Impact SoundWorks Rosette Mandolin

The mandolin is an essential element of American folk music.

Rosette Mandolin puts this iconic instrument at your fingertips, capturing a bluegrass-style performance that works just as well in country, folk, Celtic, world music, and even rock or pop, on both rhythm & leads.

Get naturally musical results playing it right out of the box, or customize the tone and performance with our powerful Rosette engine.

About the Library

Although it originated in 18th century Italy, the mandolin has occupied a cherished space in American roots music for nearly a century. An iconic element of bluegrass music, it has also had an enduring presence in country, folk, Celtic and world music.

Legendary rock bands such as Led Zeppelin, Queen, Rod Stewart, and R.E.M. have featured it in some of their greatest hits.

The aim with Rosette Mandolin was to provide a beautifully detailed instrument that would shine not only in a bluegrass role but across a wide range of genres.

Authentic Sound & Performance

For this newest entry in the Rosette series, ISW turned to legendary bluegrass musician and multi-instrumentalist Ronnie Stewart, recording him at bluegrass veteran Rickey Wasson's Kentucky studio.

To achieve the ultimate in realism with this virtual mandolin, ISW recorded up and down strokes on every string and fret, in a broad set of articulations.

These include:

• Chops, the quick strums characteristic of bluegrass playing
• Taps, for fast passages
• Tremolo, tempo synced as well as manually controllable
• Slides
• Grace notes
• Chokes
• Legato, both manual and automatic with hammer ons and pull-offs

All articulations are conveniently mapped and completely editable.

The articulation set and deep sampling gives you the detail, variation, and expression to create a realistic performance and blend it smoothly with live instruments.

The powerful Rosette engine (built on Shreddage 3.5) works behind-the-scenes to make the instrument imminently playable, providing a natural and musical legato, using hammer-ons and pull-offs as needed.

Conveniently mapped (and editable) key switches allow you to access the additional articulations efficiently.

If you're looking for a different tone or performance style, you can quickly run through presets to audition a wide variety of tones as well as alternative fretting and picking styles.

Recreating the Mandolin's Versatility

Recording artists, bands, and composers have turned to the mandolin again and again for its ability to shine across a wide spectrum of musical expression: energetically rhythmic, gritty and folksy, lyrical and quietly contemplative, and more.

It can be heard in everything from country to pop to video game fantasy music to children's music.

We've aimed to capture the full spectrum of the mandolin's capabilities. It is famed as a nimble instrument for fast playing, and we've made rapid passages more realistic through multiple legato types as well as articulations such as tap and chop.

Rosette Mandolin performs equally well as a lead instrument, with its singing tone and melodic expressiveness thanks to deep sampling and several performance styles.

It blends beautifully with vocals and a huge range of instruments, from modern ones like electric guitar, bass, and keyboards to period instruments like recorder and hurdy-gurdy.

Its high register extends the range and broadens the palette of any ensemble or band.

The Rosette Engine

The Rosette line is built on the updated Shreddage 3.5 engine, expanded for the needs of acoustic instruments, and designed to not bog you down with complicated menus and controls.

The algorithms and settings of this engine work behind the scenes to turn your keyboard playing into a realistic mandolin performance without ever having to go "under the hood."

You can customize the sound and performance quite easily with the intuitive controls, most of which are under the Main tab.

The Performance Style drop-down menu provides presets that tweak the instrument to best suit the chosen style.

For example, use the standard performance mode to emulate a real musician's hand movements up and down the fret.

Or use the Workstation mode to allow much freer (and possibly less realistic) motions and movements across the frets.

Other performance parameters include a variety of fretting and picking modes.

About the Performer

Rosette Mandolin features Ronnie Stewart, a multi-instrumental bluegrass musician who has played with countless bands and on a staggeringly long list of recordings in addition to several of his own solo albums.

He won the International Bluegrass Music Association award for Fiddle Player of the Year in 2000 and Banjo Player of the Year in 2011.

Ronnie's performance was recorded in Rickey Wasson's Main Street Studio in Clay City, Kentucky - a state-of-the-art studio in the heart of bluegrass country.

Features

• Thousands of pristine 24-bit samples
• Exquisite studio recordings using the finest studio mics & preamps for stunning clarity and detail
• 4-string F-style acoustic mandolin
• A classic instrument of American folk music, performed with a pick in a bluegrass style by one of Nashville’s finest
• All crucial articulations
• Sustains, tremolo, harmonics, hammer-on/pull-off, slides, chokes, pitched & unpitched releases, and rhythmic chops (major, minor, powerchord)
• Every string sampled using up and down picking, 3 dynamic levels, and up to 4 round robin variations
• 11 production-ready tone snapshots
• Poly input feature for realistic chords
• Total articulation control technology
• Console FX rack and mixer