Steinway & Dulcitone
Microloops & Oddities
Raw, organic keys with fresh inspiration
£49
included in the Omnis Everything Bundle – huge savings and massive giveaway
Can experiments become instruments?
Alium began with a search for the perfect grand piano to sample. After a session at Nottingham’s Albert Hall, I captured test recordings of the Steinway— plucking, pen-tapping, and striking strings. While not suited for a full-scale sampling project, these samples were too unique to gather digital dust.
So began a journey of discovery. The test recordings were reshaped and reimagined through analogue effects, taking the familiar into new sonic territories and celebrating the sounds of the unpolished and the unplanned. Alongside the Steinway samples, Alium now includes the rare, resonant tones of the Dulcitone, with plans to continue adding organic, expressive keyboard instruments.
Alium invites you to create music from the curious and the imperfect. Raw, organic, and full of character. Alium is for the explorers.
Steinway Grand Piano
A distilled flavour of the Hamburg Steinway C captured at Nottingham Albert Hall
Sampled 3 ways;
normalé – plucked – struck
Dulcitone
Recorded in remarkable detail with legendary microphones through world-class analogue desks and hardware
Retains the subtle clunks and mechanical quirks of the aged action. Perfectly imperfect and unapologetically unpolished to capture its beautiful character
AUDIO AUDIO AUDIO
VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO
Alium 1.0 launch trailer
Dulcitone launch trailer
gb installed
Core instruments
samples
MOODS
Requires full/retail version of Kontakt 7.8.1
Nov 3rd 2024: Thanks for checking out Alium and I’m hugely excited to share the Dulcitone update! It was a joy to sample and the results I think speak for themselves. At present I’m super busy getting the Alder Solo Strings ready for launch aiming for Black Friday so please forgive the sparcity in terms of manual, walkthrough and demos, more will be coming soon along with a further update to Alium.
In the meantime: The Dulcitone (as well as the Steinway) was recorded with some rather wonderful gear. I’d suggest the C42s as your main mic setup to get started – stereo pair with a good width. The U87s are in a little more were fed through the Fairchild compressor. This is a rather aweomse, softer sound. The incredible C12 (look up this mic! In fact, look up all the mics) presents your first remarkable mono option. The U47 was set back in the room and set to omni to capture a characterful mono studio sound while the Schoeps V4Us are your stereo studio sound. Underneath is an SM57 going quite hard into a Distressor for another coloured, mono tone.
Then of course; mix to your hearts desire. A broad selection of mics both mono and stereo, coloured by the Fairchild, Distressor, SSL and Neve desks gives you a full mix session to create your own sound easily, right in the UI.
This is a free update to Alium owners and starts to bring the vision of the library to life. A harmonium has already been sampled to add down the line. I’ll be making some guides on updating libraries soon, in the meantime, please re-download from Pulse, backup the existing libary in case.
Alium is part of the Omnis Bundle – for £189 you get Alium as well as pre-orders for the Alder Solo Strings, Trumpets and Tuba, Exclusive libraries Violin and Cello Struttura, Frozen Piano from Herman Samples, all other Waverunner libraries currently released and a 1/300 chance to win a MacBook Pro. Yes I must be crazy. Yes the deal is limited and it must end this November. Check it out here.
As always plese feel free to reach out with questions: hello@waverunneraudio.com
Ross