The Bowed Bucket is what happens when you build an instrument out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket, a wooden 4×4 and some cello strings. The bucket was fitted with tuning lugs and then holes were drilled out to allow individual strings to pass through, using the bottom wall as the bridge, so that sound projected outward and down. Then a 4×4 wooden beam was affixed to the bucket and the strings were then stretched up the heavy wooden neck, roughly nailed in place and hand -tuned. Remember that old string and paper cup trick from when you were a kid? Yeah, think bigger.

Bowing the strings produces a surprisingly clean, yet rich and beefy sound, with plenty of growl and low end and a nice clear bite. It's sound is a little similar to electric cello, but with a unique rawness and body. For our percussion, we simply banged on it like an idiot, with results just as you'd expect – plastic bucket drums. We captured various bowed articulations from both inside and outside of the bucket. We also plugged in our custom polyphonic Sim-legato and Uberpeggiator systems to some instruments, just for kicks. And of course, as a bonus, we've also created a variety of very cool lead, pad, ambient droning and FX presets to take it to the next level.

• Available by Direct Download or DVD.
• 568 Samples (standard PCM wav).
• 29 .nki files (unlocked format).
• 545 MB installed (348 MB Download).

Native Instruments Kontakt version 3.5 or 4 full retail version of Kontakt required to use all .nki instrument program presets included in this library. The free Kontakt "Player" does not support this library.