Harpaphone
A tourist-shop souvenir harp resonating through a bouzouki top, resembling some kind of frankenstein kalimba/ukulele/balafon....
ByEamon
The story
My first ‘finished’ sample instrument – A toy / holiday souvenir harp sat atop a bouzouki to aid resonance. My Mum brought this souvenir harp back from a trip to Donegal – surprisingly, it came with a tuning key despite not really being functional as an instrument with 5 tiny strings and little in the way of a soundboard. I decided to tune it to the practical limits of its range and try to make a functional sample instrument. With the high pitch and nylon strings I was expecting something resembling a ukulele, but the sharp attack with little sustain ends up with something more like a kalimba or xylophone in sound. The range extends from G2 – E5 ~2.5 octaves, with 3 velocity layers 0-50; 51-89; 90-127 and 2 round-robins for most notes, and a basic reverb set up with a knob to vary the ‘send’ output. I hope it can be useful! Should work on Kontakt 5+.
Harpaphone demo
Reviews
A brilliant, quirky little library...
I don't believe the other reviews are being fair. You only have to READ THE DESCRIPTION and look at the cover picture on this page to see that you're not going to get a 'Harp' library. This is a great little instrument that offers brilliantly quirky, woody tones. Perfect for evoking those Mark Mothersbaugh sounds. This would have been perfect on a score I did last year. That just goes to show how useful PB, and libraries like this can be.
A toy-like harp
...that doesn't really sound like a harp. It has a kind of detuned and childish, but that's really what it has to offer for you. The lower range sounds very artificial and stretched, so the actual usual range is limited. The sampling is good enough to play a simple tune and not hear any noise. Other than that, don't have super high expectations.
Almost a harp...
It's a strange little library. The samples don't appear to have quite enough tonality to be super useful outside of a more percussive instrument. GUI is a little plain as well and might benefit from some more controls. Additional processing or synthesized sounds from these samples might also be a logical expansion for this library to have a little more content.