Rinascimento Intro, Outro and Overview

Just a note. I'm not the happy mouthpiece of any company trying to sell you something, though hey review copies are welcome but I'll be just as me in those reviews. (I bought Rinascimento out of my own Visa, but was given a review copy of Dominus.) I'm a slightly grumpy, poor (in many ways) composer, musician, developer who enjoys new instruments. To quote the old baseball announcer, "I calls 'em as I sees 'em." So I do nitpick and complain. Also I'm no grammarian so yes there are mistakes scattered throughout. Point them out as you find them in the comments and you will get a glorious no-prize.

Since I am a tiny dev and am learning to compose (I hope), I do tend to dig deeper into the instruments than most reviewers. I will and do open up Kontakt to see what is underneath the instrument and play individual samples. I bet no other reviewer has ever pulled a mass of legato samples apart just to see how many there were and how they sounded by themselves. The answers, a ton of samples and they sound weird by themselves. It is sort of like a mechanic writing a review of a car. A different, grubbier perspective.

Since a blog is written backwards in time, I've had a chance to listen to and play with all three dozen or so toys in this massive collection that Summer Santa and Visa brought to my computer. The verdict is a Definite Recommendation if you are looking for authentic sounding Medieval and Renaissance instruments and don't already own ERA II Medieval Legends. Even if you do own ERA II or don't exactly need realistic medieval instruments this package is still fun and potentially useful romp. More on that in a moment.

What Rinascimento covers extensively is Lutes and Flutes. There are 7 lutes and 15 woodwinds, flutes and reeds. There is also a nice set of keys with a solid organ, a little organ, harpsichord and virginal. The Brass and Strings have fewer instruments with 2 Brass and 3 Strings, but the predecessor versions of the Trombone, Violin and Viola are very nice and worth owning. Plus there is a Hurdy Gurdy which is well... a unique instrument. There is also a nice Percussion patch with four drums and other sundries.

In general the tone of Rinascimento is quite nice. I have a buddy who is an actual musician who plays these instruments and his initial thoughts based on the demos was nice Lutes and Percussion and nice but possibly unnecessary Organ, but average Flutes and poor Reeds. With my more limited knowledge I tend to agree, though the Flutes sound fine to me. The Reeds can get quite buzzy, especially close, compared to what I've heard listening to some Youtube videos. Still that makes them a bit interesting if you want a buzzier sound.

What makes this a really useful library is the Microphones. There are Close, Mid and Far mics and they can be mixed and matched in any combination. I was surprised that many of the Woodwinds actually change tone quite a lot based on the mic position. For instance in a blind test I don't think I would have known that the Alto Crumhorn was the same instrument Close and Far. Up Close it had a buzzy, gnarly, don't mess with me sound, while on Far mic it sound like a more casual, friendly horn. This of course helps address the earlier buzzy sounding complaint. I would definitely suggest using the mic mix to modify the tone as it can have a greater effect than just giving the illusion of distance.

The other huge selling point of this library is the Legato. For Woodwinds, Brass and Strings there is a true legato. That is the transitions and the held notes were recorded for each transition from tone to tone. This makes for an especially nice legato. Many instruments have a faked legato, which I use on my own instruments and while a nice effect and better than nothing, it doesn't sound 'real'. From chatting a bit via email with Paolo, one of the nicest guys in all of Europe, he explained that the legato was "full sustain legato". I won't go into the details of what this means, since I don't really understand myself, but this gives a very natural legato transition that is one of the selling points of many Fluffy Audio Instrument Strings and Woodwinds. It is almost a trademark sound.

On that note, the thing you have to do when you are playing longs in Rinascimento is to use that Legato. Repeatedly hitting say an E note for a second, releasing and hitting it again won't sound good as it is simply playing the same sustain sample. On the other hand imagine you start with the E and then go legato down to C, then D and resolve to E, then G, back to E and C and back to E. Every single E was a different sample.I'm not sure how many legato notes there are but an average 750 sample instrument might have 30 sustain, 120 staccato and 600 legato samples. This is true legato with a different recorded note for every tone across an octave or so. And the Legato really is impressive once you figure it out. Play with it, adjust the parameters and you will start enjoying the amazing tweekability and the resulting sound. And it solves the same sample too many times thing.

In my email with Paolo, he also explained that these types of primitive instruments are significantly different than modern instruments and require different sampling techniques. Most Medieval instruments apparently tended to sound good only if played in a certain way and 'at a precise dynamic'. So you don't need or even want velocity layers on many of these instruments as too much or too little force can make the instrument sound terrible. It is the ability to play dynamically that is one of the prime differences between modern and primitive instruments. Also many of these instruments were limited in scale and range and unless you wanted to drill new holes in the woodwinds you couldn't chromatically sample them. So the instruments were sampled in their natural scales and ranges and then the closest sample was used for the non-sampled keys so you wouldn't have any dead keys.

I do want to mention how much I appreciated Paolo's attitude. I questioned many design choices and other things which could justifiably upset a developer. Paolo was constantly kind and informative to a somewhat annoying customer and I was. He didn't know I was writing a review, nor did I at the time. (I will ask his permission to quote him.) So he was simply answering a customer in far more depth than an average developer would ever go. If you like good Customer relations, this is your developer.

Another thing Fluffy Audio likes to do is make interfaces that allow for a lot of customization. I like the fact that you can change the dynamic range. As mentioned earlier, these instruments tended to have a limited dynamic range and often this library reflects that with a smaller range than I'm used to. Sometimes I like, however unrealistically, to be able to go quite soft. The adjustment lets me go all the way to -102 db which is lower than you would ever want, but -60 can give you a nice dynamic contrast from pp to ff. Another nice feature is a velocity curve that you can draw in with your mouse. Make any weird curve you want.

It should be noted that Vibrato is a modern idea. In the 'olde' days if you played vibrato, you were a crummy musician who couldn't hold a tone. The legend is that Vibrato was invented to make a louder sound for the old wax cylinder recordings since they needed much louder sounds than a traditional violin could produce. Also the good Violinists refused to record and the lousy ones had a natural vibrato. So play it loud and play it vibrato became the watchword. All the kids heard this growing up and thought vibrato was the way it was done. So now we are stuck with it in violins and opera. Anyway if you want be a crummy player and emulate wax cylinder recordings, Rinascimento has a decent faked vibrato setting with some twiddle controls to adjust.

Now if you do own the ERA the Second, should you buy Rinascimento? I don't have ERA II, so my thoughts on it are based on reading the manual, reading reviews and user comments and listening to demos. After having written the previous sentence I tried the Best Service Try where they let you play with some of their instruments for 20 minutes. This is a great service for free and much appreciated. While 20 minutes isn't long especially with some lag, it still gave me a better idea of the sound and feel of some of the instruments.

ERA II has more instruments and more articulations which is certainly a plus. It only has one mic position which is the biggest negative. However the big difference to me is tone. ERA II sounds like what Hollywood thinks Medieval and Renaissance Europe sounded like. That tone is nice but unreal. The sales page for ERA II speaks about the collection being like a fantasy novel and I think this is true. For a high fantasy sound of Medieval times and movie soundscapes, ERA II is the way to go. Elves would love this.

On the other hand Rinascimento has fewer instruments and articulations and lacks sustain round robins. What it does have is authenticity. This is much closer to what it did sound like. I'm actually something of a historian and Rinascimento takes me to plague-ridden, dirt-poor peasant laden, meed in my cup after a brutal day, a motley group of traveling minstrels on stage desperately playing lutes and flutes and banging drums for a meal and tips Europe. Was that a run-on sentence? For real world and low fantasy Medieval this is the way to go. Dwarfs would love this.

Rinascimento also has 3 well recorded mic positions that blend well together in any combination and work well on their own. The other thing Rinascimento has is a killer legato. It can be hard to tell on a fairly short internet session how good ERA 2's legato is, but from what I heard it seemed decent but not to the level of the Rinascimento legato.

And it has flexibility. The Articulation Creator screen is quite nice and can add a lot if you dig into it. It lets you adjust many aspects of the legato such as what the legato fades in and out of and how long it takes and the release, add and adjust vibrato and other things. It also lets you simply roll your own articulation choosing from legato, instant (a legato insert) and polyphonic. Then you can pick from the various articulations like sustain, legato, staccato, tongued and save it all when you are done. There is also a flexible auto-strummer for the lutes.

So ERA 2 is more instruments and more fantasy. Rinascimento is more mics and more Medieval. I think they both are great projects, they are just a little different in focus.


If you are just taking a look but don't really need a more authentic Medieval and Renaissance instruments, you might be interested in these instruments to diversify your palette in much the way world instruments can add colors to your music. It has been said that the past is a foreign land and you can definitely hear that in this pack. Actually many of these instruments have their origins in or were influenced by non-European cultures. Even the instruments like the violin, viola and trombone which evolved into modern instruments have a distinct feel that can add an other worldly quality to a soundtrack or game music.

If like me you love exploring music and hearing new things, there are lots of great adventures hear. Plus these are tweak-able toys that let you take out your mad scientist hat and play. This partly because of the flexibility of the interface, the legato and being able to roll your own articulations, but also because combining the instruments into different combinations can bring out new variations on the sounds. Take a bass guitar solo and it isn't much, add it too a band with drums, keys and rhythm and lead guitars and now you have something. Ask the Beatles. Experiment and let us know your favorite combinations.

Part 2 - Lutes
Part 3 - Strings
Part 4 - Flutes
Part 5 -Reeds
Part 6 - Brass
Part 7-  Keys
Part 8 - Percussion