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A new wheel of sound begins to turn

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Rotating Strings VSTi for music production

We’re excited to introduce Wheel of Strings, our new virtual instrument for composers. It’s built from the sound of master luthier Guido Falke’s hurdy-gurdies, but it’s not a strict 1:1 hurdy-gurdy recreation.
 
Instead, Wheel of Strings is designed as an expressive pad and texture instrument:
evolving drones, airy harmonic beds, subtle movement and organic grit.
Plus more synth-like tones and plucky, bright sounds that work beautifully for arpeggios. 
All captured purely from the original hurdy-gurdy recordings and made playable as a modern scoring tool.
 

Introducing Wheel Of Strings for NI Kontakt

Main Page

Wheel of Strings runs on the same two-layer engine you know from Spiral Strings.
It’s divided into Layer A and Layer B with identical controls per layer, so you can design contrasting timbres and morph between them fluidly. Users of Spiral Strings will feel instantly at home, load, play, and start sculpting without a learning curve.
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Movements & Modulation

Shape evolving textures with our flexible modulation system: three LFOs, two Step Sequencers, and cross-modulation options let you animate drones, bow-noise, buzz, and synth-like sounds. Route modulation to key parameters on both the Main and Effects pages to move from steady underscore to restless motion in seconds.

Effects

Polish or push the sound using the built-in processing chain, filters, distortion and tape-style saturation complement the raw instrument tone. The highlight remains our true-stereo convolution workflow, placing the gurdy in characterful spaces for intimate, cinematic depth.
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Impressions

Tutorials

True stereo convolution

We captured premium IRs, from selected hardware, rooms and landscapes, and optimized them for musical playability. The result is a convincing sense of size and space that enhances detail without masking the nuanced bow and wheel articulation.
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  • 12 play styles: select 1 of 10 articulations. Independent Drone and Trompette layers are permanently mapped to the lower and upper keyboard ranges, respectively.
  • The same as in Spiral Strings, No pre-recorded phrases, fully playable.
    Wheel of Strings was sampled note-by-note. What you hear are long, expressive sustains with rich overtones, wheel noise and subtle movement, not locked riffs. Because the material isn’t bound to fixed phrases, you can play any key, any scale, and sculpt textures in real time.
  • Three round robins of 10-25 second long files
  • Three microphone positions – recorded with low-noise sounddesign mics and vintage and modern Hi-End gear grails 
  • Uncommon True Stereo Reverb engine with our own crazy IR’s 

In collaboration with Olof Johnsson, a professional voice artist known for his work in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies,” we have captured an incredible range of realistic creature sounds. Olof’s mesmerizing performance left us in awe, and we believe he possesses some kind of magical vocal transformation effect within his vocal chords.
In addition to Olofs exceptional performances, we ventured further by recording our own vocal endeavors, along with the assistance of a death metal singer, supportive friends, and even family members.

Audio Demos

The Hurdy Gurdy

The idea began while recording our Sentient Frequencies sound pack, 
when instrument maker Guido Falke performed his hurdy-gurdy in a chapel for the FX side. 
Hearing its musical voice, we felt it deserved a dedicated instrument, so we invited Guido back to record it as a performer, not just for effects.

 
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The large one

Guido Falke brought two hurdy gurdies he built. One was his large, flagship instrument with a massive, resonant body, so full and enveloping it feels almost like an organ. We first heard it in the chapel while recording Sentient Frequencies. The moment it spoke, we felt it: goosebumps. Pure magic.

The small one

Guido also brought a smaller hurdy gurdy. We had planned to record only the large one, so this was a welcome surprise. We recorded two articulations, showcasing a fine, airy tone with an even higher top end.

Masterfully captured from every angle

To do Wheel of Strings justice, we recorded Guido Falke’s hurdy-gurdy in a world-class room-in-room studio, designed for absolute control and silence. Every session was focused on capturing the full character of the instrument, from the airy bow noise and shimmering overtones to the growling low end.

We used multiple mic perspectives so you can shape the sound exactly as you like: spacious room mics with Stereo sets of Sennheiser MKH 8020 and 8090, a detailed close MS setup with MKH 30 and MKH 8040 plus a Schoeps MK41 and MK2 with digital preamp (CMD 42) for extra focus and definition.
For the body resonance we added a piezzo “The Inducer” from Trance Audio  and a LOM geophone to capture the deepest low-frequency movement of the instrument.

All of this comes together in Wheel of Strings as a playable, mix-ready instrument that feels like sitting right in front of a beautifully recorded hurdy-gurdy.

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If you want delicious and scratchy string goodness that goes beyond traditional string instruments and extended playing techniques, Spiral Strings is for you. The instrument is well-crafted and sports a… Read More »

Waveinformer.com
Online Magazinhttps://waveinformer.com/2023/12/12/kontakt-strings-library/

I had to compose this scene with a lake hidden inside a mountain, so I was looking for sounds which were spherical, rich in harmonics and could fill out a… Read More »

David Menke
ComposerMusic: Belle et Sébastien – Nouvelle Génération, Monsters inside me, The last days of American Crime, Thatcher´s not dead, Sam - A Saxon

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