The story
T’was the day before Christmas and the guy selling wouldn’t ship it.
So I jumped in the car and drove for eight hours straight just to secure the purchase of this instrument. And even though it was kind of rough around the edges, it was still that much of a bargain.
The bars was in a box, damper pedal was not working, the motor was in pieces and it was missing some of its woodwork.
But man, once restored it now have this nice mellower sound that has found its way into several TV-shows. It is still quirky as hell, but really fun to play, just as I dreamed it would be when I first saw the ad.
So thank you Santa for letting me have Christmas every day.
This virtual incarnation was specifically made for one episode and one scene of the Swedish show “Festen – season two”.
You can hear it in the fifth episode just when “Dessi” leaves the nightclub.
https://www.svtplay.se/video/25837920/festen/festen-sasong-2-ibland-ar-fisk-starkare-an-lejon-1
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About the instrument. This is a Mastern vibraphone, recorded one dark night in 2019 using a Townsend L22 in stereo.
2x Round Robins with a custom convolution IR
Click the unicorn for options and use the modwheel to enter the shimmery world of unicorns.
Then use the mixer to blend voices to your liking, CC21 for Vibrato.
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Quick walkthrough/demo
Reviews for Acoustic Unicorn Series – Skimmer Metall
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Adorable and very unique take on Vibraphone
This vibraphone sounds so good, it's not conventionally clean but it does sound well recorded and is very playable. I call it "adorable" because this feels like a very casual and kind representation of vibes that I often associate with independent records and fun music. The timing feels a little off for some of the notes and I think that actually gives this instrument an edge to force you write in a certain mindset with it, something cut and dry tools often fail to achieve.
A customizable dream
I am absolutely in love with this instrument, especially with the Skimmer options being done in such a beautiful and useful way. You WILL create the perfect ambience for your own dream, guaranteed.
You have to become familiar with the UI first, because it's not 100% intuitive, but it's not hard to get either. You have to read the text and mess with the options. Play around and the you will easily have the world of unicorns in your fingertips.
That is... IF you manage to find the right instrument to click, because when open the folder you will see a bunch of out-of-date .nki files. For me, the most "complete" one was the v200314. The GUI is the same with the other ones of the series, which I am not a fan of, but it works as intended. Even with that in mind, it's near perfect for me!
Awesome Metallic ambience
This is a great instrument from a great series. Although the solo metallic hits aren't my favorite on pianobook, they are still characterful and pretty dynamic. Things get really amazing when you use the mod wheel. It creates these ambient almost bowed like metallic textures that are really beautiful. Its so awesome that you wrote this clearly on the GUI. Sometimes sample makers program some really awesome effect on the mod wheel but dont even let us know about it so we miss it sometimes. Speaking of the GUI, its fun, really well designed and functional. Ive seen some complain about having to click the unicorn but i dont mind this at all. I think its cool. Awesome instrument overall
Nicely evolving mixture of pad
Very interesting, evolving metal pad sound, totally different two elements combined.
A Trippy Vibraphone
On the surface of it, this is a typical, yet sweet sounding vibraphone. Engaging the Mod wheel engages "Skimmers" not really sure what that is? which introduce a lot of non-harmonic sounds. The onset seems to be exponential, so one moment they're barely there, and the next, they're too loud. If I had to guess the source material for this sample pack, I would have guessed it to be a celesta, as the sound is far more akin to that instrument than to a vibraphone. As others have noted, there are some organizational problems with the folder structure, and it takes a bit of experimentation to figure out which of the many kontakt files to actually load. It's worth the effort in the end, though. This is a lovely sample pack.
