Flemish instrument-building family Ruckers need little in the way of introduction to those in the know; suffice to say, their highly-valued (and valuable) historic harpsichords are akin to Stradivarius violins built by the Stradivari (Stradivarius) family. Fortuitously, the Stradivarius name has become a superlative often associated with excellence, so you could say that the name of Ruckers is as important to early keyboard instruments as that of Stradivarius is to the violin family. You could even say that the harpsichord was the ‘synthesizer’ of its time, without which influential early musical stylings such as baroque and renaissance would never have emerged. Interestingly, instruments central to this emergence were not mass produced but rather individually-crafted (and now highly-prized) pieces.
Needless to say, 1628 must have been an especially excellent year for the Ruckers family, for the Ruckers 1628 is now one of the greatest and most valuable harpsichords of all time. However, it is highly unlikely that 1,628 people have even played this especially highly-valued (and valuable) historic harpsichord in its lengthy lifetime. Those thinking that they will never get to experience the sheer musical joy of playing this two-manual harpsichord built by master craftsman Andreas Ruckers (The Elder) in Antwerp way back in 1628 should surely think again. Thanks to the definitive development work of TempoRubato in collaboration with fellow German sample content provider par excellence realsamples, now they can conveniently enjoy playing an authentic recreation of the Ruckers 1628 from the comfort of their favourite iOS device whenever and wherever they like!
Who better to introduce Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628, then, than TempoRubato Owner Rolf Wöhrmann: “We are proud to bring the Ruckers 1628 — one of the finest and most valuable keyboard instruments in history — to the fingertips of musicians in a faithful representation of great musicality and playability. The harpsichord sound has been discredited by so many uninformed sample libraries that discovering the true beauty of the sonic richness and capabilities is a great ear-opening experience for all musicians and producers on a quest for new sounds and inspiring sonic objects.”
Objectively speaking, Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 has been tested and tuned with hardened harpsichord instrumentalists and features full recreation of all stops and combinations. Creative users can play both manuals individually using separate MIDI channels with faithful recreation of manual coupling using key velocity for controlling onset delays. It includes historic tuning systems such as Werckmeister, Vallotti, Krinberger, Meantone, and more. Main a4 pitch is tuneable by +/- one semitone specifically for historically-correct performances. That said, performances need not necessarily be restricted to faithful recreations of those notable early musical stylings, but are applicable to current genres, too. Try using Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 with AudioBus to pump some fresh sounds into EDM productions, for example, following in the adventurous musical footsteps of French alt rockers Phoenix who made much use of realsamples’ historic harpsichord sample content on a recent recording.
Technologically speaking, Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 is truly a state-of-the-art app, supporting all iOS standards such as AudioBus, Core MIDI, Virtual MIDI, and InterApp-Audio. Indeed, it can be played using Apple’s InterApp-Audio or from other iOS apps via virtual Core MIDI. When using it as a sound module for MIDI controller keyboards it is fully playable using Core MIDI-compliant interfaces or Apple’s Camera Connection Kit and class-compliant USB MIDI devices, so communicating with the outside musical world is well and truly taken care of.
Of course, superb sample content is also a given with Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 making mind-blowing use of 800MB of sampled data, including key release sounds, while high-quality 64-bit floating point audio processing is used throughout. Today any appropriate iOS device owner can dive right in to the rich sampled sound of the original Ruckers 1628 harpsichord and start exploring the app’s capabilities using the onscreen keyboards. So why not head on over to Apple’s App Store and download Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 right now? It’s much more cost-effective than owning the real thing, that’s for sure!
Owners of Apple’s iPad Air, iPad mini retina (or later), and iPhone 5S (or later) can purchase and download Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 from Apple’s App Store for an introductory discounted price of €8.99 EUR (rising to €21.99 EUR from December 2 onwards).
Watch TempoRubato’s ear-opening Historic Harpsichords – Ruckers 1628 introductory video here: