Darragh Morgan Contemporary Violin

Darragh Morgan is one of the finest contemporary violinists of his generation, having performed and premiered music from the entire range of modern composers, as soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. Darragh has appeared as Concertmaster with London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Les Siecles and Aurora Orchestra. He has recorded 75+ albums of chamber music, many of which have received Diaspon D'or and Gramophone Awards. He is violinist in the renowned Fidelio Trio and a former member of The Smith Quartet. Darragh plays an 1848 violin by Giuseppe Rocca and has a PhD in Music from University of Ulster.

This library was created at his suggestion after helping me with some recordings for my forthcoming Ambient Steampunk album. The goal of this library is to complement and not compete with the many fine violin libraries with extended techniques that are available, and we went out of our way to ensure they were techniques that had not been recorded, and draws upon Darragh's decades of experience reaching far beyond the horizon of what the violin can naturally or reasonably do.

Check out the demos. Demos 1-4 are done entirely with the library - no other 3rd party sounds at all. This is not how the library was intended to be used, but serves to show off its range. Demo 5 uses some of the originally recorded samples along with other libraries and analogue synthesisers, which is the context the library was designed around.

Additionally, the library has not been compressed, because the composer is invited and expected to dive in to the original sample recordings to use as audio files, and perhaps design their own instruments.

Technical Notes:

Uncompressed, the library is about 1.8Gb. There is an extensive pads section which was created via GR-1 granular synthesis, and a few other proprietary tricks.

Where programmed in:

CC1 = Lo Pass Filter

CC11 = Hi Pass Filter (and Random Note Generator)

CC16 = Sample Start Position (for long organic sounds gives different start positions)

CC20 = Dry Mix

List of techniques/patches recorded with 4 mics, a stereo pair (default) and 2 large condenser mics which can act as an alternative stereo pair.

(N.B. most patches have a "pure" version of just the sample as it was recorded, and a pitch spread version):

• Bowing Behind Bridge - Scratch Sfz and Long
• Bowing Behind Bridge - Scratch
• Bowing Behind Bridge - Tremelo
• Bowing on Peg
• Col Legno Ricochet Bounce
• Col Legno Ricochet Hit
• Col Legno Swirling Pitch
• Crackle - Big Drums (programmed to be used as cinematic drum patch)
• Crackle - Pitch for Sample Start (different pitches start the playback at different points in the file)
• Crackle (this is a technique whereby the back of the violin is bowed to produce a "crackling" effect.
• Glissando - Slow Down
• Glissando - Very Fast Double Up (double stop)
• Glissando - Very Fast Up (CC16 for starting at beginning of gliss)
• Glissando - Very Slow Down
• Glissando - Vibrato Up
• Glissando Down - Fast
• Glissando Up - Double
• Glissando Up - Medium
• Harmonic Arpeggiations
• Harmonic Double Trills
• Harmonic Hairpin Trills
• Harmonic Natural Trills - Long
• Harmonic Practise Mute Trills
• Harmonic Sfz Trills
• Harmonic Trills
• Pizzicato Fluido (a technique using the bow frog on fingerboard in a similar manner to a slide guitar)
• Pizzicato Fluido - Ascend Note Generator
• Pizzicato Fluido - Ascend Reverse
• Pizzicato Fluido - Ascend
• Pizzicato Fluido - Bend Up Down
• Pont Pattern - Pitch Spread (Minor 3rd repeated figure. Different octaves have different performances allowing you to layer to create cluster effects)
• Pont Pattern II - Mi5 (diminished 5th and P4 cluster similar to above)
• Scratch Glissando
• Trill - Accel Surge (Surge effects recorded are only lower register)
• Trill - Gliss Up
• Trill - Mi3rd Surge

Additional (mono 1 mic only):

• Bow Strokes (recommend using audio recording rather than sample)
• Circular Bowing I
• Circular Bowing II
• Multiphonics CrossFade CC16
• Ricochet All
• Ricochet Arpeggio
• Ricochet Gliss Up Key Spread

Pads; there are 47 pads labelled with the technique from which they were created. They generally have a low and high pass filter programmed in and they are only 1 mic position - the stereo pair.

Compatibility: The library was created with Kontakt 6.8, and has been tested on later versions of Kontakt with no known issues.