Fracture Sounds ARCO: Bowed and Plucked Piano Ensemble KONTAKT-DECiBEL

Team DECiBEL | 31 May 2021 | 5.52GB

Arco is a beautiful ensemble of four pianos, meticulously sampled in a concert hall with a range of bowed and plucked articulations. Arco is perfect for dramatic swells, shimmering textures and lush melodic lines. Over a year in the making, and the first of its kind, Arco’s unique sonic flavours will be a welcome addition to any composer’s toolbox. Runs in Kontakt 5.3 or above.

The sound of Arco could be described as a hybrid between a piano and a string ensemble. We took four pianos (two grands and two uprights), put them in a concert hall and performed each note with a range of techniques. After weeks of planning and experimenting, we settled on using nylon fishing line, coated in two types of rosin – bass rosin for the lower range and cello rosin for the upper range.

In addition to bowed articulations, the library also contains ensemble plucks, a specially scripted plucked tremolo, and a range of atonal and aleatoric FX and glissandi.

Developed with the modern film, TV and game composer in mind, Arco is extremely playable out-of-the-box, and features a clean, accessible user interface for controlling the performance.

The Recording
We spent 3 days in a modern concert hall recording studio, recording the ensemble with 20 top-shelf microphones (including Neumann, DPA, Royer, Coles and Schoeps), through a pristine signal path (D.A.V. pre-amps, RME converters). The hall we chose features a deliciously rich, thick, yet fairly short reverb tail, perfect for creating a sense of distance while being dry enough to add your own reverb to taste. The three included microphone mixes make it easy to dial in the perfect sound for your music, and the unique ‘perspective’ control gives you a single slider to easily shift between a close or distant mix.

The Patches
Main Patches
ARCO – Bowed Sustains.nki
ARCO – Spiccato.nki
ARCO – Soft Spiccato.nki
ARCO – Plucks.nki
ARCO – Plucked Tremolo.nki
ARCO – Glissando Effects.nki

Economical Patches (reduced voice count)
Bowed Sustains (Open).nki
Bowed Sustains (Muted).nki
Bowed Sustains (Super Eco).nki
Bowed Sustains (Hyper Eco).nki
Plucked Tremolo (Eco).nki

Separate ribbon mic patches are also included, which give a thicker, warmer character to the sound.

Patch ranges: C1 to E5 (Bowed), G1 to G6 (Plucked).

Features
– Meticulously recorded in a modern concert hall environment.
– 3 mixable microphone positions, including our easy perspective mixer.
– Separate ribbon mic patches for a warmer character.
– Range of inspiring articulations: Sustain, soft and hard spiccato, plucked, and tremolo.
– Atonal/Aleatoric effects.
– Smooth dynamic morphing with the mod wheel.
– ‘Texture’ control for morphing between different performance styles.
– Simple and user-friendly interface.
– High quality 24-Bit samples.
– 6GB download size (NCW compressed from 11GB sample pool).
– Requires the full version of Kontakt 5.3 or above.