Review Aviram Harp Guitar from Aviram Dayan Production (Currently 85%OFF)
Aviram Harp Guitar’s 9 keyswitched patches are versatile, well constructed, and sonically convincing with perhaps my only complaint being that there is no user manual.
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Review Aviram Harp Guitar from Aviram Dayan Production
Aviram Harp Guitar sells for $122.00 (USD) from Aviram Dayan Production / DreamMelodiC
Thoughts
Originally published on April 14, 2016
Producing beautiful acoustic guitar sample instruments that are versatile, well constructed, and sonically convincing is no easy task, and yet Aviram Dayan Production / DreaMelodiC has succeeded in doing just that, and in truly astonishing form. What’s more, it is a HARP guitar, which hereafter you are welcome to read as “Baritone guitar that sounds down to A0.”
This is an important distinction to (not) make because it would be nothing less than an utter shame if this instrument was passed over by prospective artists simply because they found no need for a harp guitar, per se. This sample instrument works well as a baritone guitar; it also works beautifully as a guitarrón Mexicano (but I am not often a composer of mariachi and I can’t speak to its passability therein).
Insofar as I would like to avoid angry emails from harp-guitar enthusiasts denouncing my summary judgment that a harp guitar is in fact just a really low baritone guitar: of course these are two separate instruments, one very real and possessing of a body of literature, the other a figment of my imagination, employed herein as a literary convenience. Having spent the last several days listening to harp guitar music, I can state that I found the Aviram to be sonically quite precise.
Facts
Aviram Dayan Production / DreaMelodiC is an Israeli developer and probably developed the Harp Guitar for Middle-Eastern and western composers both, judging from the instruments demo music.
Harp Guitar clocks in at 2.88GB and requires the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5 or higher. It features 9 main patches on one .nki, all available through keyswitch triggering different instrument playback. I have surmised that the 9 patches are: HarpLyre, Holloway, Mandolin, Chitarpa, Balalaika, Knutsen guitar, Harp-Lyres, and Tamburica. (yes, that is eight and not nine, and no, I don’t know why the website only listed eight instruments in a self-described list of nine.
I would really have loved documentation with this sample instrument!) As best I can gather, all of these instruments are in fact harp guitars, which means a Mandolin Harp Guitar is a real instrument that exists (!), and which just goes to show that you learn something new every day.
There are no separate articulations for each instrument and the tone sounds until you lift your finger off the controller the number of round robins per patch varies.
There are four primary parameters at your disposal – reverb, tremolo, delay, and guitar noise. There is also a really nifty arpeggiator that affords the artist a kind of mind-blowing amount of control over the arpeggiation.
Harp Guitar is meticulously mapped, but the far reaches dynamic reaches do not produce different touches or timbres – they are simply louder / quieter. Not being a harp-guitarist I cannot opine on whether this is a shortcoming.
The GUI is simple and straightforward. As I mentioned previously, Harp Guitar does not include documentation, which is perhaps my only complaint.
Aviram Harp Guitar sells for $122.00 (USD) from Aviram Dayan Production / DreamMelodiC
