“Surmandal” also known as “Swarmandal” is a small Indian harp.
It is generally used to accompany vocalists playing arpeggios and notes with the right thumb in Hindustani Classical music. The Surmandal was used in The Beatles songs “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and “Within You Without You”, plucked with a guitar pick like we have done here with the “Indian Surmandal” SampleSet.
The SampleSet contains 867 24-bit WAV files
16 programs for all versions of Steinberg HALion
16 programs for Logic EXS24
16 programs for NI Kontakt v1 and v2
2 program for NI Kontakt v3 and v4
Surmandal Plectrum
The “Surmandal” programs are the plectrum picked Surmandal from C1 to G4 with all notes and half notes sampled. The mappings are E2 to G5, the G5 is stretched to C6 and E2 is stretched down to C2.
Every note has been sampled in 4 velocity layers and has 4 samples for every layer, these have been programmed as “round robin” for the Kontakt and EXS24 programs. The HALion programs have all samples mapped as velocity layers instead, a total of 16 velocity layers
Surmandal Thaats
A Thaat is a musical mode in Hindustani music which always has seven notes (excluding the repeated tonic) and is considered the basis for the system of organizing and classifying ragas in North Indian classical music
Each thaat contains a different combination of altered and natural notes. The flattening or sharpening of pitches always occurs with reference to the interval pattern in Bilawal Thaat (the major scale). It is important to note that, as in the Western church modes, each Thaat is a series of intervals, not a series of notes. That is, one can arbitrarily designate any pitch as C (the tonic) and build the series from there. Many different ragas can originate from each Thaat (also called father raga)
There are ten generally accepted Thaats, all included in the Indian Surmandal SampleSet:
Bilawal, Khamaj, Kafi, Asavari, Bhairavi, Bhairav, Kalyan, Marwa, Purvi & Todi. These are strummed up/down in different speeds and also clusters of notes for each Thaat.
“Indian Surmandal” costs $69 (+$11 if you want it on DVD) and all formats are included.
For more details about “Indian Surmandal” visit www.precisionsound.net.
