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. We 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. We used a viola bow 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.
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Contents
The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. We've also included 20 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.
This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Our customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. We’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.
The interface is rounded-out by our modular FX rack panel, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes our favorite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. We’ve added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!
Kontakt Format
This library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or later. Kontakt is an industry-standard advanced virtual instrument software platform. You can view screenshots of this library's custom graphical user interface in the image gallery above. This library is packed with features to provide you a wide range of sound shaping parameter controls, each one totally automation-ready in your host environment or Kontakt's stand-alone mode. Learn more about Kontakt by Clicking Here.
This is a standard Kontakt open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player does not fully support it and can only run it in a limited "demo mode". However, the sample directories are unlocked so you can use them in other wav-compatible software, sampler and synth formats. The special Libraries tab doesn't support this open-format Kontakt library, but you can use the standard File browser tab and import this library into the Kontakt Quickload window for easy loading and navigation.
Product Specs
- 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
Documentation
System Requirements
The full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt version 5.5 (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 OSX 10.9 or higher. Dual Core CPU, 2 GB System Ram, SATA or SSD hard drive recommended for this library.
Note: This digital product is delivered as a download via the Amazon S3 cloud network. A broadband internet connection is required. Please see our Help Page for licensing information, download and installation instructions, tutorials and to read our End User Licensing Agreement before ordering. All sales are final.
Videos
Walkthrough: Circle Bells
Composing With Circle Bells
Reviews & Endorsements
"From delightful to demonic and everything in between, Circle Bells can do it all."
- Jason Graves (Far Cry Primal, Until Dawn, The Order: 1886 and Dead Space)