Kit lyre
A hand built Lyre played with paper clips, bowes and muted with paper
Byabominable
The story
I made this Lyre from an inexpensive kit over the early part of the Christmas holiday in 2020. Given that these kits cost less than 20 quid, the results are quite pleasing. Quite a different sound from an acoustic guitar, especially when flicked or bowed with a pencil!
Reviews
Interesting Scratchy Folk Tones
Although i agree with the issues mentioned by others. Inconsistency in sampling, dynamic range etc. But overall i think this is a really useful pack, i love the more kind of scratchy bowed tones. Although they are thin on their own i think they would sound great layered with other instruments. The firelyre patch has a nice tone and plays really nicely with fast passages. Theres nothing i dislike in this library. I think in general if it was more deeply sampled it could be a 5/5 library. The sounds are really organic and inspiring.
Interesting folk sounds inside!
There are 6 different instruments inside this pack, and every one of them is unique.
First, the Bowed Lyre is basically one stroke that gets resampled based on the pitch. The sample has a little noise, and it gets time-stretched across the small range that is offered. At the same time, I really like how it sounds in the lows. It can create some really nice, kind of folk-horror sfx.
Then there's the Elastic Mute which sounds like it has double strings, and it plays in single hits. It's nice but I very much prefer the next one, Firelyre, which sounds something between a harp and a dulcimer. This is by far my favorite one.
Next there's the flicked lyre which mostly sounds like a dulcimer, and then there are two paper patches that I am not a fan of, but you might still find interesting.
All of the instruments sound dynamic enough, but the more you strike, the more white noise you are going to get. The patches are very barebones though, so it's up to you to find ways to tweak them if that's what you want to do.
One of two of the sounds are good, the rest I would struggle to find a use for
My favorite sound of the bunch here is the one labeled firelyre. It sounds the best and I use it the most. The other ones I don't see myself using even if they have their charm.