Good accordian VST

I play some Irish/Scottish music now and then, and wondered if anyone could suggest a good sounding accordian vst. Thanks.

I’ve used some before in SampleTank 3 (& maybe 4). My favorite is the one that came on my Roland 700…Paris Romance.

I found one on Plugin Boutique call La Parisienne and used virtual cash to get a good discount.

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I recently got some IKMultimedia Sampletank banks in the 25 for 1 group-buy and found some pretty usable accordion, harmonium and melodica sounds in the “Alternate Keys” soundbank:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/stalternatekeys/?pkey=stsounds-alternatekeys

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Thanks Dave. I’m guessing you have to buy Sample Tank 4 as a starter, then add the Alternate Keys bank. Is that correct?

As others have commented, Sample Tank has several free-reed aerophone type instruments available. I also have a Korg bundle with Triton and Triton Extreme as well as my still in daily use Korg Triton Rack and all of these have some great instruments in this category. I have a few other products from other companies - like Boulder Sounds - which have some rather eclectic choices, but one of my all time favorites is Little Pump Reeds by Soundiron. It is my all time favorite go-to when I want something more unusual sounding and at $29 hard to beat. The most in depth collection is probably Eduardo Tarilonte’s Accordions 2 by Bigfish Audio but it is expensive - about $200. Sonokintetic Accordion is probably the best value accordion plugin available at 50 euros. Format for these instruments are for Kontakt.

The first instrument I played was accordion for almost 15 years before expanding my horizons and taking up several other instruments. My main instrument these days is the hurdy gurdy. Reed instruments are the main historical companions for the HG over the centuries, especially musettes and other smaller free-reed pipe instruments. Of all of the above plugins, the ones I use most often are the Korg programs and Little Pump Reeds. Hope this helps.

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I’m using a few accordion sounds only, for example the outro of Rammstein “Reise Reise” :slight_smile:

NI Kontakt 6 factory library “Accordion” and “Melodeon” layered with this pretty low-cost library gives me good vibes:

https://www.cmusic.pro/product-cat/royal-standart/royal-standart

But history tells us:

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That’s because he wasn’t reading the music properly

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I think you can use the sample pack with the free version Sampletank 4 CS, certainly the product page seems to say you can:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/st4cs/?pkey=sampletank-4-cs

Ha, ha. Hey those cartoons are great. I know the instrument is very uncool in many peoples eyes, but the rise of Irish music (Dirty old town) and pumping country (Wagon wheel) has lifted the accordion’s status I reckon. Especially in my case, with this old fella strutting out front using a bright red Alexis Vortex key tar and wireless headset mic playing those and other similar songs on GP. I have a guitarist buddy with a bright red Gibson, and yesterday, we were both strutting out front playing Time is tight (with VB3 not an accordion by the way!). I haven’t quite managed the Chuck Berry duck walk yet, or The Shadows walk that they made famous, but I am working on it!!

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Man, I am finding that impossible to download. I keep getting the run around going in circles achieving nothing. I may have to look at other suggestions.

Please don’t get me wrong. The cartoon was just for the fun of it! I’m far from judging the accordion uncool. Actually I like it’s sound, but it plays a minor role in my kind of music.

I’m just a fan of Gary Larson cartoons, which others might hate. And these days we had a recent debate in the Vintage Synth group of Facebook, about which vintage synth to replace the accordion for the shown purpose :slight_smile:

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Hi CC. I bought this one. I’m not that familiar with Kontact. How do you access the various instruments with Kontact? I believe there are three available.

If your question is how to use/load an instrument from a third party (e.g not from NI), see this video below. Note - this applies to any third part instrument that is in NI format. There is a caveat about open/closed format - open format requires the full version of Kontakt, closed can be used with either the full version or Kontakt Player. Note - apparently there is According and Melodeon instruments in the NI Factory library, but I haven’t used them.

@dhj got me to try this one years ago : http://virtual-acoustic.com/index.php/en/kontakt-sample-packs/guerrini-professional-4

I never looked back. I’ve used it live and on recordings. Sounds awesome.

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Thank you so much for the link. Synthway has a number of really wonderful products in addition to Akkordica which I liked, and purchased, which I am already using and experimenting with.