dulcitone 1884

Billboard

Hello and thanks for visiting.

dulcitone1884

This is the home of the worlds first multi-sampled rare and beautiful 150 (ish) year old DULCITONE, and infact one of the few ways you can listen to what one actually sounds like.

Originally designed and manufactured in Scotland in the 1800's, and with allegedly only 2000 in existence the DULCITONE is a portable keyboard that was made for missionaries to hump around remote african village churches to help perk up hymn services. It has a very basic piano action with spring loaded felt covered hammers striking small magnet shaped tuning forks. Its a bit like a Fender Rhodes electric piano without the electric bits, and has a very lovely woody, clonky glockenspiel/celesta kind of sound.

These things are starting to become deeply fashionable, especially amongst "with it" film composers looking for something with a bit of character in a Tom Waits or Bjorky kinda way ( Jon Brion uses dulcitone extensively on his soundtracks of Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind .)

This is your chance to to play my lovingly sampled 150 year old antique Dulcitone in all its glory. 70megs, 3 velocity layers and some fancy programming ( Kontakt, Ableton and Reason Combinator formats ) but without the slightly iffy forks and sticking keyboard.

£15.00 available in Kontakt2 and 3, Ableton Sampler, EXS24, Soundfont, Shortcircuit, SFZ, NN-XT/Reason Combinator, Wusik, and Giga formats.

click here to buy direct using paypal and then email your choice of format/s to me at pendlep@aol.com and i'll send you a download link back as soon as i can
( usually a matter of minutes, but i'm in the UK on GMT so allow time for me to sleep...and take occasional toilet breaks )

ships piano

Here's another small, slightly portable and largely neglected keyboard instrument. Designed by JB Cramer and Sons of London in the late 1800's, the ships piano (or yacht piano) was built especially for the cramped confines of Victorian pleasure boats. The perfect thing for a little sea bound entertainment in the good old pre-ipod days of the empire.
International adventurer Captain Robert Scott (of the Antarctic ) was apparently a fan and always had one onboard for those times when a hearty, spirit lifting sing-along was just the ticket. James Joyce also briefly mentions a ships piano in his book The Dubliners.... which must be worth a few cool points.

Other than that these things are very rare and pretty much ignored these days.

A ships piano is basically a tiny rudimentary upright piano with a five octave keyboard that folds upwards to save space. It has no bottom half and sits either on a low table or a stand with a small leather and chain contraption dangling from its bottom that loops around the foot for the sustain pedal.

Because of its small frame size it struggles with low notes so the bass strings are very wide gauge and particularly flabby, resulting in a strange almost atonal metallic sound in the lower reaches.

The ships piano is no Blüthner or Steinway, and there's no chance of extracting rich sonorous tones from this fella ...but its charming simplicity has lots and lots of useful character. Its very plinky without being too plonky....if you know what I mean.

I've meticulously sampled every usable white note binaurally with 4 and sometimes 5 velocity layers for 155mb of 16bit samples.

Available for £15 as Kontakt 2/3, EXS, Ableton Sampler Rack, Reason Combinator and Soundfont formats.

click here to buy direct using paypal and then email your choice of format/s to me at pendlep@aol.com for your download link

tiny binaural harpsichord

The "worlds first" prepared tiny binaural harpsichord .

110meg of binaurally multi-sampled "Arnold Dolmetsch" portable harpsichord.
Its neither old nor antique, its not even in perfect tune, but its been lovingly sampled with OKM in ear microphones and a fake head.

2 adjustable layers of binaural harpsichord-ness
1 adjustable release layer of harpsichord note off clunk.
2 more layers of adjustable john cage style prepared-ness.

And a separate program with an extra 62mb of binaural prepared-ness recorded with in ear mics and my own head stuck deep inside the guts of a full size harpsichord.

yours for £15.00

click here to paypal a payment for tiny binaural harpsichord email me what format you want ( pendlep@aol.com) and i'll send you a download link as soon as is humanly possible.

Currently available as an Ableton Sampler Rack, Kontakt2, EXS, Wusik and Giga.

steel drum percussion room

A kit of lovely dusty binaural acoustic drum samples and slightly prepared steel drums....a kind of Tom Waits percussion machine featuring drums in all shapes and sizes.
Theres 4 octaves of huge flappy marching band bass drums, ripped and rattly snares and kicks, frame drums, congas, bongos, toms, hi-hats, cymbals, boxes, metal shelving...you name it.

Plus the "prepared" steel drums.

These are a neglected set of bass and cello steel pans played with fingers and soft mallets to avoid sounding like proper steel drums ( more apocalypse than calypso ), the tunings are a bit iffy, but theres plenty of velocity layers per hit for a rusty hang drum like effect. Great for film scoring.

Both kits were recorded binaurally in a great sounding room with long decays with a total of 168mb of samples.

Currently available in Kontakt, SFZ, Giga, Soundfont ,Ableton Live Sampler, Wusik, EXS and Reason NNxt .

as ever only £15

click here to paypal a payment for steel drum percussion room email me what format you want ( pendlep@aol.com) and i'll send you a download link asap.

PENDLE'S FIREWORKS!

A FREE 33mb soundfont of single hit firework bangs, pops and fizzes recorded on Bonfire night 5th November 2007 in and around Brighton UK.
( click above to download )