Street Erhu
$49.00
The Street Erhu is a truly unique live-performance phrase library featuring over 4600 high-quality traditional Chinese Erhu violin phrases. The Erhu is a traditional 2-string violin dating back more than a thousand years, likely originating from Mongolia. The instrument has a small hollow snake or goat-skinned cylindrical resonating body and a long thin neck with no fingerboard. It is played upright in the performer’s lap, with the bow passed between the strings. Bow contact on the strings is never broken, giving the erhu it’s distinctly sinuous playing style.Weighing in at over 6 GB of content, this collection covers 8 different Erhu violins, ranging from bass to treble and in a variety of tunings. This one-of-a-kind library combines the authenticity of an emotive street musician with granular deep sampling fully controllable through their powerful custom user interface.
For the creation of Street Erhu, they worked with veteran street performer Qi Xin Huang and local Erhu craftsman Kenneth Lam. Qi Xin’s playing is raw, emotive and authentic, evoking a traditional flavor not possible with a sterile and overly rigid performance. Each erhu in this library offers its own unique flavor, creating a palette of different sounds fit for any stylistic need.
CONTENTS
- 1 Bass Erhu – 1,328 phrases
- 6 Mid Erhus – 2,543 phrases (combined)
- 1 Treble Erhu – 341 phrases
- City Street – 12 songs
- Subway Station – 40 songs
This Street Erhu features 83 presets for Kontakt. There are 1328 bass erhu, 2543 mid-range erhu and 341 treble erhu phrases recorded in a dry studio environment, plus 398 bowing and fingering sfx. There are also 12 additional songs recorded live on busy city streets and 40 songs recorded in a bustling underground subway station. They’ve also included 48 ambiences created from the source material allowing users to experiment with a wide range of soundscapes and FX. As always there is a range of automatable LFO, EQ, filter, custom convolution and sound-shaping systems to expand on the creative possibilities that this library offers.
Each distinct erhu set features a variety of songs and motifs, with between 24 – 36 phrases per song spread over the keyboard in standard fashion. New songs can also be selected and loaded instantly using selector key-switches or the song selection menu. There’s also a built-in 40-step phrase sequencer with multiple playback modes that pops out when you need it. They provide complete control over tone, note attack and release, start offset, playback speed, pitch shifting, legato mode with adjustable cross-fading, bowing sfx, crescendo swelling, and volume & resonant filter LFO effects with adjustable shape, rate and synch, with full automation support on all parameters. Current phrase playback and offset start positions are conveniently and clearly displayed in the waveform window. You can also instantly set the erhu into a wide range of real acoustic environments and special effects is easy with their fully integrated convolution impulse selector.
