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A decent Dilruba?

dflood

dflood

Senior Member
Anybody know if there are any sampled dilruba or esraj VIs available? In case you are not familiar with them they are kind of like bowed sitars. It is the instrument used to double George Harrison’s voice on “Within You Without You” on the Sergeant Pepper’s album.



I believe there is also an esraj featured in this tune by Loreena McKennitt:



It’s an amazing sound. I found a few loop libraries of Indian instruments and some of the big ethnic collections like Ra and UVI world suite have one or the other, but I wasn’t too thrilled with the way they sounded in the small snippets I could find online. I’m surprised the Native Instruments India collection didn’t include one because to my ears they are the most interesting of all the melodic Indian instruments.
Click to read more...
 
The instruments with sympathetic/resonating strings are extremly hard to capture. At the moment I think there is no convincing (!) dilruba/esraj/sarangi on the market the best for my taste being the one in silk .
Have a listen:

https://www.soundsonline.com/silk

choose the demo "Raga Girija" , the instrument right at the beginning
 
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There are some sarangi samples available out there, and while it's a different instrument, it often has the same function as a dilruba. AFAIK Loreena McKennit has been using both dilruba and sarangi in her productions. But why not use a real player instead? There are 1.3 billion people in India, and it's probably easier to find a dilruba player on internet than a dilruba library (there are several on YouTube). Or learn to play one?
(broken link removed)

Edit: just found a version of Within Without you with sarangi:

Listening to the Beatles version again, it sounds more like a sarangi than a dilruba to me - are you sure it's a dilruba?
 
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Vik said:
Listening to the Beatles version again, it sounds more like a sarangi than a dilruba to me - are you sure it's a dilruba?
Click to expand...

I’m sure no expert. It’s what the Internet told me, so who knows. The liner notes for Loreena McKennitt's The Mask and Mirror list an esraj on Full Circle. That started me on my search. Whatever it is, it’s a sound I’d love to use.
 
Sid Francis said:
The instruments with sympathetic/resonating strings are extremly hard to capture.
Click to expand...

Would that be because they need to continue to ring after the bowed notes end? I guess you’d have to come up with a way of muting the sympathetic strings for sampling and somehow activating their sonic contribution separately. Sounds like an application for physical modelling. Either that or everything would need to be done with phrases?
 
dflood said:
The liner notes for Loreena McKennitt's The Mask and Mirror list an esraj on Full Circle. That started me on my search. Whatever it is, it’s a sound I’d love to use.
Click to expand...
Well, it if says so on the cover, then it's an esraj, which isn't very different from a dilruba. They both sound great. I have a couple of dilrubas, but haven't been practicing that instrument for years, otherwise I could possibly have helped you out.
 
dflood said:
Anybody know if there are any sampled dilruba or esraj VIs available? In case you are not familiar with them they are kind of like bowed sitars. It is the instrument used to double George Harrison’s voice on “Within You Without You” on the Sergeant Pepper’s album.



I believe there is also an esraj featured in this tune by Loreena McKennitt:



It’s an amazing sound. I found a few loop libraries of Indian instruments and some of the big ethnic collections like Ra and UVI world suite have one or the other, but I wasn’t too thrilled with the way they sounded in the small snippets I could find online. I’m surprised the Native Instruments India collection didn’t include one because to my ears they are the most interesting of all the melodic Indian instruments.
Click to expand...


I've always liked the one in EWQL Silk:

https://www.soundsonline.com/silk
 
dflood said:
Would that be because they need to continue to ring after the bowed notes end? I guess you’d have to come up with a way of muting the sympathetic strings for sampling and somehow activating their sonic contribution separately. Sounds like an application for physical modelling. Either that or everything would need to be done with phrases?
Click to expand...

Yes to everything .-)
 
Vik said:
There are some sarangi samples available out there, and while it's a different instrument, it often has the same function as a dilruba. AFAIK Loreena McKennit has been using both dilruba and sarangi in her productions. But why not use a real player instead? There are 1.3 billion people in India, and it's probably easier to find a dilruba player on internet than a dilruba library (there are several on YouTube). Or learn to play one?
(broken link removed)

Edit: just found a version of Within Without you with sarangi:

Listening to the Beatles version again, it sounds more like a sarangi than a dilruba to me - are you sure it's a dilruba?
Click to expand...


Sorry for the OT, but do you know any resources where we can find musicians doing remote recordings of ethic instruments? I have hard time finding people that can play say an esraj or a kemenche, just to name a few on the internet...
 
Those are both overlooked instruments, except for SWAR (which I don't own; when I was most interested in it a decade ago, I think it was Windows-only or had other compatibility restrictions).

Ethno World is the only source that includes both, and Silk bumps the game up a bit with its Dilruba.

An inferior Esraj can be found in RA, and a not-so-great Dilruba in UVI World Suite (an otherwise worthwhile product, as is Ethno World).

All of those are old products, so maybe one of the world instrument specialists will come out with something new soon (e.g. Sonokinetic, Impact Soundworks).
 
Niah2 said:
Sorry for the OT, but do you know any resources where we can find musicians doing remote recordings of ethic instruments? I have hard time finding people that can play say an esraj or a kemenche, just to name a few on the internet...
Click to expand...
Hi, no - but if you for instance google dilruba online lessons, you find some players who also teach and have access to and use internet. They'll probably be able to help you, I guess - or point to others who can.
 
Thank you Vik. Crypto cipher does offer remote recordings (broken link removed) ... no dilruba though..
 
Mark Schmieder said:
Those are both overlooked instruments, except for SWAR (which I don't own; when I was most interested in it a decade ago, I think it was Windows-only or had other compatibility restrictions).

Ethno World is the only source that includes both, and Silk bumps the game up a bit with its Dilruba.

An inferior Esraj can be found in RA, and a not-so-great Dilruba in UVI World Suite (an otherwise worthwhile product, as is Ethno World).

All of those are old products, so maybe one of the world instrument specialists will come out with something new soon (e.g. Sonokinetic, Impact Soundworks).
Click to expand...
I don’t hear Ethno World 6 talked about much. It’s huge and expensive. Can anybody recommend it?
 
I might have mentioned this in another thread, but I do still find some use for Ethno World; simply less than before as the latest version of UVI World Suite is starting to surpass it on almost all counts, where there is overlap.

Vir2 World Impact, for percussion only, isn't the highest resolution library out there, except for certain instruments, but likewise is indispensable for me just because it covers so many instruments (and in an authentic fashion) that are otherwise hard to find. But I use it mostly for Latin and African sources.
 
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I have just reviewed the three main Dilruba choices in depth, and they are so different from one another that it's easy to draw conclusions.

Silk is by far the best recorded, as it captures the warmth of the instrument, it's buzziness, but is balanced and the timbre is affected by the playing and the chosen articulations. Neither of the other two main choices can handle this important aspect.

It's too bad that it's so hard to see an overview of articulations in Play, or to scroll easily without jumping and missing something. I so hate that interface, but it does cover most of what is needed, once one finds things with their strange organizational scheme. And it supports micro-tuning.

UVI World Suite is the worst of the three by far, so probably it is from v1 of Ethno as it is a tiny sample set with no real articulation choices. It's EXTREMELY buzzy and invariant in that regard as well.

Ethno World is the other extreme, with low frequency boom or resonance, an overall dark and somewhat distant sound (possibly poor mic choice and/or mic placement), a few articulations, micro-tuning, but not really comparable to the choices in Silk. It's by far the easiest one to play and control though, as it has the best workflow and GUI.

If you can find audio demos of Silk, I recommend listening and deciding if it's the timbre you like or associate with the instrument. If not, then you have two other choices on either side of that timbre, for dark and tame (Ethno World) to harsh and wild (World Suite).

Of course, there were a couple of other choices mentioned too, but they might be Windows-only.
 
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