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Synthesist Chris Stack (ExperimentalSynth.com) let us know about a new sound library that lets you play a collection of one-of-a-kind, historically significant keyboard instruments, including instruments played by Chopin, Mozart & Beethoven.

Stack is Director of Marketing at the Sigal Music Museum, a Greenville, SC museum that features a huge collection of rare musical instruments. Stack says that the Museum has been collaborating with Alex Davis of Tempest Instruments to sample these rare instruments, to both preserve the sound of the instruments for future generations and to make them available virtually to musicians around the world.

Sigal Collection Volume 1 is the first product from this collaboration. It features an 1845 Broadwood Grand Piano that was played by Chopin. When you play the virtual version, you’re playing and hearing a piano that was used by one of the greatest composers and musicians of all time.

Other instruments in the library include:

• A 1761 Dual-Manual Kirkman Harpsichord that was King George III’s wedding present to Queen Charlotte;
• An 1815 Walter Grand Piano;
• A 1660 Italian Harpsichord;
• A 1784 Stein Grand Piano; and
• A 1780 Spanish Clavichord.

The library is a unique solution to the curator’s conundrum.

When you have a large collection of historically significant musical instruments going back as far as 1575, many of which are still in playable condition, how do you let musicians make music with them, without the possibility of damaging irreplaceable historical artifacts?

While many musical instrument museums let visitors hear a piece of music recorded on the rare instruments, the Sigal Music Museum is pioneering a different approach, making virtual versions of these instruments available, so that everyone from young music students to seasoned performers and composers can make music with them.

Here’s the intro to Sigal Collection Volume 1:

This project has some really interesting applications.

• Music Education – The Museum, in collaboration with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has made complete workstations for exploring these instruments available in ten Greenville County Schools. The Museum hopes to expand this program to more schools, making it possible for music students to play classical music with historically accurate instruments.
• Soundtracks – the library features three centuries of keyboard instrument, making it an interesting new option for composers that want to use the sound of historically appropriate instruments for scoring television and film projects set in the past.
• Music performance and composition – finally, the project makes these instruments available to musicians that want to play and compose using instruments that they would otherwise never have an opportunity to work with.

Tempest Instruments has shared detailed information on the instruments, along with video and audio demos, at their site. Here’s a preview of their virtual version of a harpsichord that Mozart played:

Sigal Collection Volume 1 is available now, with an intro price of $129 (normally $149). You can learn more about the Museum and their mission at the Sigal Music Museum site.

Make Noise let us know that they’ve introduced a new Eurorack Module, MultiMod, that enables you create 8 variations on a control signal, and control the relative phase and speed of the variations.

The result is “a flock of related modulation signals, all derived from the same single input.”

Here’s how it works:

• Phase sets the spacing of the signal copies in time, weighted by channel, with each progressive channel getting more out of phase from the original signal and from each other.
• Spread allows for vari-speeding the copies by different amounts, with each getting progressively faster or slower than the original signal.
• Time determines the range of time captured at the input and therefore also the depth of modulation across copies of the input signal when Phase and Spread are manipulated.

MultiMod also includes Tempo, Hold, and Reset features, and a variety of Read Shapes for temporal rearrangement of input signals.

When the input is not patched, MultiMod generates an LFO that is copied eight times and manipulated in the same ways.

Features:

• Generate vari-speeded, phase modulated copies of any modulation signal.
• Control 8 CVs with 3 fully modulatable parameters.Multiple unique read shapes for varying traversal through copied signals
• Tempo/Reset inputs and Clock output for temporal system integration
• Hold feature for looping captured signals
• Ultra-Wide 20V p-p I/O ranges approach analog maximums of the Eurorack system
• “Full TechniColor, Maximum Blinkenlights”
• Calibrated to accurately pass critical control signals such as quantized pitch CV
• Internally generated signals for “LFO mode” when nothing is patched to the Signal Input.

The official into video:

A demo video, created by synthesist Sarah Belle Reid:

And here’s an overview and demo from Red Means Recording:

You can find out about the development of the module, and some new technology used in the module, in the latest issue of the Make Noise Zine.

MultiMod is available now for $349.

Optigan has released Pizzicato Pop, a new sound disc for the ’70s lo-fi optical sample playback keyboard, the Optigan.

What they have to say about it:

“Pizzicato Pop is the latest in our series of excavations into the Optigan Archives in search of material that was left on the cutting room floor.

The working title for this disc was “Contemporary #107”. It was recorded in 1970 during the initial Optigan session in Cologne, Germany, with the pizzicato string overdubs being added sometime later. Previously only heard on the song “Hope In Your Eyes” by Optiganally Yours.

The keyboard sound is also from the Optigan Archives – an experiment that combines a Hammond B3 with a hand-played tremolo on an RMI Rocksichord.”

The official video demo:

Pizzicato Pop is available now for $89.