Two years ago in September, we wanted to tell another story - or perhaps a fairy tale, a legend? Let's take it from afar. Hic sunt leones – literally "here are the lions" – the Romans said about the mysterious African continent. This saying became common for all unexplored parts of the empire. That was exactly what we were looking for: leones.

We felt excited to explore uncharted territory in search of new wild beasts to tame, and Gallichon, Crumhorn or Theorbo were just some of the fearsome predators we sought. We had heard about La Rossignol, a group of Italian Renaissance Music players. After some research and calls, we met Domenico, the ensemble's chief organizer and lutist.

We were surprised – but somewhat disappointed – to find that even Domenico was looking for a good Sample Library to make Renaissance mock-ups! His search made sense though, as only a small portion of Renaissance repertoire had been sampled. We managed to involve Domenico and La Rossignol, but we still needed some instruments. Cornetto, Gallichon, and Dulciana were hard to find, and good players even harder. After several weeks, we finally enlisted some of our county's finest musicians: Lord Cantalupi of the Wolvesinger family and Count Mandonico of the Cornets. The players lived scattered from Bologna to Milano, so we traveled extensively to meet them.

These days of planning, meetings and sandwiches became one of the project's highlights. Meeting different people with different approaches helped us think more precisely about the interface and behavior of the virtual instruments, but more importantly, about the general idea and inner sound of Rinascimento we wanted to shape from scratch. This was, ultimately, the most challenging task: giving new life to age-old vibrations that must be played in a present context!