How to resolve AdBlock issue? TCHC VAULTS - SOLO BODHRÁN
Music-making community tools-maker The Crow Hill Company announces the availability of VAULTS - SOLO BODHRA´N - acting as a development of one of the world’s most ancient drum designs by bringing the heartbeat of traditional Irish music to its lengthening line of free and accessible instruments arising from company co-founder and composer Christian Henson effectively opening his ‘vaults’ for everyone to enjoy, this time turning to the artistry of Callum Convoy, one of the most sought-after bodhra´n players in Scotland, to bring about the authentic sound and expressive spirit of the long-lived frame drum to which the library owes its no-nonsense name - as of February 19…
Instantly Irish-sounding by virtue of its musical roots, the bodhra´n is most commonly played in solo contexts. It is shaped like a big tambourine and played on its side with a tipper or beater, while the left hand is placed on the inside of the drum to control pitch and timbre. The bodhra´n propels tunes with a vibrant energy and the potential to shine in almost any genre, regardless of the instrument in question’s historically rich roots. And, as The Crow Hill Company’s accompanying artwork for VAULTS - SOLO BODHRA´N helpfully states, YOU PRONOUNCE IT BOR-RAN.
As an inspirational addition to its lengthening line of free and accessible instruments, The Crow Hill Company’s latest library lets anyone experiment with both simple and complex grooves of varying time signatures while also making use of its wild distortion and beautiful multi-band compression controls to twist and shape its authentic sound into something else entirely. Enter The Crow Hill Company’s Theo Le Derf, digging a little deeper. “The library is split into two parts; the white keys all play varying accented grooves, and the black keys are all multi-samples, going from low to high,” he begins, before adding: “Both of these parts are velocity based, and the loops are time-synch’d to your DAW, so will adapt to any BPM that your project is in.”
It almost goes without saying that VAULTS - SOLO BODHRA´N’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) is as intuitive as always. Apart from the obvious background colour change to an appropriate Emerald green, it follows a familiar pattern already established by those products previously released as part of The Crow Hill Company’s lengthening line of free and accessible instruments, though Theo Le Derf duly provides a quick guided tour: “The first large dial on SOLO BODHRA´N is called RHYTHM and it contains two grooves that you can alternate like the A- and B-side of a vinyl record - one side is more simple and the other more complex, and it is automatically assigned to MIDI CC1; DISTANCE fades between the close mics and the spot mics further away - mics used were a pair of Neumann TLM103s and a pair of Neumann KLM184s. The small dials are more concentrated effects, the first one being CRUSH, which is a really wild, fun distortion; SQUEEZE is a beautiful multi-band compressor, which really tightens up the sound; ECHO is a stereo ping- pong delay; and SPLOSH is the standard VAULTS... reverb, both of which allow you to add more ambience to the drums.”
As a working musician himself, Theo Le Derf is perfectly positioned to speculate as to what VAULTS - SOLO BODHRA´N’s (many) musical uses could well be: “If you’re a media composer working on a chase scene or something, it could potentially work as a backbeat to that kind of vibe; certainly the bodhra´n doesn’t only shine in traditional Irish music, but can be used in anything that has a particular driving force. Indeed, it has the potential to fit into almost any genre.” Get this, though: in The Crow Hill Company’s VAULTS... webpage’s words, FREE FOR THOSE WHO TREASURE SOUND, VAULTS - SOLO BODHRA´N is now available for all to download.