Cuatro Puertoriqueno

Inspired by the Spitfire Audio LABS Charango instrument, I decided to sample a Cuatro Puertoriqueno that I had built form scratch. The Cuatro was made from Spanish cedar for the body and Yagrumo for the soundboard. The Cuatro is a Puertorican instrument that is often used in Puertorican folk (jabaro) as well as Christmas music.

Each note was recorded using a Rode NT2 large capsule microphone through a Joe Meek VC6Q preamp. For the pluck instrument I added some EQ and compression as well as a small amount of Supermassive reverb. I played/recorded the notes twice with a medium pick and setup a round-robin in the EXS24. Of note, I played a B that seemed to modulate weirdly, and I kind of liked how human it sounded when added to the round robin. I also made a pad using the Cuatro samples as source material and adding some reverb, modulation, and delay to fill it out as a pad with some motion.

IMPORTANT

This library works with the free Decent Sampler player plugin