Musical Chairs
Two pitched percussion instruments made from strikingly resonant seating options


ByEver Westerly
The story
This is technically two “instruments”, but they go together so well both sonically and conceptually I felt they should be bundled together. This is my first sample pack, featuring some samples I’ve had kicking around for a few years now, of two different chairs that I no longer own:
The Chairlesta(metal) preset is based on samples of a drafting stool I used to have. It was not super comfortable, but it did have a footrest bar that was a solid piece of some kind of metal, and would resonate beautifully (and for a surprisingly long time) if banged into on accident (which of course led to me banging into it on purpose). Three velocity layers to hopefully humanize it a bit.
The Chairimba(wood) preset is based on samples of the unscrewed legs of a wooden chair which again just had a surprisingly good resonance when struck. For this preset, I had a much longer file of me randomly whacking the legs together (with no particular idea what I was doing at the time), so I was able to include three sets of Round Robins in addition to three velocity layers for each note, so that may result in a somewhat livelier performance?
Both presets include all the effects and controls I thought might be useful:
– Attack
– Release
– Low pass filter
– High pass filter
– Glide time
– Fine tuning of +/- 50 cents
– the weird overtones of the metal chair made me feel less than 100% confident in my tuning of the sample, so I spun this knob up to help me check that; figured I might as well leave it in once I had it!
– Delay
– Mix
– Time
– Feedback
– Tempo sync
– Reverb
– Mix
– Room Size
– Dampening
Additionally, the Chairlesta(metal) preset includes the following that just didn’t make sense for the wooden chair, since the samples are so short
– Chorus
– Mix
– Depth
– Rate
– Sample looping button to allow for sustained notes if desired
Hope you enjoy!
Interface


Reviews
Instant inspiration
Had to write music for a cue for a TV series and was feeling uninspired. Roamed around Pianobook looking for sounds that would trigger ideas, and found Musical Chairs. From the first note ideas started to come, and for this I am grateful.