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.

Excelsior Piano Ableton Instrument Rack

The Excelsior Hall is located in the community of Wonyip in the Strzelecki Ranges in Victoria, Australia. Originally the local school hall from the early 1900's it fell in to disrepair until being rescued by community involvement some years ago. Recently the original piano from the hall was discovered languishing in a local barn and was returned to the renovated hall on the back of a tractor.

Now known as The Excelsior Piano it has been untuned for at least 40 years, however, all of its 80 keys work as do most of the dampers. I made a trip to the hall a couple of weeks ago and did a recording of the piano key by key in various ways and from these recordings have created the Excelsior Piano Rack for Ableton Live.

In the rack each piano key is represented by an individual sample in both long and short versions. The long version is striking the key and holding it down until the decay has finished, the short version is a quick strike of the key and recording until the decay has finished. There is also included a bonus drum rack of effects created by various string scrapes and hits against the piano frame etc.

Owners of Ableton's Sampler instrument can bust open the Simpler instruments and play with tuning the individual notes (good luck!) to make the piano more "playable".

Demo of the Excelsior Piano Sampler/Simpler Rack:



Demo of the Excelsior Piano Effects Drum Rack:




Download The Excelsior Piano Rack here

Comments encouraged.

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

Sunrise Reed Organ - Ableton Live Sampler/Simpler Instrument

The Sunrise Reed Organ is a two and a bit octave plastic reed organ from Japan. It is battery operated and the reeds are driven by an inbuilt fan, the volume being controlled by the speed of the fan. The organ itself has a true, clear reed sound for a toy instrument but what is so nice about this toy is that the fan is quite loud and a distinctive part of the overall character of the sound.

The Ableton Instrument I have created from it includes a sample of each key and a separate sample of the fan drone that has it's own volume control. The reason for a separate sample of the fan is to make it possible for the fan noise to continue when notes aren't being played. I've also added a couple of simple macro assingments - one for the spread of the note samples to thicken the sound and a wet/dry control for a Simple Delay and a Reverb. There is also a control to select Glide - when in glide mode the instrument suddenly transforms into a pretty nice lo-fi portmanteau synth.

Let me know if you find it fun or useful - I'll be posting some more of my instruments in the coming weeks so check back.

Demo of the sound with various settings. Played on the rack not the original instrument.



Download Sunrise Reed Organ