Rare Instruments Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars
(QUANTUM LEAP AKAI/GIGASAMPLER CD‑ROM SET)
If you want to add ethnic flavour to your music, there are various sample CDs containing traditional phrases for cutting and pasting into compositions. In some cases the recordings sound as if they were captured out of the window of a still‑moving tourist coach, but nearly all limit your possibilities, since it's almost impossible to timestretch or pitch‑shift them far. You really need multisampled instruments that you can play yourself, but with articulations and performance flourishes played by talented musicians and mapped in for easy access.
Enter Rare Instruments, a three‑CD set covering the Far East, Middle East/India, and Europe. It's not totally comprehensive — you'd need several CDs per country for that — but instead concentrates on capturing the full expressive possibilities of a limited selection of ethnic instruments.
From the Far East comes a 34‑inch Chinese Gong, for the classic 'big' sound, while the 23‑inch Thai Gong provides a mid‑range tone. Both are played with large mallets, sticks, and hammer, in a variety of ways. The Taiko drums have been recorded with various mic techniques, including the floor‑shaking Thunder and Earthquake versions! The final two representatives from this region are the melancholy Erhu (a two‑stringed Chinese fiddle), and the evocative 10‑foot Tibetan Rag Dung trumpet.
The highlight of the Middle East and India collection for me was the Duduk. This small wooden reeded instrument is normally accompanied by a second player blowing a continuous drone, while the first plays the melody with ornaments and flourishes. These are articulated using keyswitching, and there are three collections of 'licks' to load in, as well as a separate drone. There are two stringed instruments — a Middle Eastern fiddle and an Indian Sarangi with four main strings and twelve sympathetic ones. Both provide authentic sounds that work far better if you understand the scales of the region. Tablas complete the second CD‑ROM, the low tones of the copper Baya complementing the higher ones of the wooden Tabla, with a variety of hits, rolls, and rim shots in various positions on the heads, mapped so that you can play each drum sound with one hand.
The Europe CD provides an eclectic selection including an Alpenhorn, Gadulka (bowed three‑string Bavarian fiddle with sympathetic strings), Scottish Bagpipes, a triple pipe instrument from Sardinia called the Launeddas, and the Hurdy Gurdy, which bows the strings with a course wheel and stops the strings with keys (it's played rather like an accordion). However, for me the twin peaks of the collection were the Irish Low Whistle and the Uilleann Pipes — both played in a variety of articulations using keyswitching, and capable of producing magnificent results.
Sound quality is excellent. Many samples are unlooped and up to 15 seconds long, while others are looped, but always cleanly. Smooth velocity switching is also used, for the percussion in particular. Quantum Leap have taken some liberties, such as stretching fixed pitch instruments over several octaves, and extending the pitch range of others, but I approve of extracting the full potential from any sound, and the manual gives authentic keys for purists. Overall, this is an excellent library destined to feature in many a film soundtrack, and is the most expressive collection of ethnic instruments I've heard to date. Martin Walker