Invented over 125 years ago, the celesta remains a nicely obscure yet fascinating instrument: It sports a vibrant, mellow and charming sound remeniscent of a vibraphone, glockenspiel, marimba and a piano – yet a sound of its own.

Edition Beurmann - French Harpsichord

The French Harpsichord library features a double-manual instrument by renowned French builder Nicolas Pigalle. The instrument – built in Dijon in 1771 – features an “enchanting sound with singing clarity and a substantial bass”, as Professor Beur-mann explains. These qualities - along with its huge tone which also manages to bring out its deli-cate, sophisticated finesse and detail – make it is an excellent representation of the French style. “It is one of only two surviving harpsichords from Dijon, a city once so rich in musical tradition, the other also being by Pigalle.”, he continues.

Edition Beurmann - Italian Harpsichord II

The Italian Harpsichord II library features an instrument built around 1590 by an anonymous maker. Being very typical for the Italian style, the instrument features a housing seperated from the painted cabinet. Furthermore, the instrument - which had been owned by the Australian opera singer Joan Sutherland - sports a special feature: The housing is not bearing directly on the cabinet, but on two ledges below the ribs. This allows for the under-body to resonate.

Edition Beurmann - English Spinet II

The English Spinet II library features an instrument built by Benjamin Slade in London around 1705. Slade´s spinets were essential to the history of the instrument. He had apprentices such as Thomas Hitchcock (see English Spinet library). The sampled instrument shows the qualities for which Slade is known, offering a very sweet-sounding yet majestic and brilliant tone. Only one spinet and one harpsichord of his instruments has survived.

True Strike 1 Orchestral Percussion

This new, re-released version of TRUE STRIKE has been completely re-designed for the Kontakt format and comes with Native Instruments Kontakt Player 3.5. New features include a re-structured instrument list, a streamlined audio pool and a custom interface with on-screen ADSR control, instrument information and other options. True Strike is ProjectSAM´s distinctive percussion series, the ultimate percussion source for film, tv, game and media composers. True Strike "Cinematic Orchestral Percussion" is the first in the series, covering symphonic percussion. Recorded in the familiar ProjectSAM concert setting, it is the most powerful sounding and versatile orchestral percussion library available.

True Strike 2 World & Effects Percussion

This new, re-released version of TRUE STRIKE 2 has been completely re-designed for the Kontakt format and comes with Native Instruments Kontakt Player 3.5. New features include a re-structured instrument list, a streamlined audio pool and a custom interface with on-screen ADSR control, instrument information and other options. True Strike is ProjectSAM´s distinctive percussion series, the ultimate percussion source for film, tv, game and media composers. True Strike 2 "Cinematic World and Effects Percussion" is the second in the series, covering a powerful set of ethnic instruments and a wide range of percussive effects, such as bowed cymbals and traileresque big bangs.

Edition Beurmann - German Lautenwerck

The German Lautenwerck library brings a long-gone instrument into your sampler: The Lautenwerck - or Lute-Harpsichord - was one of Johann Sebastian Bach´s favourite instruments. Despite 50 Lautenwerck builders in Germany, not a single instrument survived throughout the centuries. When the instruments had vanished, the awareness had gone as well: Only a couple of decades ago, musicologists found out that such an instrument had existed, solving the mystery of scores mentioning being written for Lautenwercke. Until then, one would have guessed that the composer meant a regular lute instrument by that notion. When the knowledge of it had resurfaced, Professor Beurmann had a reconstruction built by Ludwig Richter in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

German Celesta

Realsamples - release date:04.12.2012

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Invented over 125 years ago, the celesta remains a nicely obscure yet fascinating instrument: It sports a vibrant, mellow and charming sound remeniscent of a vibraphone, glockenspiel, marimba and a piano – yet a sound of its own.

At that time, it was inspiring to those looking for a new sound – Pjotr Tschaikowsky wrote some parts of his Nutcracker for a celesta. Its predecessor, the Dulcitone was rather quiet and unappropriate for orchestral use, whereas the Celesta offers rich harmonics and bell-like tone that chimes with force.

Back then, no one had ever dreamt that a celesta would be as relevant today as ever – being the acoustic ancestor of the most popular vintage electric pianos, which share the same basic sound principles. Providing a warm and full bass, it carries more weight than a toy piano and is great for any track demanding an unconsumed yet familiar sound.

The instrument out of the Beurmann collection was built by Schiedmayer™ in Stuttgart around 1960. It cost a fortune, and it still does, so there’s only few concert halls and opera houses which keep one around. The celesta is rather tough to play, offering a very tight and limited dynamic response. This is due to the hammers not touching moving strings but steel plates. However, the dynamics are more pronounced than with a Dulcitone, for example, since the hammers’ lever stroke is considerably higher with the celesta. The steel plates are oppositely placed in the housing instead of juxtaposed placement. The result: Neighbouring keys find their tones evolved from throughout the panorama that way which makes for a nice overall stereo experience.

Capturing the dynamic shades of the instrument, we recorded every note with 16 different samples. We recorded the release sounds as well, providing 8 varitions of each key release sound to complete the virtual celesta.

To start right away, presets are available for all common sample formats including HAlion®, Kontakt2® and higher, EXS24® and GigaStudio3®.

For the critical task of recording the celesta, we employed custom-made Wagner™ U47w® tube microphones in conjunction with Crane Song™ Flamingo® preamps and Universal Audio™ 2192® digital converters to do the instrument justice. For maximum sound quality, we recorded in 192 kHz/24 bits resolution, downsampled to 44.1 kHz/24 bits.

In addition to the samples, the library contains an essay in English from Professor Andreas E. Beurmann himself, explaining both the historical and musical background of the instrument.
The sample library contains nearly 1200 single samples.

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This Multi Format Library does not include any software to play the sounds on your computer. Moving your mouse over * Multi Format Library in the product header will highlight all the included formats. Any compatible software is required to load and play the sounds of this library.

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