Marcel's Flute Shop

Marcel's Flute Shop for Reason 3.04 and up

Consists of 2 Reason refills that are also available separately! 5 ethnic flutes carefully sampled. Extreme high realism when played on your keyboard and hundreds of loops and phrases by Marcel Ebbers. Includes Irish Flute, Bamboo, Sopranino Recorder, Clarke Tin Whistle and the Feadog Whistle.

• The "Sonic Flutes" refill: 5 beautiful flutes carefully sampled and programmed for extremely high realism when playing the sounds on your keyboard or MIDI Wind controller.

• The "Fluity Loops" refill: Over 350 loops and phrases performed by Marcel Ebbers on those same 5 flutes. All loops and phrases are .WAVe-files programmed for the NN-XT sampler. (soon available for other sequencer hosts as well!)

• All Loops and flute patches are embedded in combinator patches and have gotten the same treatment using EQ, dynamics and effects for full integration of loops and your keyboard playing within one track.

• The Marcel's Flute Shop refills are great for lots of styles: Celtic, Chinese, Indian, Arabian, African, jazz, film scoring, dance etc.

BAMBOO

This beauty is a souvenir Marcel's friend Harding bought from the Anjuna Fleamarket in Goa, India. Harding and Marcel share this generous haBit of giving eachother instruments, soundcards and lots of other fine stuff as a present. The Sonic Flutes Bamboo version counts 10 velocity/alt layers and is a great instrument to play on your keyboard. It certainly isn't the real thing (yet!) but fine enough to give you some nice shivers while playing. Great for all kinds of ethnic styles but also great for jazzy stuff.

SNIPER

Marcel bought this warm and full sounding flute online from Irish flute builder Michael Cronnely. "Sniper" is a nickname Marcel gave his instrument since it takes some time to assemble the flute from several parts whenever he wants to play it. The Sniper has many, many sonic faces and characters. It can be gentle and fragile but also strong, masculine and agressive. The Sonic Flutes Sniper patch has 9 velocity/alt layers for great realism when played on your keyboard.

The samples are not looped and last as long as Marcel's breath could hold it in a natural way. We just didn't want to add any supernatural features and keep the patch as realistic and playable as possible. The original tuning is D major. Even the sampled Sniper sounds best in D major, B minor or E minor or G major. While sampling this instrument we didn't want to devastate its beautiful natural pitch too much by using auto tuning gear since this would also affect its sound character too much.

You'll be fully cool while playing in above mentioned keys and if you are in let's say C minor and you hear a slightly out of tune note here and there, then thank the Lord for giving us real instruments to sample :)   (and maybe consider to transpose your track -1 half note anyway because if Marcel would be in your studio to track some flutes, he just might be gently asking for this too)

SOPRANINO

This small recorder has an innocent and friendly tone. It's an original German Moeck stemming from a costly mysterious unknown French Ardennian collection from unknown and forgotten times. Play this sopranino Moeck and step into distant Renaissance times.

FEADOG

Feadóg (Irish for whistle or flute) can be described as an end blown fipple flute, putting it in the same category as the recorder and Native American flutes. This tin whistle was a present Marcel got from his wife Sylvie when they were on a romantic surprise trip to Dublin.

CLARKE

The first Tinwhistle was invented around 1840 in the tiny village of Coney Weston, in England. Robert Clarke, a poor farm labourer owned and played a small wooden whistle. He heard that a new material called tinplate had been invented. He asked his friend the blacksmith if he could obtain some tinplate and show him how to reproduce his wooden whistle, using this new metal product.

The new Tinwhistle played so well that Robert decided to begin a business manufacturing these instruments. He also heard that there were big opportunities for manufacture in Lancashire. Together with his son, he walked all the way from Coney Weston to Manchester, pushing his tools and materials in a handbarrow. On the way he stopped in villages where there were markets and made the Tinwhistles. These he sold to villagers. Sometimes he met navigators, Irish labourers who were building railways and canals, and sold his Tinwhistles to them. These Irishmen took them back to Ireland, where the English Tinwhistles rapidly became Ireland's favourite folk instrument.

When Robert reached Manchester he set up his factory in a shed and soon became a successful manufacturer. Later he built two houses, a factory, and a church in New Moston, a nearby village. By then he was a very wealthy man. All from making the instrument that everyone wanted to play.

Notes to the Fluity Loops refill

The 350+ loops and phrases are subdivided in 20 construction sets. Each set contains 10 to 30+ loops and/or phrases that are played on the same instrument in the same style and mood. The tempo based samples always start exactly on the first beat of a bar, even if there is no sound played yet. This means that you will always be in time when you hit the sample on the first beat.