Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars
Released to great acclaim in 2008, Soniccouture’s Balinese Gamelan is a detailed and authentic sampling of the magnificent Semara Dana gamelan housed at London’s LSO St Luke’s. In 2015 the library was supplemented by a smaller gamelan ensemble and re‑released as Balinese Gamelan II. Now rebuilt and sporting a colourful, musically instructive new GUI, it’s been relaunched to tie in with the release of Soniccouture’s all‑new Balinese Flutes collection (more on which shortly). Both libraries require Kontakt 7 or Kontakt 7 Player version 7.9 or later.
Balinese Gamelan II gives you the option of an instantly playable gamelan ensemble by loading all of Semara Dana’s 25 deep‑sampled instruments in a single Kontakt patch. Pairs of bronze‑keyed ‘gangsa’ metallophones and their larger penyacah, jegog and calung relatives are layered with melodic trompong and reyong gong‑chimes (aka kettle gongs) and mapped chromatically from C3 to E7, while the low C‑1 to B2 key zone is occupied by large sonorous gongs, kendang drums, hi‑hat‑like ceng ceng and unpitched percussion. Comprising a quartet of kantilan and pemade metallophones, two smaller gongs, kendang and percussion, the somewhat more clangorous Gamelan Batel Ramayana from Toronto gets the same handy all‑in‑one presentation.
The instruments default to A=440 Western standard tuning, but you can switch them back to their original pitches with one button click, whereupon you’ll hear a very pronounced difference! As remarked in my May 2008 review, the library nails the shimmering, brilliant bell‑like sound of Balinese gamelan while offering great cinematic sound‑design opportunities (composer Dave Porter’s use of big gongs and low, throbbing jegogs in S4 E3 of Breaking Bad).
Traditional Balinese gamelan groups feature a small ensemble of suling, simple vertical bamboo flutes which come in a variety of sizes. Soniccouture have four in their collection, ranging from the three‑foot‑tall suling gambuh to the small suling kantilan. You can play each instrument separately, or in a full‑range A2‑C7 ‘Combined Flutes’ patch, which uses samples from all four. Played at three dynamics, the samples were phase‑matched to enable seamless dynamic crossfades — this also allowed Soniccouture to create a modelled breath pressure response, including natural vibrato modelling and stunningly realistic legato transitions.
I love the pure, unaffected, breathy tone of these wooden flutes. Whether you’re recreating the heady, high‑pitched swirling suling parts of a real‑life gamelan performance, adding a folksy ethnic flute to a fantasy film score or emulating a classical piccolo/concert flute/alto flute/bass flute quartet, their positive attack and ultra‑lifelike lilting legatos do a great job. A comprehensive set of controls enable you to vary breath pressure, legato time, vibrato depth, rate and start time and subtle performance‑related tuning artefacts, but none of that is necessary: these expressive, adaptable and wonderfully playable Balinese flutes sound perfect straight out of the box.
Balinese Gamelan II £249, Balinese Flutes £79.
Balinese Gamelan II £249, Balinese Flutes £79.