What is a Kantele?

The Kantele is a traditional plucked string instrument of the zitherfamily native to Finland and Estonia which, in turn, is part of the Baltic Psalteries instrument group. The Kantele has a distinctive bell-like sound and diatonic tuning. Our Kantele has five strings tuned in G-A-B-C´and D´, but we made a Kontakt patch to play it in chromatic tuning.The Kantele was updated in 2015 to version 2: We recorded the Kantele from the scratch. Beside a more detailed and complex recording in terms of round robin variations and velocity layers, we recorded the Kantele with two complete different microphones: a dynamic Sennheiser MD 421 and on the other hand a condenser mic Neuman U-87. By doing so you are now able to chose between these 2 microphone and balance them at your own requirements. Furthermore we added a reverse sample set to enrich the Kantele with a more articfial character – if you want. Finally we created a new GUI and added some scripting. You now get a complete new Kantele version 2.

But you can still hear the old samples by checking the „Add Draft“. This sample set was recorded som eyears ago. It has another sound timbre which could make your Kantele sound more bright.