Zitherette
$17.40
This enchanting little instrument is a simple 8-string fretless zither, roughly 12 x 20 inches in size. Zithers are a broad family of hollow-bodied string instruments common throughout all of Europe and Asia. Variants range from the dulcimer to the Koto, with countless other flavors unique to each region and culture. Common to each of them is the arrangement of multiple strings over a neck-less soundbox. The oldest known variant of the zither family dates back to 4th century B.C China. Their particular hand-held zither has a smooth, dark tone, with a clean biting attack and long, natural decay. At it’s softest, it has a pristine, almost harp-like sound, while the hardest notes bend deeply at the attack, with a pronounced twang. They chose a pluck articulation and captured it very close and dry, in wide stereo.
As always, they’ve packed their custom user interface with lots of great sound-shaping controls that give you the flexibility to warp the shape in many ways. You have control over Volume Swell, Attack, Release, Transient Offset, Vibrato, Filters, Tuning, articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more.
CONTENTS
They sampled their little zither extensively, as we do with all of their instruments. Each string has an average of 8 velocity layers, with 4 round-robin variations per layer. They also captured palm mute release triggers, with 2 velocities and 4 round robins per note. The full pluck and palm mute articulations are chromatically mapped with all 8 notes. In addition, each individual note is accessible as a single articulation, mapped to it’s root key and chromatically spread up and down the entire range. They created a variety of custom sound-designed FX patches, extending the creative possibilities even further.
Multisampled articulations:
- 8 individual string pluck articulations, mapped in a chromatic ensemble.
- 8 individual string palm mute articulations, mapped in a chromatic ensemble.
- Individual pluck and palm mute single note articulation, tuned up and down the entire key range.
Powerful GUI Features:
- 4 sound-designed atmospheric ambiences with multiple layers.
- LFO system with selectable shape, target, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in controls.
- 12 filter types assignable to velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and sequencer.
- Advanced arpeggiator system.
- Play-assist features with key and scale locking.
- Modular FX rack window, with 18 DSP effect modules to choose from, including 99 custom environmental and FX reverb presets.
