Ancient Greek Strings

Ancient Greek Strings is a fantastic collection of 7 deeply sampled stringed instruments that delve deeply into the historic roots of Western musical traditions, stretching back thousands of years. This library features a Barbiton, Cithara, Lyre, Goat Horn Lyre, Pandura, Phorminx and Trigonon. Crafted of wood, gut and goatskins, these classic musical artefacts capture the sound and spirit of classical Greek civilization at its height.

The influence they have had on modern harps, guitars and zithers is clearly audible and plain to see in these faithful reconstructions. Each piece was hand-crafted by master craftsman Panagiotis Stefos of LyrΑvlos in Athens. Stefos and his team played each instrument, all recorded in exquisite detail by producer John Valasis, with 8 round-robins and 4 dynamic velocities per string.

You'll enjoy Soundiron's flexible GUI features, with independent close and overhead mic positions, a wide selection of chromatic and special effect articulations and a bank of 20 sound-designed ambiences created from the raw acoustic source for added texture and creative potential. Ancient Greek Strings features 15,158 24-bit samples and is 8.23 GB installed.

The Artist

Ancient Greek Strings was recorded by John Valasis. John is a Greek-born composer, producer and sound designer. From his Athens based studio, he delivers scoring, foley and sound design services for many local and international clients. John's clientele includes prestigious brands like Native Instruments, Ableton, Soundiron, Virgin, Amazon Prime Video, Vice Magazine and BBC. John is also part of the roster of Ninja Tune's imprint Just Isn't Music, alongside artists like Amon Tobin, Bonobo, Flying Lotus and The Cinematic Orchestra.

Lyravlos is a historical organization, musical ensemble and research group that recreates authentic bronze age instruments, using the same raw materials as instrument craftsmen in the height of Athens in 430 BC. They are recognised in Greece as well as abroad for a work not only of artistic and educational value but also of important accomplishments in original research. From the Athens Hall of Music and the Warsaw Opera, from the Festival of Old Music in Stockholm and Corcoran Gallery in Washington to the co-operation with the National Orchestra of Athens in the First Greek Musical Celebrations to the participation in the festivities of the 2004 Olympic Games and with Universities as the Boston University, Sorbonne, Ionian University, University of Ioannina, also with more than 400 concerts and seminars in schools of all grades, Lyravlos has become identified to realize the most well-documented effort towards the learning and promotion of the rich Ancient Greek musical tradition. The fundamental aim of Lyravlos is to revive in a scientifically documented manner and to rightly promote the Ancient Greek music, by reconstructing the instruments which give life to the ancient sounds.

Contents

The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over the swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. Soundiron have also included 20 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.

This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Soundiron's customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. Soundiron have included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.

The interface is rounded out by Soundiron's modular FX rack panel, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes Soundiron's favourite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. Soundiron have added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!

Features

• One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format.
• 7 stringed instrument finger plucks, picks, mutes, staccato, FX in close and far mic positions.
• 20 Ambience patches created from the source content.
• 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM .wav samples.
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets.
• 15,158 Stereo WAV files.
• 8.23 GB installed.
• 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

• Windows 7 or higher.
• Mac OSX 10.9 or higher.
• Dual-Core CPU, 2 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.
• Kontakt Full Version 5.5 or later