Angklung

Angklung is a full-ranged traditional tuned percussion instrument originating from Indonesia, dating back to roughly the 7th Century AD. Over the past thousand years, it has spread widely throughout Southeast Asia and Polynesia and can be heard in a variety of traditional and modern music, from gamelan orchestras to pop bands and jazz ensembles.

The Angklung is actually best thought of as a set of several individual single-note instruments, each one comprised of a pair of bamboo tubes in a higher/lower octave pair sounded by a loose rattle. The result is a uniquely full, clear but short-sustaining, dry note. For this massive dedicated Angklung multi-sample library, they’ve recorded a set of 18 Angklung notes, tuned over a major scale spanning nearly 3 full octaves. They captured them up close in a dry studio and out in a large open hall with 3 mic positions (close, mid, far). They recorded each up and down stroke separately, with 48 round-robin variations per-velocity/per-note for the dry (24 up/24 down) and 16 round-robin variations per-velocity/per-note for the hall samples (8 up/8 down). They also recorded natural hand-played sustaining loops at different speeds and intensities, with smooth dynamic cross-fading between layers and adjustable release samples. And finally, they created a full collection of sustaining pads, ambiences and soundscapes from the raw bamboo angklung recordings that complement the sonic flavor and soul of the library.

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