Taishokoto Ableton Live Instrument Rack

The Taishokoto is a Japanese acoustic instrument invented about 100 years ago. It consists of a long resonant box over which are strung a number of strings which are strummed by the right hand and "stopped" by a typewriter like keyboard with the left hand.

The Taishkoto has as many as 6 strings - the lowest of which are drone strings and are not "stopped" - usually tuned to G and perhaps a second drone tuned to D while the remaining strings are all tuned to G an octave higher. These higher strings have a characteristic sound produced by the slightly out of tune
harmonics beating against each other.

For this rack I have multi-sampled a 6 string Taishokoto and set the samples up to give a pseudo "round-robin" effect so that each strum sounds slightly different. I've separated the drone so the relative volume of the note and drone can be adjusted and I've also made the drone tuneable so that the instrument can be easily played in any key.

All notes played below a certain point on the keyboard play the G/D drone and the keys that produce the melody notes have their own G/D drone triggered from them. Play around with it and you will soon get the idea.

Download Taishokoto Rack for Ableton Live 8/9 or file mirrored here

Let me know if you enjoy this or use it in any of your music.

The Tashokoto is also know as Tashigoto or Nagoya Harp and is very similar to the Indian BulBul Tarang but usually made a lot more carefully.

Kalimba 50 Ableton Rack

I have multi-sampled this little rustic Kalimba (also known as Mbira, Thumb Piano or Lamellophone) to create an Ableton Live Sampler/Simpler rack. The rack has controls to allow mixing between a tuned version of the instrument (good for playing with other tuned instruments), a "round robin" version which gives a more "realistic" sound as each trigger of a note plays one of a number of sampled plucks (this is also a tuned version) and a "random" version, which sounds more like playing the actual untuned instrument. There is a control for "spread" which thickens the sound and controls for attack and release time.

As you can see from the photo each tine of the Kalimba has a small piece of tin wrapped around it which vibrates as the tine vibrates giving a distinctive character to the sound. As the accompanying audio demo shows these vibrating bits of tin sound very interesting down a few octaves.

Anyone who owns the Sampler instrument in Ableton can expand Simpler to get access to the individual samples and re-tune or muck around with the "chance" of various tines being struck in the "round robin" channel.



Chuck a guitar amp plugin on the end of it and you will have a pretty good CongoTronics sound happening.

Download Kalimba 50 Rack