Soni Musicae / Hauptwerk


                 

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Sound esthetics of the "Blanchet" sound bank

This bank has been created according to the following aims : we tried to produce the best soundbank possible, without any concession, i.e. without any consideration of size.

1) According to this, we have one sample for each note, and it last as long as the string has been audible : the files last between 5 et 20 secondes, so the bank weights 330 Mb (uncompressed). We know that the final result is a little demanding for some computers, or sound-cards. We are sorry, but it was the only solution to get a quality comparable to commercial products. We hope we have created one of the best available harpsichord soundbank and hope you will appreciate to get it for free.

2) You may find this recording too dry, not reverberated enough. It is wanted, because we want this bank to be used in many contexts. You may modify its sound, and add some reverberation, what would have been impossible with a less neutral sound (for ex : church or concert hall).

3) The harpsichord has been tuned to A 415 Hz and to equal temperament. But we propose the possibility to retune it to five other temperaments : Pythagorician, MeanTone 4, Werkmeister 3, Vallotti, and Kellner, using the excellent PipeTune program:

(http://www.duemig-neufahrn.de/Orgel/PipeTune/ ) and 5 .bat files are available with some instructions for use in one autoextractible file on the download page.