Soniccouture are very pleased to announce Glass Works, a fantastic collection of sampled rare instruments which generate sound from glass. Glass Works is the first SC product to be packaged in Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player, meaning that non-Kontakt owners can enjoy the enhanced scripting and control for which Soniccouture instruments have become renowned.

LE CRISTAL — A bizarre ’sound sculpture’ designed in 1952 by Bernard and François Baschet. It consists of about 4 octaves of chromatically tuned glass rods, which are rubbed with wet fingers. The vibration of the glass is passed to a heavy block of metal, which itself is tuned and in fact determines the final pitch. The entire mechanism is amplified by a large steel plate, called the “flame”. There are also three small fiberglass cones that amplify the higher frequencies.

THE GLASS ARMONICA — A musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones). The instrument was invented by Benjamin Franklin, who called his invention the “armonica” after the Italian word for harmony. He worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.

CLOUD CHAMBER BOWLS — Soniccouture’s recreation of an instrument built in the 1950s by maverick American composer Harry Partch. It consists of hanging “bowls” which are sections of 12-gallon glass carboys. Both tops and bottoms of the carboys are used. Partch had 14 (later 13) bowls hanging from a large wooden frame he called a “tori”. The name “Cloud Chamber Bowls” arose from the fact that Partch found the original tops and bottoms at a Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1950. The bowls were originally used for cloud chambers used in tracing paths of subatomic particles.

Glass Works is available now on DVD and download, priced at $159 / £99. The free Native Instruments Kontakt Player runs stand-alone or as a VST, AU, or RTAS (Pro Tools 7 or later) plug-in on Mac OS 10.4.x or higher.

www.soniccouture.com/en/products/p53-glass-works/

Discuss Glass Works in our Instruments forum.