Six hand-welded, tuned steel bells by metalworking artisan Pete Engelhart, played with mallets, picks and viola bow.

Circle Bells captures the rare instrument known as “Blossom Bells”, whose six conical bells are tuned to different pitches and spread out in a fan arrangement. Each bell has a deep, warm and sonorous tone with crystalline clarity, rich overtones and a sustain of up to 10 seconds. Played with mallets it evokes a steel marimbaphone or celeste, bowed it recalls a glass armonica, yet its undulating resonance defies direct comparison. Soundiron recorded each bell up close in wide stereo, with strikes, rolls, scrapes, staccatos and sustains, plus extensive round robins and velocity layers.

Features

• Six bells played with mallets, picks and bow
• Strikes, rolls, scrapes, staccatos and sustains
• 56 ambience patches and 20 custom FX presets from the source recordings
• Interface with LFO, filter, glide, arpeggiator and scale lock
• Effects rack with 18 effects in 10 slots and convolution reverb

Technical details

• Type: Virtual instrument for Kontakt
• Operating systems: Windows, macOS
• Plug-in formats: Via Kontakt: VST2, VST3, Audio Unit (macOS only), AAX, standalone
• Requirement: Full version of Native Instruments Kontakt (version 5.5 or higher); Kontakt Player is not sufficient
• Content: 6 bells, 2,932 samples (24-bit / 48 kHz), 6.42 GB

System requirements

• Mac OS X 10.9 or higher
• Windows 7 or higher
• RAM: 2 GB
• Disk space: 6 GB
• Full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 or higher

The licence is registered with the manufacturer at https://activate.soundiron.com/. You will receive your serial number and the download link by e-mail immediately after purchase.