XPERIMENTA Kantele KONTAKT

“Finnish folk poetry recounts that the first kantele was made from the jaw bones of fish and the hair of young maidens. When the first kantele was played, the sound was so beautiful that all living things started to cry. Their tears rolled into the ocean, and when they touched the sea they turned into beautiful blue pearls.”

Get inspired by the Finnish sound of the nature: XPERIMENTA Kantele is a sampled library of three beautiful Kanteles, including the Concerto Kantele, played by the musician and artist Emma Lomy.

XPERIMENTA Kantele was recorded in a 105mq recording studio in the Sibelius Academy Music Technology department, using only top-end gear and a lot of passion.

Main Features

3 unique instruments

Each instrument has a soul.

This is why we sampled three

instruments:

– Concerto Kantele

– Round-Ended Kantele

– Small Kantele

Creative Layers

Add color and personality to your Kantele: with the “Layer” feature, you can add to the sound three instrument layers:

3 Microphone Settings

Don’t get distracted by thousand of knobs: the essential, the better. Customize your instrument and find your sound.

Harmonics and Felt

We recorded the harmonics of the Concerto Kantele. Is possible to trigger them by moving the modwheel (CC1) to the maximum value.

The kantele is the national instrument of Finland, and it belongs to a large family of string instruments called “zithers“. Zithers have a resonating body with a variable number of strings, which can be plucked, strummed, struck, or bowed. In the case of the kantele, the strings are plucked or strummed and the smallest kanteles can be held in the player’s lap. There are kanteles of many sizes: 5-string, 10-string, 11-string, all the way up to the 36-string concert kantele, like the one we recorded.

Played by Emma Lomy
“Emma Lomy is a Finnish multidisciplinary artist, specialising in music, poetry, essays, theatre, dance, photography and performance art. Lomy’s works explore interlacing minimalistic impressionism into a study of the aesthetic acceptance of the beautiful through various means of art.”

Recorded in Sibelius Academy Studios
The kantele was recorded in Sibelius Academy, the main conservatory of Finland. In the Folk Departement, the Kantele and other beautiful traditional instruments are still studied. The recording was made in a 105mq recording room, using only top end gear: DPA, Neumann and Gefell microphones, Grace Design preamps and RME converters.