Andy Narell Steel Pans – The Ellie Mannette Collection

At long last the virtual instrument library that Andy Narell and I began working on nearly 10 years ago has been released and is now available through Ilio – a producer and distributor of innovative and inspiring tools for musicians based in Southern California. Andy gathered 22 of the best Steel Pans created by Ellie Mannette from Basses to Lead pans and meticulously recorded each note on every pan as many as 40 times from very soft to loud with the intention of creating the most refined and playable virtual Steel Orchestra library ever.  As the sample editor I was responsible for taking these recordings and slicing them into the individual note samples that make up the instrument. The library contains nearly 20,000 individual ~4 second samples covering the full dynamic range of these amazing Instruments.  The recording and editing was just the beginning and the next step was to begin building the instrument using Kontakt – Native Instruments sampler.  Andy spent countless hours working out the details of how this library would look and function before turning to Tracy Collins – founder of Indiginus – who worked on the functionality and GUI. The result is a Steel Pan library like no other made for arrangers, composers and producers interested in the sound of Ellie Mannette’s finest Steel Pans.

For an in depth look at the library check out the video on the product page on the Ilio site