Field notes · · Tomek Piskor-Ślesicki
If you only get one
Browsing through the Felt catalogue can feel like visiting a candy store with tastes you haven't tried yet. That's intentional.
Everything here has a free trial with no time limit, so the best way in is to grab whichever ones intrigue you and play. But if you want an opinion, here is mine:
The one I would tell anybody to own: Nisko
Nisko is a 1963 Hohner Basset, a single-oscillator bass synthesizer with two knobs and one sound. I wanted a bottom end as deep as an 808 that still behaves like something a person played, and that is what came out. You feel it in your chest, which is why it works whenever you need a solid bass foundation.
It's also very good doubling cellos an octave lower on a film cue. But it isn't only for soundtracks. Pop, trap, rock, pretty much anything that isn't headed straight for a TikTok reel: there's something magical about bass this huge.
Nisko was recorded directly to tape on a Studer A62 tape machine, through an array of vintage analogue hardware.
Where most people start: Lekko
Lekko is about as fragile as a piano gets. A small Swedish upright with cotton between the hammers and the strings, sampled as quietly as possible. If the sound in your head is a felt piano, this is the one.
If you want that with more range, Bardzo is the other way in. A grand that sounds about as not-grand as possible, from the instrument that may well have inspired the Klavins Una Corda developed with Nils Frahm (don't quote me, it's a guess!).
If you're looking for sounds that are different
Helenko and Blisko. Helenko is a 1930s tabletop celeste that folds into a suitcase. Blisko is violin, viola and cello playing genre-less, avant-garde textures, never in sync. These are where I'd start myself, because they hand you textures that are hard to find anywhere else. The Afterglow patches on Helenko are still some of my favourites in the catalogue.
Jasno sits near Helenko in atmosphere, and captures a largely forgotten instrument, the Hohner Guitaret. I love how familiar yet untraceable it sounds. Its Afterglows are worth the trial on their own: Becoming Ocean, Piano Drop and Echoes are soundtrack-ready as they are.
The mechanism of the 1930s Jenco celeste sampled for Helenko and a rack of vintage hardware effects used to create its Afterglow patches.
If you are here for the effects
Kolor or Brut. Kolor is the equalizer, built from rare post-war hardware you can mix and match, at home on the master as well as on individual tracks. Brut is the saturation. It belongs on individual tracks more often than across a whole mix, though it sits there fine if you keep the drive down.
Rysy is the other kind of answer. If you want to pull sounds apart in the tradition of the early electronic music studios, that's the one: a 1950s Maihak filter from the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, and not a mixing tool.
Still stuck?
If you end up wanting several, look at the bundles before buying one at a time. That's what they're for.
But mostly: pick the two or three that caught your eye, put the trials on the same track, and see which one makes you want to keep playing. There are no sales at Felt, so there's no pressure to buy something you don't need. Get what inspires you for the music you're working on now, and come back for the rest when you need it.
Plugins mentioned in this article:
A 1960s sub bass, sampled straight to tape
$35
A 1970s Scandinavian upright, sampled as quietly as possible
$69
A 1970s touring grand with two strings per key and no soundboard
$149
A 1930s tabletop celeste with all its quirks left in
$79
from $99
A rare 1960s Guitaret, plucked, struck and granulated
$69
A modular equalizer sampled from rare post-war European hardware
$169
A saturation plugin built from rare studio and test equipment
$119
Sampled from a rare 1950s filter from the Polish Radio Experimental Studio
$69
