Waterharp

The Soundiron Waterharp is a deeply multi-sampled percussion and effects instrument library that captures the heart and soul of the waterphone. This unique instrument concept was originally developed by Richard Waters in the late 1960s. Waterphones — also commonly known as Water Harps — are found in all shapes and sizes, but they generally follow the same basic design: a brass vessel with a hollow brass water chamber and a long neck. The top side of the chamber is adorned with vertical brass tines or bars. It is played by strumming, striking and bowing these tines, which resonate together creating darkly harmonic or dissonant tones and textures. The tines are cut to specific lengths and arranged to create scales as they wind around the body of the waterphone. Adding water to the chamber and changing the position of the waterphone drastically changes the pitch and harmonics that are produced when the instrument is played. The water chamber itself can also be played as a percussion instrument. Overall, the waterphone can be considered as both a tuned and un-tuned percussion instrument, but is most often used in suspense and horror soundtracks and sound design as a dramatic sound effect tool.

The Soundiron team have played it with lots of different mallets, sticks, metal rods, fingers and palms, bows and even voices to explore every nuance and hidden musical potential of this instrument. They recorded it both empty and full of water. It was even recorded from the inside out using hydrophones (underwater microphones), while being cooked over open flame and while filled with machine screws. And finally, Soundiron created a wide selection of ambient soundscapes, pads, drones, ambiences and atmospheres using the recordings and all manner of creative sound design techniques to take this library to the next level.

Waterharp 3.0 includes an upgraded user interface for both Kontakt 6 (full version 6.2.2) and the free Decent Sampler engine. The presets have been optimised to put each category right at your fingertips, with easy articulation menu loading. Soundiron have also added a new range of deep ambiences, synths and sound-designed atmospheres, all hand-crafted from the original instrument source. 

Features

• Bowing (no water) Slow, Medium, Fast FX
• Bowing sweep (water) Slow, Medium, Fast FX
• Bowing 2-note legato
• Bowing Sustain (with and without water)
• Bowing Staccato
• Bowing FX grinding w/ tine buzz (with and without water)
• Bowing FX w/ magnets
• Bowing FX w/ hydrophone (underwater mic)
• Bowing FX w/vocals
• Bowing FX boiling at four different temperature levels
• Mallet Rubber (6-7 velocity layers – 6 round robin) at +16 tines
• Mallet Metal (6-7 velocity layers – 6 round robin) at +8 tines
• Hand Played “Metal Tabla” (10 velocity layers – 10 round robin) bottom and top
• Wooden Mallet (6-7 velocity layers – 6 round robin) at +20 tines
• Hydro Mallets (6 round robin) at +20 tines
• Rubber, Metal and Wooden Mallet Sweeps (Slow, Medium, Fast)
• Hydro-Vocal drones, phrases and more…
• Custom ambiences, including patches by Steven Tavaglione (Ambient music on Wall-E, American Beauty and more)

Kontakt Format

This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.1 or later. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument / software sampler platform.

Check out screenshots of our custom graphical user interface for Kontakt in the image gallery above. They provide a wide range of sound shaping parameter controls, each one totally automation-ready in your host environment or Kontakt's stand-alone mode.

This is a standard Kontakt open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library. However, the sample directories are fully accessible to allow user customization, import and mapping into other wav-compatible software, sampler and synth formats. Click Here to learn about the differences between the full unlocked version of Kontakt and limited Kontakt Player.

The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab, or import this library into the Kontakt database and Quickload tools for easy navigation, loading and organization.

Product Specifications

• 8.9 GB installed 
• 3,017 Samples 
• 21 Kontakt 6.6.2 .nki instrument presets 
• 15 Decent Sampler 1.11.18 .nki instrument presets 
• 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed PCM wav audio 
• Unlocked Kontakt and Decent Sampler presets and wav samples to allow complete flexibility and freedom 
• 100+ Bonus Pads, Soundscapes and Atmospheres 
• Dozens of custom convolution reverb impulses with a variety of different room, hall and special effect acoustic environments. 

System Requirements

The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 6.2.2 (or later) is required to use .nki instrument presets included in this library. The free Kontakt "Player" and "Add Library" import process do not support these standard open-format Kontakt libraries. The free Decent Sampler engine is required to use the .dspreset instrument presets included in this library. 

• Windows 7 or higher.
• Mac OSX 10.12 or higher for Kontakt.
• Mac OSX 10.9 or higher for Decent Sampler.
• Linux x86 64bit supported for Decent Sampler.
• Multi-Core CPU, 3 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.