a similar example) are difficult to sample & model realistically, because if you record a single note with the tremolo active, it will be out of sync with all subsequent notes you record. Previous attempts to sample the vibraphone usually recorded the instrument with the motor/tremolo switched off, then faked the effect using filters and LFO.

Soniccouture Vibraphone takes a completely new approach - by sampling the entire instrument twice. Once with the fans closed, once with them fully open, both times completely static - the motor switched off. Once we have the full vibraphone sound sampled in both states - fans closed and fans open - we can then simply crossfade between them in Kontakt using a simple sinusoidal LFO. This gives not only the authentic sound, but also full control over the speed of the tremolo, another essential element of the instrument.

Download File Size:7.44 GB

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