We spend a great deal of our time finding and/or creating new instruments that are not commonly known and the Circle Bells are no exception. We managed to get our hands on a very unique tuned percussion instrument, which is made by an artisan in the San Francisco Bay Area and can only be found in a handful of local music shops. The maker makes only one at the time, so there are very few of them available in the world. The instrument sounds somewhere between a Gamelan, Glass Waterbowl, Prayer Bowl and something extraterrestrial. It is made of an array of 6 steel cone-shaped bells, ranging from 2" to 3 1/2" in diameter and each about 10" long. Each note can sustain for up to 10 seconds or more and carries a deep blend of beautiful overtones.
We recorded the instrument in wide stereo, very up close in a dry vocal booth . We very carefully captured a huge variety of articulations and effects on the Circle Bells, making it one of our very largest libraries. It's divided into two sections: sustains and strikes. The Strikes section includes soft mallets and hard metal picks, with a large array of custom-designed special effect instrument patches, light versions and special presets. The Sustains section includes viola bow sustains, staccatos and effects, as well as soft mallet and metal pick sustaining rolls and crecendos, all covering a wide range of speeds and intensities that can be fully controlled using the modwheel.
There are also "wet" versions of all core articulations provided, utilizing a variety our own custom-captured convolution impulse responses in Kontakt's internal convolution reverb effect. The effects range from very realisticto totally sureal. We've also included a large colleciton of custom sound-designed ambient drone instruments, which were created by heavily manipulating the Circle Bells source recordings. Some of these ambiences were custom-crafted by veteran sound designer and world-class wind instrumentalist Steven Tavaglione ( Wall-E, American Beauty, CSI, Supernatural and 100s other movies/shows/games). All in all, our Circle Bells library is truly one of the deepest, most comprehensive and musically powerful tuned percussion libraries that Tonehammer has created.
Note: The Sustains and Strikes portion of the library are both included in the package, but are provided separately as a 2-part download due to the large size of this comprehensive library. After downloading and extracting both .rar volumes, they can be combined into a single directory, by dragging the "2_CircleBells_Sustains_Library" folder from Tonehammer_CircleBells_2 into the main directory structure in Tonehammer_CircleBells_1.
Tonehammer: Circle Bells:
- $59
- Articulation list:
- Cloth mallet strikes: an average of 12 velocity layers with our standard 10 round-robins
- Cloth mallet rolls: modwheel controlled loops with 3+ velocity layers and 2+ round robins with release triggers
- Twin metal guitar pick strikes: an average of 12 velocity layers and 10x round-robin
- Twin metal guitar pick scratch effects: 8 layers and 8 round robins per layer
- Twin metal guitar pick scratch "rolls": modwheel controlled loops with 3+ velocity layers and 2+ round robins with release triggers
- Bowing sustains on all bells (fundamental notes and harmonics): 2+ velocity layers and 2+ round robin with release triggers
- Bowing staccatos on all bells (fundamental notes and harmonics): 2+ velocity layers and 2+ round robin
- Custom sculptable ambient drones, created using only the circle bells as source material
- Extensive read me install, patch and hint documentation (.pdf)
- Interview w/Mike Peaslee / Troels Folmann on Circle Bells (mp3 interview)
- 35 instrument patches, 1.994 samples, 3.6 GB installed, 2.2 GB .rar 2-part download
- Sample resolution: 44.1Khz /24 bit and stereo .wav format
- Format(s): Kontakt and .wav
- Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 2 / 3 / 4 full retail versions required.
- Note: Free Kontakt Player will only work for 30 minutes with this product. Full version required to remove this restriction.
- Bonus: Ambient Drone instruments, including Circle Bell Glitch Bank with 53 Glitched Loops (Kontakt 3 only) by Steven Tavaglione.
Circle Bells – Demo 1
Featuring: Circle Bells, Forgotten Voices: "Barbary", Hang Drum, Propanium and Anti-Drum Vol. 2
Download Circle Bells demo 1 mp3 demo
Download Circle Bells (circle bells only) mp3 demo
Demo by T. B. Folmann
Circle Bells – Demo 2
Featuring: Circle Bells, Forgotten Voices: "Barbary".
Download Circle Bells demo 2 mp3 demo
Download Circle Bells (circle bells only) mp3 demo
Demo by T. B. Folmann
Circle Bells – Demo 3
Featuring: Circle Bells, Forgotten Voices: "Cait". Forgotten Voices: "Michael"
Download Circle Bells demo 2 mp3 demo
Download Circle Bells (circle bells only) mp3 demo
Demo by M. Peaslee
Eric Watkins
February 10, 2010
Keith Stacey
September 2, 2009
Andreas Schwietzke
August 21, 2009
Nuno Malo
July 17, 2009
Alexandar Tamingitz
July 17, 2009
Simon Stockhausen
June 30, 2009
Ray Savage
June 11, 2009
Gary Kephart
June 7, 2009
Bernardo Uzeda
June 5, 2009