Geosonics is a collaboration between legendary field recordist Chris Watson and Soniccouture. Hundreds of hours of recording time, in some of the worlds most extreme and inhospitable environments. Oct 15, 2016 SonicCouture Skiddaw Stones for Ableton Live v9.6.2 ALP-SYNTHiC4TE has been exclusively released on AudioZ by Horsemen who chose to ask not to post mirrors. Please respect the uploader's wishes. Horsemen − +8 + 4151 / 1. Soniccouture The Skiddaw Stones v2.0.0 KONTAKT. Native Instruments Kontakt 6 v6.2.2 UPDATE FiXED / v6.2.2 WiN MacOSX. The official SoundCloud of Ableton. We make Ableton Live, a unique environment for producing and performing music with a computer. You can find samples of Ableton Instruments, Partner Instruments.

Despite the title, this isn't the debut CD of a Cumbrian '60s tribute band. It is, in fact, another of Soniccouture's increasingly frequent excursions into the weird and wonderful world of exotic tuned percussion. The back story is fascinating: back in the 18th century it was noted that the local stones of Skiddaw in the Lake District sounded particularly resonant when struck, spurring amateur musician James Richardson to collect enough of them to produce a fully chromatic, multi‑octave xylophone‑style instrument, which he and his three sons learned to play. In 1840 the Richardsons set off on a 'Musical Stones' tour which almost rivalled those of Jagger, Richards and company in popularity: in fact, the concerts proved so successful that the men didn't return home for three years — a situation many 'rock wives' (sorry) will be familiar with.

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Headlined 'Monstre Rock Band', an 1846 newspaper concert ad states that the sound of the instrument ranges from the 'alleged warble of a lark” to the 'deep bass of a funeral bell”. I heard no birds or bells while playing the samples, but what struck me was the unmistakable (once you've heard it it) sound of a lithophone, hard and chippy on the surface while retaining a pure, melodious fundamental tone like that of a marimba. Though displaying a somewhat primitive ethnic flavour, the sound is musical and far from unsophisticated.

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Soniccouture hired local musician Chris Stones (!) to play the stones with wooden and rubber mallets. Five octaves were chromatically sampled at up to 12 velocities per note (an unusually high number for a tuned percussion instrument) and multiple 'round robin' alternations, generating nearly 5000 samples that occupy 2.5GB. The wooden hits are bright and clangorous, reminiscent of the sound of a Balinese gamelan metallophone, and just as effective for strident rhythm patterns and lead lines. Rubber mallets give a softer peal, like a cross between a ceramic wind chime and a bass marimba, and their low velocities are ideal for rippling rhythm patterns and ostinatos.

Taking advantage of the pre‑industrial, rough‑hewn surface of the stones, a set of slithery, scraped performances have a strangely liquid, undulating effect, which, when played chordally, can create some great soundscapes. As usual, Soniccouture provide an entertaining Kontakt 'jammer' script, which creates automatic, random single‑note arpeggiaic rhythm patterns. Users can control the note and octave range of the arpeggios as well as their speed and note value. Ableton Live and Logic EXS24 versions are also included, the former with its own arpeggiator.

Limited access to this priceless historic instrument prevented Soniccouture from sampling a greater range of performances, making it slightly less versatile than a lot of the sampled percussion on the market. But in terms of its playability, musicality, depth of sampling, programming and unique, one‑off sound, it's a five‑star product. Dave Stewart

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Skiddaw Stones Ableton Download Free

The Skiddaw Stones are probably the most unusual and certainly the oldest instrument that Soniccouture has sampled. A Lithophone (litho=stone, phone=voice) dating from 1840, the Skiddaw Stones are composed of 61 tuned and shaped rocks made from the rare hornfels stone, found in Cumbria, England. Chauvet dj hurricane 1800. Hornfels is said to have a superior tone and a longer ring than the more commonly used slate.

It took their creator, Joseph Richardson, a stonemason and musician, almost thirteen years to collect and shape enough individual notes of hornfels to make an eight-octave range. The task of assembling this instrument consumed Joseph so absolutely that he and his family were reduced to poverty. When the instrument was completed, Richardson and his sons toured Europe as The Rock, Bell and Steel Band, and even performed at Buckingham Palace by command of Queen Victoria.

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The Skiddaw Stones currently reside at the Keswick Museum, who very kindly agreed to let us take them off site, to a studio, for the recording. As the stones are insured for £350,000, this was no casual undertaking. At the studio, two sets of mallets were used to laboriously capture large sets of velocity hits, then an extra articulation was recorded--the sound of the head of the wooden mallet being scraped across the stone surface, a surprisingly haunting and resonant sound. The result is an absolutely bewitching instrument, one that sounds truly ancient, even older than it is. Totally unique rock music.