Circle Bells

The Circlebells is a unique percussion instrument made by an artisan in the San Francisco Bay Area and can only be found in a handful of local music shops. The maker makes only one at the time, so there are very few of them available in the world. The instrument sounds somewhere between a Gamelan, Glass Waterbowl, Prayer Bowl and something extraterrestrial. It is made of an array of 6 steel cone-shaped bells, ranging from 2" to 3 1/2" in diameter and each about 10" long. Each note can sustain for up to 10 seconds or more and carries a deep blend of beautiful overtones.

We recorded the instrument in wide stereo, very up close in a dry vocal booth. We very carefully captured a huge variety of articulations and effects on the Circle Bells. It's divided into two sections: sustains and strikes. The Strikes section includes soft mallets and hard metal picks, with a large array of custom-designed special effect instrument patches, light versions and special presets. The Sustains section includes viola bow sustains, staccatos and effects, as well as soft mallet and metal pick sustaining rolls and crecendos, all covering a wide range of speeds and intensities that can be fully controlled using the modwheel.

As usual, we've included a host of ambient patches. Some of these ambiences were custom-crafted by veteran sound designer and world-class wind instrumentalist Steven Tavaglione (Wall-E, American Beauty, CSI, Supernatural and 100s other movies/shows/games).

• Available by Direct Download or DVD.
• 1,994 Samples (standard PCM wav).
• 35 .nki files (unlocked format).
• 3.6 GB installed.

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.