Never been that fond of sample CD's or the increasingly common sample CD released as a virtual instrument. They tend to be a bit too specific, can work well together but often it's hard to find sounds that could be used elsewhere. They can also be expensive, justified by the enormous library in which you can only find a handful of really usable sounds. So it wasn't with enormous enthusiasm that I responded to Cinematique Instruments offer to try some of their samples. Glancing at their list of instruments I was immediately roused from my apathy by the odd mix – it was a small selection but very unexpected. No less unexpected was the price – a handful of Euros for individual instruments, this is much more like it. This is how they describe themselves - “Cinematique Instruments is a brand new library of rare and unique instruments. Our goal is to create expressive and powerful tools for people who are writing music. No matter what kind of music... “

I'm not going to go into massive detail on each instrument but hopefully give you a flavour of what I found interesting about the instruments, the quality and their approach. These are all instruments for Kontakt 3 and above and as Kontakt sorts them alphabetically i'm going to start with the Autoharp.

Autoharp

In case you're not familiar an Autoharp is a stringed zither type instrument that you strum or pick that has  buttons over the top for selecting chords – these mute out the strings not in that chord. Clever and simple. You get 7 instruments within the set, the first being the range of chords the rest being single notes in various articulations. There's also a bonus “draft” instrument that has some weird and spooky chords on it and actually I liked this one best of all! For usability though the single notes are fabulous. The “Single Deluxe” is the pure, individually sampled strings, with just a couple of layers but great sound, great sustain. You have to hit them quite hard to reach the top layer but it gives exactly the right expression. Not content with giving you just the instrument Cinematique also like to mess about. There's a “Percussive” instrument which uses timpani mallets on the strings and a Tremolo which is routed through a guitar amp giving a very plucked organ sound – interesting and perhaps this might be a recurring theme, a bit of character, which is nice. It's their most expensive instrument at €25 which means they probably spent the most time on this and consider it their finest achievement. I can certainly say that I will be using this sound, without a doubt – all over the place.

If I had to find a criticism, and this would be common of all their instruments, is that they don't make much use of the power of Kontakt. They use a bit of mod wheel for changing the attack, and some key switches in the chord styles but there's a whole lot more that could be done to provide a range of presets to delight and interest people.

Baritone Ukulele Muted

First question – but why? It's a weird thing to do. In the documentation they simply say that they had a lot of fun with this instrument and weren't interested in doing the whole thing – just the muted sound. When you play it it's actually quite good. There's four velocity levels that give it a nice range of sounds  - it's the mallet version that really does it for me, very soft and warm with a bit of a squeak.

Percussion

There's nine separate instruments in the percussion section including a “Percussion Set1” which is like a “best of” although actually the individual instruments are more fleshed out. I'd like to see them do a bundle of these lot together but it's just as valid to let you choose exactly what you want. All these drums and bells sound fabulous, the quality is truly excellent. There's bongos, chimes, guiro, ocean drum, shaker, spring drum and tambourine, plus something called “Metall (sic) Objects”. For me the chimes stand out mainly because you so rarely get anything more than a glissando whereas here you get individual notes with whatever neighbouring chime gets hit plus some very interesting Kontakt programming that creates an alternative note on release along with controls over delay, tone and reverb – I don't quite know how to explain it and the included documentation is very brief, but there you are – best chimes i've ever heard. This sort of “release” function is used on some of the other sounds like the shaker where you get a shake on press and another on release – this works really well for me and you can actually get a sound of a shaker being shaken back and forth rather than shaken once and then the same again (I know what I mean by that even if i'm not getting it across very well!). The Metallic Objects were quite good – you could do your own “Stomp” performance. What was there was definitely well recorded and very usable but I felt it could do with a bit more content.

Glass

Moving on to another sort of percussion instrument but not usually found in an orchestra section -a bunch of glasses. This was the first instrument I tried as it instantly caught my attention and I certainly wasn't disappointed. The finger rim rubbing is sublime, a wonderfully engaging and yet icy sound that can become a genuinely glassy pad. You also have mallets which are great, if less remarkable and for some reason they thought it would sound good with a rotary effect and so they dropped that in too. The sustained notes though are almost, for me, the best sound in the whole range.

Rhodes Mark 1

So what is the best sound in this eclectic collection? The “Rhodes Mark 1 amped”. It's just so dirty, so lively, so broken as to create this amazing sense of a real, loved and played to death instrument. Without the amp simulator it's a lovely, warm Rhodes. It doesn't have the sparkle of the more common Mark II but it's an absolute joy to play. You've got like one sound, with or with an amp, with or without tremolo but it's gorgeous. I used all sorts of Rhodes emulations and samples, Kontakt has a pretty decent Mk 2 itself, so does Dimension and of course there's the Lounge Lizard from Applied Acoustics but I feel they've captured something pretty unique here, warts and all. It's €19 – for the best Rhodes around, bargain!

Kantele

Hmmm this is weird one, it's a plucked instrument from Finland and Estonia that sounds great but has this weird tuning problem at high velocity, although of course, it's not a problem, it's how it's supposed to be :)
At this point you realise how helpful the website demo songs are as they show you exactly how they can be used.

Magnus Harmonica Organ

Top marks for comedic value but it's a noisy beast. Sounds like an accordion or a harmonium I suppose but essentially it's a childs toy that's occasionally used by crazy, arty indie bands on stage – ha ha, how very ironic etc etc. It's a faithful sample set plus a couple of patches with rotary effects to jazz it up a bit. It is what it is.

Super Sound EK-470

Similarly this is a rubbishy old electronic home keyboard and you can hear every squeak, creak and buzz. If you're after making some low-fi 8bit tunes then maybe this is for you. They added some effects to make some pretty cool sounds if you like that kind of thing. I get the feeling that the Magnus and this were some of their early attempts at instrument sampling, and they did a marvellous job but i'm thankful they've moved onto more interesting instruments.

Zeitter & Winkelmann Piano

This is the old piano they have knocking around at the studio. It demonstrates the quality of the work put into creating these instruments. It has such a playable sound, the layering is excellent, the dyanamics and “feel” is superb. There's a bit of noise when sustaining which is probably vibrations in the body of the piano rather than outside intrusions so it makes for an interesting piano – but absolutely it sounds like a “real” piano.

Cinematique Instruments have a unique and expanding collection of esoteric, rare and weird instruments. The recording quality is excellent and the playability is top notch. They could do more with Kontakt to create a wider range of presets but for the price you get a faithful recreation of the instrument that nothing can touch. The Rhodes, as I mentioned, really stood out for me and I watch with interest to see what comes next. Two more isntruments have already been introduced since I started looking, a Bowed Psaltery and something called “Downbeat Box” which looks very interesting indeed.



I've had a great time checking these out and can heartily recommend them to anyone after something unexpectedly delightful.

http://www.cinematique-instruments.com