Hello all people, I hope you’re doing marvellously effectively.
We lately had the good pleasure of being again at Abbey Street Studios with Mirek Stiles, this time within the Curve Bender Room, speaking about one thing splendidly inventive, splendidly unusual and, better of all, fully free: The Huge Nessie Free Sampler.
You’ll be able to obtain Huge Nessie free of charge right here: https://www.abbeyroad.com/bignessie
Huge Nessie is Abbey Street’s first in-house constructed sampled instrument, and it’s precisely the form of factor that makes you need to cease what you’re doing, open a session and begin making music.
What makes it so particular is that it doesn’t come from the standard world of completely recorded pianos, strings or drum kits. As a substitute, it was born from a collaboration between Abbey Street and Scottish dressmaker Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY, founding father of the model Loverboy. Charles had created a clothes line impressed by Abbey Street, and that sparked the thought: what would occur if Abbey Street went into his inventive world, captured the sounds of his workshop, then introduced these sounds again into the studios and remodeled them into an instrument?
The result’s Huge Nessie.
That is the place it will get actually enjoyable. Mirek and the Abbey Street staff went to Charles Jeffrey’s workshop at Somerset Home in London with transportable recorders and began gathering sounds in a really hands-on, experimental manner. They captured stitching machines, shoe bins used as percussion, reels of cloth wrapped round cardboard tubes, room sounds and all kinds of sudden textures from Charles’ inventive atmosphere.
Then Charles and his music director Tom got here to Abbey Street Studio Two, the place the staff arrange drums, guitars, bass and piano. However as a substitute of simply enjoying them usually, they introduced the style world into the method. Materials had been draped over drums, knitting needles grew to become drumsticks, scissors had been used to pluck piano strings, and something that would merge trend and music grew to become truthful recreation.
That’s the fantastic thing about Huge Nessie. It’s not only a pattern library. It’s a inventive collision between two worlds.
Mirek describes this as a part of Abbey Street’s “Curve Bender philosophy,” impressed by the legendary RS56 Curve Bender EQ. The unique Curve Bender gave engineers the flexibility to dig into particular frequencies and actually form, bend and mangle sounds. Abbey Street has taken that spirit and utilized it to sampling: harvest attention-grabbing sounds, course of them by way of outstanding tools, reamp them by way of legendary rooms, then flip them into playable devices.
And naturally, as a result of that is Abbey Street, the processing chain is somewhat extraordinary.
The sounds had been run by way of items of Abbey Street historical past, together with the Redd. 17 valve desk from 1958, the J37 four-track valve tape machine, previous EMI tape, Chandler Abbey Street gear, traditional outboard, classic harmonizers and even the restored BTR3 EMI tape machine. The staff additionally reamped sounds by way of the studios themselves, utilizing areas like Studio One, Studio Two and Studio Three as a part of the instrument’s sonic fingerprint.
That’s one thing you can not actually recreate wherever else. It’s not simply the samples. It’s the samples plus Abbey Street’s rooms, microphones, tape machines, desks and historical past.
Huge Nessie is designed as a Kontakt instrument, however it isn’t laid out like a standard piano or guitar library. Sarah Mace, who helped construct the instrument, defined that the thought was to provide folks sufficient selection to begin making a complete piece of music from one instrument.
The keyboard is cut up into completely different sound zones. There are loops, drum sounds, basses, melodic synth-like textures and sound results. Among the sounds are deeply musical, some are percussive, some are atmospheric and a few are simply splendidly odd.
There are bass sounds created from actual bass and processed into one thing stranger and extra textural. There are synth-like sounds made out of guitars, pads and even voices resonating beneath a piano with the maintain pedal held down. There are sound results from Charles’ workshop, together with random bits of speech, stitching machines and different moments that had been captured through the course of.
That’s what makes it such an important inventive device. You aren’t simply loading up a clear, predictable sound. You might be loading up a world.
The sampler additionally features a set of inventive controls with names that match the character of the instrument: Scowl, Chomp, Scale, Curl, Lure, Spit, Pulse and Fang.
Scowl is the reverb, created from the unbelievable acoustic of the stairwell at Somerset Home. Chomp provides heat and lo-fi character. Scale works as a stereo spreader. Curl is a filter. Lure provides a vibrato-style motion. Spit brings in high-frequency fizz. Pulse provides distortion. Fang provides one other layer of saturation.
In different phrases, Huge Nessie isn’t just a set of samples. It’s a vibe field.
You’ll be able to open it, seize a loop, add a bass, discover a unusual percussion sound, throw on some reverb or distortion and instantly begin constructing one thing. Sarah even demonstrated a observe she had constructed utilizing principally Huge Nessie, with solely a little bit additional guitar added. The beat, bass, textures and far of the environment all got here from the sampler.
That’s precisely the form of factor I really like. Instruments that make you need to create. Instruments that make you play. Instruments that provide you with concepts earlier than you might have had time to overthink them.
And one of the best half?
Huge Nessie is free.
Abbey Street needed this primary instrument to be one thing the neighborhood may obtain, discover and revel in. It’s the starting of what appears like a a lot larger journey, with extra Abbey Street pattern libraries and devices to return.
Obtain Huge Nessie free of charge right here: https://www.abbeyroad.com/bignessie
Mirek additionally hinted on the wealth of sounds Abbey Street has entry to, from previous Akai S1000 pattern libraries present in cabinets, to classic drum machines, synths, Omnichords, Jupiter 4s, Prophet-5s, traditional Abbey Street gear and the studios themselves. Huge Nessie is step one, however it appears like there may be much more coming.
For me, that is precisely what fashionable music-making ought to be about. Sure, the historical past is unbelievable. Sure, the gear is unbelievable. Sure, the rooms are legendary. However on the coronary heart of all of it is playfulness.
Huge Nessie takes stitching machines, materials, drums, pianos, tape machines, stairwells, voices, valves, distortion, reverb and creativeness, then turns them into one thing anybody can use to begin making music.
So obtain it, make one thing bizarre, make one thing lovely, make one thing that surprises you.
Obtain Huge Nessie free of charge right here: https://www.abbeyroad.com/bignessie
And whenever you do, Abbey Street desires to listen to it.
You’ll be able to ship your compositions to: [email protected]
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing,
Warren
