Cyclick Samples - Pizzicato Pleasures [WAV | NKI] -Sin

Initially I had planned to scour my hard drives for raw materials for
this samples set: fragments of plucked violins/violas/cellos from old
multitracks, classic synth plucks, that kind of thing. Then I remembered
a friend round the corner from the studio has a celtic harp we'd used
for a recent album, and so just hours later it arrived. After some time
tuning and settling it was ready to be mic'ed up and plucked.

Though 'pizzicato' is associated with the plucking of normally bowed
instruments, or a muted pluck of a stringed instrument that usually rings
out, the harp was on the original list of instruments for this sample set.

I had thought I'd be using the harp for just half the set, but before
I knew it I'd amassed a wealth of raw materials that then took the rest
of the allotted time to edit down.

The end result is a triple velocity layered multisample in five mic setups:
a two mic stereo mix, a three mic stereo mix and the three individual mics
in mono format. Each of these was processed differently (EQ and a touch of
parallel compression to help the sustain) to enhance their main characteristics.
There is a set of chords in one stereo and two mono mixes. These are mostly in
pairs or triplets with higher and lower register versions. The classic harp sound,
that of the glissando or swept pluck, is of course present. These are in 'up'
and 'down' sweeps (up was easier than down, so they dominatein the set) in
three keys: C major, C minor and C harmonic minor (minor with a major 7th).

As a key change requires retuning there wasn't time to do sets in other keys,
but the harp pitch shifts nicely. Also, C major uses the same notes as A minor,
and C minor is the same as Eb major; nothing else uses the same notes as
C harmonic major, but it sounds lovely!

The samples are all kept dry (no FX, verb, etc.) so you can treat them how
you want – there is nothing like a load of delay, phaser and reverb on a
harp glissando. Tucking a multisampled harp behind a synth patch can
reap beautiful rewards too – they're not just for movie dream sequences you know!

All Kontakt instruments (version 5) have a highpass filter assigned to the
Mod Wheel (MIDI CC#01), a lowpass assigned to MIDI CC#74, and an amplitude
modulation LFO assigned to Aftertouch.