Early Patches

The sounds of rare acoustic instruments. This unique collection comprises the sounds of 45 different acoustical instruments wich are widely used in the performance of either Early Music and also for world music.
Wind instruments, consort of renaissance flutes and reed instruments, rauschpfeife, panflute, bambooflute, shawm. string instruments, Lutes, Dulcimer, psaltery, early harp. percussion, bells, darabouka, tombak, rig, bendir, tar, kettle drum, davul.

More informations
More informations

Reviews

Sound on Sound 4/2000

Early Patches provides a well-recorded set of medieval and Renaissance instruments in three main categories: Wind, Strings and Percussion. They are available as Soundfonts (for Soundblaster-compatible soundcards), and in TTS and 94b format (both on one CD-ROM for the Terratec EWS64 and Guillemot Maxisound 64 series). The Wind instruments are split into flutes and reeds. The flutes include Renaissance tranverse flute, bamboo flute, pan pipes, a selection of medieval recorders, and a range of gemshorns – shepherds’ flutes made from cowhorn. The reed instruments include various shawms (forerunners to the oboe), kortholts (the name literally means ’short wood’, but sounds rather more interesting!), clarinettinos and dudys (a type of bagpipe with one or two drones). The strings comprise lute, ud (Arabian lute), steel-strung cittern, dulcimer, kanun (oriental zither) and psaltery (medieval zither), along with early medieval harp and Scandinavian nyckelharpa. Percussion is divided into bells and drums. There are various bronze hand bells, temple bells and tubular bells, while drums include darabouka (ceramic hand drum), Persian tombak, Egyptian riq ( a type of tambourine), bendir (Maroccan frame drum), tar (Turkish frame drum), snare drums (with light bodies and skin heads), kettle drum and davul (Turkish bass drum played with beaters). There are 45 instruments in total, many of them are modern reproductions carefully modelled from pictures in ancient books and manuscripts. All the recordings are multisampled; in the case of the wind and string instruments there are up to a dozen or more samples across the appropriate note range to ensure smooth transitions, whereas the drums are all sampled using various playing techniques and special effects such as rimshots, mutes and slaps. The recording quality of all instruments (and the looping of wind and string sounds) is very good, and this has obviously been a labour of love. File sizes are modest for both the drums and wind instruments – between 300K and 4Mb – but multisampled strings are more memory-hungry, ranging from 1.7Mb right up to the dulcimer’s l 3Mb. The CD-ROM not only contains the Soundfonts, but the same instruments as collections of WAV files for use in other sampling environments. A further 15 CD audio tracks put the Soundfonts through their paces, and demonstrate just how realistic the sounds can be in the right hands. For the not so scholarly among us, the CD-ROM also contains very informative Web-based documentation (in both Cerman and English), complete with photographs and descriptions of each instrument. As far as I’m aware, the only other Soundfont collection that includes early acoustic instruments is World Instruments from Emu which includes the entire sound set from the Proteus 3. But while it contains a huge number of traditional sounds from around the world, the samples are much shorter, and there are a lot fewer of them in multisampled form (for instance, the dulcimer is only 368K in size). If you are commissioned to write a historical film score, or just want some new ‘old’ sounds in your songs, Early Patches is a must." Review: Early Patches  Sound On Sound 4/2000"Early Patches provides a well-recorded set of medieval and Renaissance instruments in three main categories: Wind, Strings and Percussion. They are available as Soundfonts (for Soundblaster-compatible soundcards), and in TTS and 94b format (both on one CD-ROM for the Terratec EWS64 and Guillemot Maxisound 64 series). The Wind instruments are split into flutes and reeds. The flutes include Renaissance tranverse flute, bamboo flute, pan pipes, a selection of medieval recorders, and a range of gemshorns – shepherds’ flutes made from cowhorn. The reed instruments include various shawms (forerunners to the oboe), kortholts (the name literally means ’short wood’, but sounds rather more interesting!), clarinettinos and dudys (a type of bagpipe with one or two drones). The strings comprise lute, ud (Arabian lute), steel-strung cittern, dulcimer, kanun (oriental zither) and psaltery (medieval zither), along with early medieval harp and Scandinavian nyckelharpa. Percussion is divided into bells and drums. There are various bronze hand bells, temple bells and tubular bells, while drums include darabouka (ceramic hand drum), Persian tombak, Egyptian riq ( a type of tambourine), bendir (Maroccan frame drum), tar (Turkish frame drum), snare drums (with light bodies and skin heads), kettle drum and davul (Turkish bass drum played with beaters). There are 45 instruments in total, many of them are modern reproductions carefully modelled from pictures in ancient books and manuscripts. All the recordings are multisampled; in the case of the wind and string instruments there are up to a dozen or more samples across the appropriate note range to ensure smooth transitions, whereas the drums are all sampled using various playing techniques and special effects such as rimshots, mutes and slaps. The recording quality of all instruments (and the looping of wind and string sounds) is very good, and this has obviously been a labour of love. File sizes are modest for both the drums and wind instruments – between 300K and 4Mb – but multisampled strings are more memory-hungry, ranging from 1.7Mb right up to the dulcimer’s l 3Mb. The CD-ROM not only contains the Soundfonts, but the same instruments as collections of WAV files for use in other sampling environments. A further 15 CD audio tracks put the Soundfonts through their paces, and demonstrate just how realistic the sounds can be in the right hands. For the not so scholarly among us, the CD-ROM also contains very informative Web-based documentation (in both Cerman and English), complete with photographs and descriptions of each instrument. As far as I’m aware, the only other Soundfont collection that includes early acoustic instruments is World Instruments from Emu which includes the entire sound set from the Proteus 3. But while it contains a huge number of traditional sounds from around the world, the samples are much shorter, and there are a lot fewer of them in multisampled form (for instance, the dulcimer is only 368K in size). If you are commissioned to write a historical film score, or just want some new ‘old’ sounds in your songs, Early Patches is a must."