Soniccouture Grand Marimba

A descendant of the African balafon, the modern marimba originated in Mexico, and is typified by wooden bars mounted above metal resonator tubes, which can be tuned using stops.

When we decided to sample a marimba, we knew we wanted to find a 5 octave concert model. There’s something very special about the enormous bass notes of a full sized model. The Yamaha 6100 model, which was designed in collaboration with world-renowned marimba legend Keiko Abe, seemed to be the natural choice.

A descendant of the African balafon, the modern marimba originated in Mexico, and is typified by wooden bars mounted above metal resonator tubes, which can be tuned using stops.

When we decided to sample a marimba, we knew we wanted to find a 5 octave concert model. There’s something very special about the enormous bass notes of a full sized model. The Yamaha 6100 model, which was designed in collaboration with world-renowned marimba legend Keiko Abe, seemed to be the natural choice.

Soniccouture has launched The Canterbury Suitcase, a new virtual Rhodes instrument for Native Instruments Kontakt Player. Back in June of 2012 we were recording Grand Marimba at Canterbury Music in Toronto. Studio owner Jeremy Darby was showing us his collection of vintage instruments, and let us try his Rhodes Suitcase 88. It immediately struck us as one of the most beautifully maintained and best sounding Suitcases we’d ever played.