The Bowed Bucket is what happens when you hammer together a big fat instrument out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket, a wooden 4×4 beam, bass tuners and 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.
They bowed it, plucked it, struck it with drumsticks in a close, dry setting to get tons of tonality, then programmed it into a living, breathing self-contained bucket band. After that, they manipulated all the raw material to create a variety of playable atmospheric pads and ambiences to bring out the full creative potential of this rather odd contraption.
Bowing the strings produces a surprisingly clean, yet rich and beefy sound, with plenty of growl, low end, and a nice clear bite. It’s sound is a little similar to an electric cello, but with a unique rawness and body. For their percussion, they simply banged on it like idiots, with results just as you’d expect – plastic bucket drums. They captured various bowed articulations from both inside and outside of the bucket. And of course, as a bonus, they’ve also created a variety of very cool lead, pad, ambient droning and FX presets to expand your creative options.
CONTENTS
The Kontakt interface includes a suite of automation-ready sound-shaping controls to give you total creative flexibility. You have control over swell, attack, release, offset, vibrato, filter, pitch (coarse & fine), articulation switching, cross-fading and layering, and so much more. They’ve also included 22 unique sound-designed custom FX presets to give you lots of creative options.
This library comes with an adaptable LFO system, with selectable LFO shape, modulation target parameter, speed, intensity, tempo-syncing and fade-in time. You can also apply your choice of 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters, with assignable modulation targets such as velocity, modwheel, expression, after-touch, key position and step-sequencer table control. Their customizable arpeggiator offers a velocity table and control over arp direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. They’ve included a key and scale lock system to constrain your notes to common scales and keys for easy melodic composition and live performance.
The interface is rounded-out by their modular FX rack panel, with 18 different DSP effect modules that you can assign in any of 10 available slots, in any order that you wish. You’ll find classic phaser, flanger, delay, distortion, amp and cab simulators, compressors, EQ, rotator and so much more. The Reverb effect includes their favorite convolution reverb impulse responses, including 99 different rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor environments, plus another 40 custom FX impulses to radically transform the sound and open up whole new worlds of musical possibility. They’ve added a great bank of FX rack chain factory presets to get you started!
