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Eamon
Composer and Musician from Melbourne, Australia, specialising in folk / world music and instruments. I compose mainly for video games, and for my band projects 'IPA Collective', a global folk-fusion group, and 'Gododdin', my folk metal band. I'm avid about weird instruments, especially acoustic and traditional instruments. My attempts to amass a collection have been hampered by frequent overseas moves in recent years, but I've now taken to building a digital collection, including many Pianobook contributions.
The ability to build sample instruments, thanks in large part to Christian Henson's and David Hilowitz's instructional videos, has also freed up my 'collecting' habits, knowing I can buy an instrument can make a permanent digital version even if I will have to eventually sell it on! I enjoy the excitement of finally hearing a digital instrument come to life from a bunch of samples, especially wildly unplayable / out of tune souvenir instruments, and I'm looking forward to sharing more of these on Pianobook!
I've now set up a tip page, which will all go towards new obscure instruments, so you can safely consider it a downpayment on your next free sample pack :D.
Sample Packs
Eamon’s Reviews
A Gorgeous Instrument
After watching the intro video I was excited to try this instrument. Having briefly tested it, I'm excited to go back and write with it. I have a lot of sample packs now of various dulcimers and zithers but I think this may become the weapon of choice. It has a beautiful sound, and the ability to tweak the 3 different mics make it a bit easier to tone down the 'swampiness' that so many of these dulcimer-type instruments end up with. The various patches and different in-built effects give a diverse array of sounds, and provide plenty of source for inspiration.
And the GUI provides a gorgeous backdrop while still being simple and easy to use.
At nearly 5GB it's got some junk in the trunk, but I think it's worth every bit.
Beautiful string textures
I picked this up a few weeks ago from Jon's page and had to go back to it to review. The instrument sounds amazing, and takes very little effort to have beautiful music rolling off your fingertips. Definitely worth downloading and enjoying. Thanks Jon!
Cool synth sounds with good customisability
A cool synth which is quite different to what I was expecting. The basic tone to me brings to mind a kind of 80s sci-fi or nature documentary sound, with the 'Rust' dial applying a somewhat phaser-like effect. So it's more of a 'bubbling up from the ocean floor' than 'echoing from a rusted shipwreck hull' type vibe. There is ADSR control plus reverb, delay and a powerful arpeggiator for further customisation of the sound. I found myself accidentally writing a tune while testing it out, and that was before I even got to the arpeggiator! Need to test out with some other effects, distortion etc. to see how far I can push the tone, but it works great as a self-contained synth and can provide plenty of inspiration.
It's an organ, it's a bass, it's a rubber band on a box
A bunch of different preset sounds, I would never have guessed a rubber band could be so versatile but this is basically a unique prepackaged synth. And it all actually sounds really good. Could easily fill in the role of a synth bass, with other patches sounding more like banjo, piano, organ, etc. The versatility makes me want to write something entirely for rubber band box. The GUI is good too with plenty of effects options readily accessible. I definitely do not regret the curiosity-driven download of the rubberband box.
My new favourite zither library?
A really nicely recorded zither with plenty of flexibility in terms of articulations. All of the melody articulations are very useable, with crisp attack on the notes, and the melody key samples are all well-tuned and lacking any 'dips' in intonation after initial attack which are sometimes present in zither/lyre libraries. The '3 voice' articulation functions as a kind of chorus effect, somewhat replicating the sound typical of zithers with multiple strings per note or extra sympathetic strings. The notes lose a bit of realism in the upper registers, but you shouldn't be playing there if you want realism anyway!
There are several chord keys which also come in 2 different articulations. A couple of these have some tuning issues, but ultimately these are just a bonus anyway and there's nothing preventing playing chords manually on the regular melody keys. There are also a number of keys assigned to more 'SFX' style sweeps etc., which again are a nice extra which may be useful in certain circumstances.
Overall a very nice zither and one I expect to be using in the future. Thanks Woodencup!