The Chordophones

The Chordophones is built using the combined sounds of the retired FrozenPlain products “Ancient Chordophone” and “Hammered Chordophone”. The new and vastly more powerful engine breathes new life into the samples.

The Chordophones is a library of steel string sounds that can be blended and morphed in interesting ways to make anything from something resembling a dulcimer to something guitar-like or even organic sustains and pads. The volume, pan and tuning of the 6 layers can be chosen using the mixer.

First we have the hammered strings sound, this is a multi-sampled sound made from hitting steel strings with pencils. Its tone is bouncy and rich, similar to a dulcimer. The next 4 layers are multi-sampled plucked string sounds. They’re made from recording steel strings in unusual setups, for example a very short length string. The last layer is a morphed sound made by stretching and editing a plucked string sample to last infinitely.

Overall, the Chordophones has an emotive, old sound to it. Sometimes even sounding quite “medieval”. Using the powerful interface you can adapt the sound to fit your needs. For example, you can use the Strum effect to turn chords into strums. Or the Atomise and Scatter effects to granulate the sound and create string sounding textures and pads.

The second page of The Chordophones is the FrozenPlain Effects Engine v2.0, this is features 13 effects such as: reverb, delay, arpeggiator, sequencer, chorus, filters and more.

“A chordophone is a musical instrument that makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched between two points. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.”

Download The Chordophones Manual (PDF)

Download Effects Engine Manual (PDF)

	Easy to Use Mixer Using the mixer you can change the volume, pan and tune of each of the 6 layers. This allows you to dial in the sound that you want. If you need to save RAM you can shift+click to purge the samples of that layer from memory.
	ADSR Envelopes Each of the 6 layers have their own ADSR volume envelope allowing you to shape the sound. As an additional ease of use feature, you can edit all of the envelopes at once using the master envelope.
	Convolution Reverb The convolution reverb in The Chordophones can be used as a sound design tool. This reverb unit includes 28 custom made creative impulse responses. When applied they can turn the sound into beautiful textures and atmospheres.
	Effects Page with 13 racks The Chordophones comes with the FrozenPlain effects engine which features effects such as an arpeggiator for creating rhythms, an Atomise effect used to granulate the sound, and filters, reverb and more.