Rolfing Vol. 3

Rolfing 3 continues a series of Live Packs that source their material from a totally rotten piano. Volume 3 approaches the piano frame at its current place: a garden in a suburb of Dresden.

Since 2009, when the recording sessions for Volume 1 & 2 took place, the piano was exposed to weather nearly unprotected. The black laquer got brittle, the strings are covered with rust and dirt. Nevertheless, these piano remains still emit a wonderfull and reverberant sound that is definitely worth capturing.

The sounds for Rolfing 3 were recorded chromatically, with an advanced setup of acoustic stereo mics and two pairs of piezo pickups. All samples have been meticulously edited by hand to form a comprehensive palette of versatile Instrument Racks. Inspired by the acoustic field surroundings during the nightly recording sessions a set of independently adjustable nature ambiences is included in the Instrument Racks. They are tightly integrated into the Rack structure and have convenient Macro assignments. Additionaly, all ambience sounds are contained as separate clips to use in different context if desired.

In a second pass the entire piano was treated by a Jazz Brush. Scraping and hitting the strings and body revealed tons of interesting sounds at the borderline between tonal and acousmatic. They are compiled to 12 additional Racks.

The Universal Format Instrument version delivers 4 groups of sample synched patches. They can be multi-layered to form the full sound and/or treated independently in any desired way.