1 Introduction
“Night Flight” is a VSTi plug-in for the Windows platform emulating
a lass of keyboards popular in the mid-seventies to early eighties
whi h were known as string ma hines or string ensembles.
1.1 What is an analogue string ensemble?
Many moons before the widespread arrival of polyphoni
synthesizers in 1981 nifty engineers at Eminent Orgelbouw B.V. in
the Netherlands dis overed that their
Orbitone system, an ele troni ir uitry
built to affordably mimi the sound of a
Leslie abinet for home organists, ould
be easily modified to reate a stunning
new sound yet unheard from an organ.
They introdu ed it as a feature to their
1972 model “Eminent 310 unique” under
the name “string ensemble”. Honestly
speaking it's sound hardly resembles
anything like a real string ensemble,
whi h however does not take away
anything from the qualities these unique syntheti timbres have in
their own right. The sound had great appeal with musi ians,
parti ularly after Eminent in luded a modifi ation of the on ept
into a portable keyboard named the
Solina string ensemble whi h was later
re-branded as Arp String Ensemble for
the US market. At the same time other
ompanies like Crumar, Logan, Roland,
Oberheim and Korg also released
string ma hines following the same
ar hite ture ombining organ-style
divide-down os illators with an ensem-
ble effe t.
String ma hines have been widely used in Pop, Ro k, Funk, Reggae,
Soul, and Dis o musi throughout the seventies and up to the early
eighties when they were popular with New Wave a ts.
4 NIGHT FLIGHT VSTi - User Manual
