Elementary Sounds – Tish v1.0.0 for WiN & Mac

Concert Vibraphone

This is a rare instrument that spent decades in a European opera house, filling grand halls with its voice.

We brought it to our studio and recorded it in an intimate setting with a remarkable musician. Despite its history, it speaks in a quiet, introspective tone — just the way we love it.

THE MAKING OF TONE

The instrument includes 5 presets, each with its own X-slider blending four sound layers.

All layers are based on the original vibraphone tone, along with sounds from rare synths, oscillators, and test equipment. It was recorded extremely softly using 8 microphones — mostly ribbon and tube — with up to 5 velocity layers and 8 round robins:

SUSTAINS

Sustains were recorded in two styles — with soft mallets and wooden sticks. Even the loudest dynamic was performed incredibly softly. Using high gain in various tube preamps, we captured every nuance.

This preset also includes randomly played octaves on the X-slider side, which sound especially beautiful when playing chords.

MUTES

Short muted notes recorded in two versions — with soft mallets and with wooden sticks.

One of the sound design layers is synthesized through a tube oscillator modulated by the vibraphone itself. Another layer is a cassette-recorded version of the mutes, captured multiple times at reduced speed on an old Japanese tape recorder.

BOWED

Played with a cello bow, this articulation has two velocity layers: short and wavy in soft dynamics, longer and more intense in louder ones.

The X-slider layers mimic the bowed tone using oscillators, LFOs, and function generators — some running fast enough to produce musical tones we sampled for this patch.

TAPE SUSTAINS

A sustain vibraphone recorded on several reel-to-reel tape machines (Studer, Telefunken, and Uher) in two versions:

• Type I – Recorded at half speed, combined with tube compressors and EQs
  
• Type II – Recorded at double-half speed for a more degraded, lo-fi character

This preset’s X-slider includes multiphonics played on the vibraphone tubes with a bow — a rare and mysterious technique. Another layer is vibraphone tremolo, where the playback speed of each note varies based on round robins.

PREPARED

Prepared vibraphone was recorded by placing different objects on each note — coins, paper, foil, wood — all vibrating from the mallet strike.

Each of the 8 round robins uses a different object, making the sound unpredictable.

The X-slider includes fast accented tremolo, and its processed version run through tape delays, loopers, and pitch shifters.