WINDPIPES

In 2023 we were given a small bellows operated wooden pipe organ, a bit bigger than an Indian Harmonium but with wooden pipes instead of reeds. Initially we thought it could make a nice, simple, cheap and cheerful Kontakt instrument but once we started recording we knew this could be something more.

A full size pipe organ has stops that create variations in tone so we thought we could do a similar thing, only with real sounds as opposed to the facsimiles produced by a real pipe organ. We settled on a range of sounds that could be produced by the movement of air. We recorded real voices for Vox Humana and euphonium for Brass for example, with the idea being to combine and blend the sounds in the manner of stops on an organ. 

The plan was to host it all in one user interface but it soon became apparent that it was going to be a bit unwieldy and we decided it was more useful as a collection of individual wind blown instruments that can be layered up in multis to get a similar effect to using the different stops on a pipe organ.

All 13 patches that make up the library have two separate mic positions (near and far) with each mic having separate controls including pitching up or down an octave. Each patch features Scatter Box, MODWHEEL’S own sync’d IRs as well as a step-mod allowing for a huge range of rhythmic options.

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The patches are:

• Wooden Pipe Organ

• Indian Harmonium

• Harmonium Bass

• Melodica

• Euphonium

• Bottle

• Voice - Hi x2 and Lo

• Whistling

• Mouth Percussion - 2 patches

• Bugle

• There is a Drive level control for Distortion as well as controls for Replika, the Native Instruments delay unit.

• The FX tab gives access to the filters, a rhythm Step-mod and Scatter Box.

• The Filters are a High Pass, a single band Mid Freq and a Low Pass.
   

• The Rhythm Step-mod works on volume and can be used to create effects ranging from a simple tremolo though to more complex rhythms.

SCATTER BOX

All the WINDPIPES patches feature Scatter Box. Scatter Box is MODWHEEL’s sync’d
and curated convolution IR effects rack which was developed from an original concept by

Kirke Godfrey of Shaped Noise.

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There are 5 sub sections

• Non sync
  19 handcrafted IRs with some featuring pitched notes (named, Cmin, Cmaj etc)

• Sync
  40 handcrafted tempo sync'd convolution IRs which will sync to your DAW's tempo

• Reverse
  15 handcrafted reversed, tempo sync’d convolution IRs

• Atmos
  25 handcrafted atmospheric IRs. These are longer events created using feedback and lesley cabinets etc, which give the instruments more of a cinematic, atmospheric quality

• Phantoms
  24 handcrafted tonal IRs where each IR will sound the particular chord selected