Chords for Sampling a Japanese Nagoya Harp (Taishogoto)

_ _ _ _ _ _ Hey, so it's a beautiful day in Philly today
But I am indoors as you can see and I'm indoors because I have this which is a Japanese Taisho Goto
It's sort of like a mountain dulcimer kind of instrument
I've had it for about two years and for some reason I never sampled it and then today I got it into my head that
I really need to make a contact instrument out of this thing
Before I do let me do a little show-and-tell because it's really a cool instrument.
It has a very unique sound
[C] Yeah, let's take a look.
The Nagoya harp is a Japanese instrument.
It was invented in the first half of the 20th century
It's kind of like a cross between a mountain dulcimer and a typewriter
It has five strings all of which are tuned to the same note G
Although they're actually tuned to different octaves and it has these little keys with numbers on them
When you press down on a button the button mechanism presses down on these little frets and that's how you get different notes
It _ _ also has a drone string a string that's tuned two octaves below the high strings
And no matter what note you're playing the drone string always plays G.
[G] _ _ _ _ [B]
I found this one in a thrift store
I think it's from the 30s or 40s
It came in a neat little box with a manual and the manual has little songs that you can play _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _
_ _ _ It sounds sort of charming but its intonation is so terrible that it's pretty much unusable as an instrument
_ Because of the tuning issues in order to sample it I had to isolate each string and record it separately which took forever
So this is the recording setup.
I came up with I've got a zoom h4 recorder and I've got an octava mic _ and
If you look here, I've got a little piezo mic.
This is a different kind of mic.
It's not a condenser mic
It's a contact mic and it actually sounds pretty terrible
But I'm hoping that if I blend it with
The other two mics that actually sound really good
It'll provide some warmth to the sound because one good thing about contact mics is they tend to be a little bit bassy
So I'm gonna give this a shot as you can see I've attached it using masking tape.
So yeah, I think I'm ready to go I've
Tuned the Teju Goto all the strings on the Teju Goto are tuned to G just different octaves.
So there's a top three [G] G's
Then there's a middle G
And then there's a low G _ _ _
_ _ [N] Okay time to get started _
Okay.
So here's what the final finished Nagoya harp contact instrument looks like
As you can see, it's [Em] got a nice UI with the photo of the instrument
So _ _ [Dm] _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ since the strings were recorded separately, you can actually choose which of the strings you are playing
so here's just the middle string and _ [Dm] _ _ _ then if you add in the high string and
_ [C] _ _ _ _ Then if you just want to hear the high string and [Dm] _ _ _
[Em] _ [G] then if you want you can add in that drone string
Here's what that sounds like _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] if you want you can tune that drone string down
So like let's say you wanted it to be a C.
You could tune it down to a C
C is seven semitones below the G and _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ _ _ Most likely you'll probably want to keep this off, but it's there for authenticity
Also for authenticity is these key press options the key press options include the
sounds of these little buttons being pressed down
And I've recorded four round Robins of each of them.
So yeah, it shouldn't sound stale at all
I'm gonna turn them up so you can hear them _ _
[N] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _
_ _ [C] There _ are _
[Dm] _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ _
also mic level
_ Adjusters, so if you want to I don't know boost the volume of the piezo microphone, for example
Here's what that would sound like
_ You know play with it as I play _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ And of course there are
ADSR controls on a second tab here _ and
Also a reverb there's a convolution reverb that I picked to go with this Nagoya harp instrument
Yeah, you can turn it all the way off or you know
[Eb] Set your [F] level
So [Am] _ _ [Em] _
_ [Dm] _ [F] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ I've come up with a little piece of music that kind of showcases some of the different ways that this instrument can be used
_ _ So let's start with this channel here on the left
_ The low middle string which sounds like this _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Em] All [E] of the strings by the way are sampled with multiple velocity layers and with four round Robins each
Okay, and then we'll move on to the next track and we've got both strings enabled for this one.
So here's what that sounds like _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ [Em] And
Then here we've got a channel where we just [Dm] got the drone going you can see the drone is the only thing [Am] going
_ [C] And _
[F] _ then [C] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] finally
[C] We've got a track here
That has the middle and the high strings enabled
But I've screwed with the attack and the sustain so that it's kind of more like a pad
_ [G] _ _ [Am] _ Almost sounds like an organ [C] even though obviously it's only plucked Nagoya harp samples.
_ [B] _ [Am] _ [C] So together
They all sound like this
So _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ yeah, that's the instrument.
It's pretty cool.
I've been using it a bunch of my stuff
Unlike a lot of my instruments.
This one is actually a commercial product.
I'm charging $10 for it
I'm gonna be raising that price pretty soon
_ [A] _
Yeah, it took me a long time to do it.
So that's why
_ But yeah, I'm excited about