RealSamples Italian Harpsichord III Edition Beurmann MULTiFORMAT

The Italian Harpsichord III library features an instrument built around 1690 by an anonymous maker. Featuring three sounds - a front and a rear 8' register as well both together - it allows for the traditional rich and slick Italian harpsichord tone, offering additional flexibility by choosing the adequate 8' or using the gentle 2 x 8' combination with its inspiring and complex harmonics. While it is very typical for the Italian style to feature a housing seperated from the painted cabinet, this instrument is one of the rare Italian harpsichords with a fixed housing. Instead, it belongs to the category of so-called "false inner-outer" instru-ments: The edges of the body as well as the offset cheeks are used to pretend that it features a separate housing.

After more than 300 years, the harpsichord still remains in fully playable condition despite its age. It is now available for the first time in the sampler with the Italian Harpsichord III library, presented in its original Kirnberger III-tuning at 382 Hz, captured with all three register variations - front 8', rear 8' and both 8' registers together. Presets at 440 Hz are also available. Like all harpsichords, the instrument is not touch-sensitive in the sense of a piano. However, even if the differences are minuscule, not any given note will sound exactly the same twice due to different resonances of body and strings. Until now, many keyboards and samplers represented harpsichords by always triggering off the exact same digital sample, leaving a cold and sterile sounding impression.

In order to improve upon previous recreations and to pay tribute to the liveliness and depth of this antique instrument, we captured every sampled register with 8 variations of each note. The release sounds of the keys are also of major importance: What was originally side noise is now often overlooked and even simply left out in artifical simulations, resulting in a very abstract overall picture. Therefore, we recorded 4 release samples per note.

Format: HAlion, Kontakt2 and higher, EXS24 and GigaStudio3.