The Crow Hill Company has added Solo Bodhrán to its free Vaults series.

The Crow Hill Company’s Vaults series has been a source of excellent free sounds since launching over a year ago, with two of my favorites, Amp Bass and Wavering Choir, coming out in recent months.

The latest addition to the vault is Solo Bodhrán, the backbone of traditional Irish folk music.

The Bodhrán is a shallow frame drum played with a tipper, a small wooden stick typically made from ash or hickory.

Although a relatively simple instrument, there’s something wonderful about the sound of the Bodhrán; it’s also popular in Scottish folk music and a sound very close to my heart.

Solo Bodhrán utilizes the familiar Vaults interface; the controls are tailor-made for use with a small fader controller.

The white keys trigger different accented grooves, and the black keys trigger pitched multi-samples (low to high).

One of the things I love about the Vaults series is that The Crow Hill Company goes the extra mile to provide an authentic sound.

The recorded instruments typically have an interesting story and are played by exceptional musicians.

In this case, The Crow Hill Company turned to Callum Convoy, a celebrated Bodhrán player and one of Scotland’s most promising percussionists.

The first of the two large dials is Rhythm, which controls the groove’s complexity. It allows you to transition between two variations of the current groove, one simple and one more complex.

The second large dial is Distance, which lets you fade between the close mics and the further away spot mics.

The smaller dials start with Crush, a distortion effect that brings a modern sound to the Bodhrán. Traditional instruments often sound great in contemporary music because there’s an element of the unexpected (it’s usually either super-cool or terrible).

Still, if you want to shape the Bodhrán into something more obviously modern, the Crush effect is an excellent choice.

Next up is Squeeze, a multi-band compressor, and the last two dials are Echo and Splosh, which you’ll find on every Vaults release.

Echo is a ping-pong delay, and Splosh is a lush reverb (you can reverse their position in the chain).

It’s always nice to see instruments outside the most typical get the plugin treatment; Solo Bodhrán is lovely.

Download: Solo Bodhrán (FREE)

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