Circle Bells

Circle Bells captures the rare artifact called "Blossom Bells", created by local SF Bay Area metal working artisan Pete Engelhart. His hand-welded tuned percussion instrument features six steel conical bells tuned to different pitches and spread out in a fan arrangement. Each bell has a deeply rich, warm & sonorous tone with a long sustain and crystalline clarity. Soundiron sampled each bell up close in wide stereo using soft mallets, hard picks, and viola bow with both single-strikes/staccatos and rolls/sustains for each articulation. Its distinctive sound evokes the feel of a steel Marimbaphone or Celeste when played with mallets and a glass armonica when bowed, yet its character and undulating resonance defies any direct comparison.

The bells range in size from 2" to 3 1/2" in diameter and about 10" long. Each note can sustain for up to 10 seconds and carries a deep blend of beautiful overtones. Circle Bells is divided into three sections: bows, mallets, picks. A viola bow was used to produce sustains and staccatos, a soft cloth mallet to play single notes and sustaining rolls, and a hard pick to play single taps, scrapes and sustaining effects. Each articulation features extensive round robin variation and deep dynamic velocity layering to give you ultimate realism - like you’re playing this experiment yourself.

Features

• One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format
• Six unique bells played with mallets, picks, and bow. Includes strikes, rolls, scrapes, staccatos, and sustains.
• 56 Ambience patches created from the source content
• 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples
• 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
• 2,932 stereo samples
• 6.42 GB installed
• Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
• Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments

System Requirements

The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.8 (or later) is required to use .nki instrument presets included in this library. The free Kontakt "Player" and "Add Library" import process do not support this standard open-format Kontakt library.

• Windows 7 or higher.
• Mac OS X 10.9 or higher.
• Dual-Core CPU
• 2 GB System Ram
• SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.

Important Notes:

• The FULL Version of Kontakt 5.8 (or later) is required in order to use this instrument.
• You will be stuck in DEMO MODE if trying to use this instrument in the FREE Kontakt Player.