Tassman HV Instruments

This special page is dedicated to the creations of sound designer Harm Visser. The Tassman HV Instruments are exclusive acoustic patches that show the true potential of Tassman. Make sure to check this space as we plan to add more HV Instruments in the up coming weeks.

Featured Instruments

The Tassman HV Instruments are free for all registered users of Tassman 4 and can be downloaded from the AAS User Library site. Here are the descriptions and audio examples of the currently available HV Instruments.

• BowedThing
  The experimental musician has a new tool at hand: a two-bowed-winding-plate instrument for extensive metal ringing madness.

  BowedThing (0.8MB MP3)

• Violin Pizz
  The Violin Pizz is a simple patch. The secret is in the excitation sample for loading in the Player module: it's a short knock on a violin body. So the String module is fed with some frequencies of a real violin.

  Violin Pizz (0.3MB MP3)

• Stringed FM
  StringedFM uses four one-mode string modules as modulators for the carrier oscillator plus feedback - with remarkable results. You can create lots of weird and spooky timbres: from pure electronic to almost acoustic sounds.

  Stringed FM (1.1MB MP3)

• Mouth Harp
  The mouth harp is a simple instrument found in many cultures as Jew's Harp, GewGaw, Jeu and many others.

  Mouth Harp (0.5MB MP3)

• Celesta
  Invented by August Mustel in 1886, the Celesta looks like an upright piano, but has metal bars instead of strings. It has a high pitched and gentle sound with a rather short decay. It resembles the sound of a Glockenspiel...

  Celesta (0.5MB MP3)

• FOF Instruments
  The word FOF is an abbreviation of Fonction d'Onde Formantique (Formant Wave Function). It is in fact a special case of amplitude modulation, where a stream of short grains (pulse train) excite a damped sinewave. This process causes a formant region. The FOF method can be used to create the human voice, but also for musical instruments. This patch uses a VCO (pulse) that feeds a string with only 4 modes, so nearly a damped sine wave, with a very short decay. The result is a violin/cello timbre and some others. But as the demo let you hear, you can also use the grains as a separate musical or effect element.

  FOF Intruments (1.0MB MP3)

• Tibetan Bells II
  Tibetan Bells II features a sound that is hard to describe. We could say that the sound has a 'moving', irregular decay.

  Tibetan Bells II (0.9MB MP3)

• Tenor Sax
  One of the most interesting aspect of the Tenor Sax patch is the non-linear behaviour of the bowed resonator. It's extremely sensitive on how hard you press a key. It can cause effects as growling, multphonics and overblowing.

  Tenor Sax (0.6MB MP3)

Do You Want More!?

Here are some sound examples of other instruments available exclusively from the Harm Visser Sound Design web site. Visit the link below to browse his superb collection.

Harm Visser Synth Design

Trombone (0.7MB MP3)

Contrabass (Plucked) (0.9MB MP3)

Oboe (0.9MB MP3)

Violin & Cello (2.0MB MP3)

Virginal (Tabletop Harpsichord) (0.7MB MP3)