SonicCouture Skiddaw Stones KONTAKT 石头音色

斯基德道石可能是最不寻常的，当然是最古老的仪器，Soniccouture已经采样。一种石版手机（石版=石头，电话=声音），始于1840年，Skiddow石头由61块由罕见的角页岩制成的调谐和形状的石头组成，发现于英国坎布里亚。据说角页岩的音调比通常使用的板岩更高，环更长。

他们的创造者，石匠兼音乐家约瑟夫·理查德森，花了将近13年的时间收集和塑造了足够多的霍恩费尔的个人音符，形成了8个八度音程。组装这台仪器的任务消耗了约瑟夫的精力，使他和他的家人陷入贫困。当乐器完成后，理查森和他的儿子们以摇滚、钟和钢乐队的身份游览欧洲，甚至在白金汉宫由维多利亚女王指挥演出。

斯基德道石目前居住在凯西克博物馆，他们非常友好地同意让我们把它们带离现场，到一个工作室，以便录音。由于这些石头的保险金额为35万英镑，所以这不是偶然的承诺。在工作室里，两组木槌被用来费力地捕捉大量的速度撞击，然后一个额外的发音被记录下来——木槌头被刮过石头表面的声音，一个令人惊讶的萦绕和共鸣的声音。其结果是一种绝对迷人的乐器，听起来真的很古老，甚至比它更古老。完全独特的摇滚音乐。

The Skiddaw Stones are probably the most unusual and certainly the oldest instrument that Soniccouture has sampled. A Lithophone (litho=stone, phone=voice) dating from 1840, the Skiddaw Stones are composed of 61 tuned and shaped rocks made from the rare hornfels stone, found in Cumbria, England. Hornfels is said to have a superior tone and a longer ring than the more commonly used slate.

It took their creator, Joseph Richardson, a stonemason and musician, almost thirteen years to collect and shape enough individual notes of hornfels to make an eight-octave range. The task of assembling this instrument consumed Joseph so absolutely that he and his family were reduced to poverty. When the instrument was completed, Richardson and his sons toured Europe as The Rock, Bell and Steel Band, and even performed at Buckingham Palace by command of Queen Victoria.

The Skiddaw Stones currently reside at the Keswick Museum, who very kindly agreed to let us take them off site, to a studio, for the recording. As the stones are insured for £350,000, this was no casual undertaking. At the studio, two sets of mallets were used to laboriously capture large sets of velocity hits, then an extra articulation was recorded–the sound of the head of the wooden mallet being scraped across the stone surface, a surprisingly haunting and resonant sound. The result is an absolutely bewitching instrument, one that sounds truly ancient, even older than it is. Totally unique rock music.