About

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.

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!

Product Specs