Garland Music Box Marimba

A tiny music box sampled and processed to sound like a marimba

ByJames Peacock

The story

I’ve been playing around with the idea of sampling some of the cheapest instruments I own, mainly childhood toys, to see if I can create something useable from them. This instrument was sampled from a tiny music box that plays ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. I processed these very delicate recordings; removing a lot of the high frequencies, adding some reverb, delay, and a fair amount of tape compression. The result ended up sounding more like a marimba than a music box, so for the sake of honesty I’ve called it a ‘music box marimba’ (patent applied for).

Interface

Reviews

  • amazing!

    This is a wonderful virtual instrument; the sound quality is virtually impeccable, and the instrument's sound itself is very pleasing and reflects the instrument's name well.

    Kozarne on 29 May 2023
  • I love it!

    I absolutely loved this sample pack. In fact I used it to compose a short soundtrack for a video game. I'm happy to see my tune is featured in this page. A Peaceful Moment :)

    Thanos on 18 January 2023
  • An awesome combo!

    Is it a music box, is it a marimba? It is both, and it sounds awesome! It is a very mellow tone, that combines the wooden and warm tone of a marimba with the inner metallic resonance of a music box. It plays very nicely, and it's spread across the entire keyboard, with samples based on the note A on each octave, and with 3 dynamic layers on each.

    Overall it is a wet sound by default, and if that's not enough, the GUI offers some extra reverb along with the other standard DecentSampler settings. It is just a very good combo-mallet that comes for free via DS, and in a very small size too.

    Alex Raptakis on 31 August 2022
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