For a Holiday offering, Bolder Sounds has posted a free Granular Christmas Bells set for Kontakt and EXS24. This is in conjunction with the release of the full version of the Christmas Bells for Kontakt 2 and EXS24 which is on sale for $14.96 until January 1st, 2009.

Also, the Best Of Bolder Collection conversion to EXS24 and Kontakt 2 is now complete with the 10th volume Miscellaneous Instruments finished. The BOB collection will be on sale until Jan 1st for $119.96. Bolder customers who have purchased individual BOB volumes may use their previous purchase amounts as a credit to upgrade to the full BOB Collection.

The full 1.8 gigabyte BOB volume sets are: American Folk / Celtic Pipes / Crystal Glasses and Meditation Bowls / Early Music / Fortepiano / Granular Selections / Miscellaneous Instruments / Pianos / Suspended Slate Rocks / World Music.

Christmas Bells ($14.96)
This Bolder sample set consists of 12 Christmas Bells which are attached to a mechanical sequencer of sorts. The bells are tuned to C5, D5, E5, F5, F#5, G5, A5, Bb5, C6, D6, and E6. When put in play mode the sequencer sends a signal to the bell’s 'clapper' to play the corresponding bell for the correct note. The play list includes all your typical Holiday favorites like Joy To The World, I Saw Three Ships, etc.

For purposes of sampling, Bolder Sounds did not use the mechanical sequencer at all. Instead they just flicked the clapper with a finger while each bell was suspended from a mic stand. For each bell 2 articulations were sampled - hits with long full decays and muted hits. For each articulation of each note, 3 samples are rotated in Round Robin fashion.

Christmas Bell Specifications:

• 86 MB (unzipped) / 58 MB (zipped).
• 24 bit stereo samples.
• 3 round robins per note.
• Articulations - long decay and short muted samples.
• Kontakt / EXS24 / WAV formats.

Christmas Bells (Free)
Bolder Sounds has created some unusual granular pad-like textures from Christmas Bells. Also included in this Bolder free sound-set are 4 hit samples with long decays of the bells from the downloadable full product release version of the bells. This way you can audition a few samples of the original bells as well as hearing the original samples sounded like before granular synthesis processing.

The Granular Bell pads are presented layered against each other, individually mapped across the keyboard in a horizontal fashion and are also layered against the 4 original bell samples. The last programming technique sounds the bell hit and then a atmospheric pad-like sound comes in from behind.

Granular Christmas Bell Specifications:

• 11 MB (unzipped) / 7 MB (zipped).
• Kontakt / EXS24 / WAV formats.