Meeks: I thought that the folks at Impact Soundworks captured the essence of the instrument really well, but I also made sure that they added the tone knob, which is an important part of the harpejji. This way, we were able to make use of the larger pool of samples whilst offering extra tonal possibilities. In the end we opted to go with a system that lets the user select whether to use the bass strings, treble strings, or both, as well as layering in neighbouring strings to create a sort of acoustic chorus sound. But because the harpejji is very unique, and can be played in many different ways, neither of these approaches was 100% perfect. With our Shreddage guitar series, we have several recordings of the same pitch on different strings, so we use a virtual hand & fret selection algorithm to pick the best sample.
With a piano, for example, it’s easy: you hit C4 on your MIDI controller and a C4 sample is played. How did you deal with programming and playing back these samples in a realistic way?Īversa: That was a real dilemma because the harpejji is like a cross between a piano and a guitar. We ended up using a more guitar-like technique of lightly resting one palm on the string while tapping with the other hand, which tamps down the decay while retaining the bass and body of the sound. This means that using a physical mute (like a piece of cloth) wouldn’t work. Also, because of how the pickups of the Harpejji are designed, if your hand or finger is not on the string, the signal will stop. The tricky part is that anytime you mute a string, you change the pitch. How did you capture the distinctive muted timbre?Īversa: We experimented with different techniques. This is something that can’t be easily emulated (unlike vibrato or pitch bends) so I’m glad we did it this way, even though it was time consuming. For the slides, or “Short Legato” as we call it in the UI, we performed semi and whole-tone slides up and down each sampled fret on each string. To capture the range of tones possible from the bass to treble strings, we used a guitar-style sampling approach of recording one octave per string, which gave us loads of overlap and therefore lots of flexibility for playback. It turns out that using a pick didn’t sound very different from the regular tapping method, but we were able to get a lovely warm sound by palm muting.
#Shreddage 3 vs electri6ity how to#
But there are two most common types of playing style, regular string tapping as well as finger-muted tapping.Īversa: Deciding how to play the harpejji for the purposes of a sample library was quite the challenge. Meeks: There are a number of ways to perform the harpejji, from picking to strums and harmonics. How did you go about capturing the unique playing style of the harpejji? Tuning was the most important consideration, since any stringed instrument will naturally start detuning as you strike the strings. Our focus was solely on a pristine, transparent signal chain consisting of just a pre-amp and audio interface. It has two separate outputs, one for the 8 bass strings and another for the 16 treble strings.Īversa: The advantage of these direct outputs is that you don’t need to worry about external noise or mic selection. This is the largest harpejji model with the biggest note range (A0 to A5), 24 strings and 15 frets. It introduced a new onboard preamp that gave each string its own channel with independent electronic muting, volume compensation and EQ. Meeks: This harpejji, the K24, was only the second harpejji model to go to market. What are the considerations for sampling such an unusual instrument?
#Shreddage 3 vs electri6ity license#
So we gave Impact Soundworks the green light to license it. If their first introduction to the harpejji is this great sounding sample set, it could only be a positive thing for Marcodi. I figured that there would be people who would encounter their software-based instrument without having any prior knowledge of the harpejji. Meeks: Andrew sent some samples to me and I thought they sounded really great. The idea of sampling the instrument occurred naturally as I spent time with it, since I was enjoying hooking it up to my DAW and experimenting with all sorts of FX processing. As it turns out, they’re based not more than an hour from where I live. We’ve also done hundreds of custom paint jobs and even complete vinyl overlays, which is really fun because the harpejji is such a big canvas for bespoke artwork.Īversa: As soon as I got home from the show I ordered a custom one for myself from Marcodi. Tim Meeks (Marcodi Musical Products): We make our instruments from birch, hard rock maple and bamboo and they each have a slightly different sound. From an aesthetic point of view it’s also a really beautiful instrument in many eye-catching designs. Andrew Aversa (Impact Soundworks): I first saw a harpejji ‘in person’ at the music trade show NAMM, and was instantly fascinated with its unique design and tone.
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