Tiny Thumb Pianos

Tiny Thumb Pianos is a modern form of the ancient African Mbira dating back to 1000 BC, also called a kalimba or sanza. The Mbira has been used for poetic storytelling, often accompanied by a Hosho (gourd shaker), and played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and social gatherings. These wooden instruments from Zimbabwe have a gentle & melodic percussive plucking sound with a marimba-like warmth and tonal body.

We recorded each tine of Tiny Thumb Pianos in wide stereo, close and dry, performed in unison and solo. The Duo and Solo plucks were captured with 10 round-robins per velocity layer, with an average of 8 velocity layers per note. After that, we sampled percussive hits, slides, taps, glisses, and other FX to enhance realism and make it feel like you’re dual-wielding tiny kalimbas IRL. We also rounded out the library’s natural tones with 20 ambient organic soundscapes and 20 custom FX presets to kickstart your creative journey. In short: this artifact is all you need to become a master musical storyteller.

The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. We've also included 20 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.

This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 low-pass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Our customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.

Key Features:

• One master NKI instrument bank: in open Kontakt format
• Thumb Piano duo & solo plucks: percussive hits, taps, slides, glisses, FX
• 20 Ambience patches: created from the source content
• 24 bit / 48 kHz: uncompressed PCM wav samples
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
• 1,805 Stereo WAV files: 1.35 GB installed
• Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls: with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
• Full FX rack: with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments