Zitherette

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. Our 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. We chose a pluck articulation and captured it very close and dry, in wide stereo.

As always, we’ve packed our 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

We sampled our little zither extensively, as we do with all of our instruments. Each string has an average of 8 velocity layers, with 4 round-robin variations per layer. We 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 its root key and chromatically spread up and down the entire range. We 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.

Kontakt Format

This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument software 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 does not fully support it and can only run it in a time-limited "demo mode". However, the sample directories are unlocked so you can use them in other wav-compatible software, sampler and synth formats. The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab, or import it into the Kontakt database and Quickload tools for easy navigation, loading and organization.

Features

• 1 master NKI instrument banks in open Kontakt format
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
• Multi-sampled acoustic articulations and designed atmospheric ambiences
• 319 stereo samples
• 766 MB Installed
• 24-bit, 48 kHz Stereo PCM Wav Format
• Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator.
• Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments.

System Requirements

The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.5.2 (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 this standard open-format Kontakt library. Windows XP or higher. Mac OSX 10.9 or higher. Dual Core CPU, 3 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library. This software is delivered as a digital download, so a broadband connection is required.