Soundiron’s Bowed Bucket is a unique virtual instrument built from an orange 5-gallon bucket, a wooden 4×4 beam, and cello strings. Bowing the strings produces an oddly clean and rich sound, similar to an electric cello. This library’s articulations include blended legato sustains, staccatos, vari-speed staccato repeats, FX, as well as the “Bucket Percussion Ensemble”.
The Bowed Bucket is the perfect addition for composers in need of uncommon instruments and sonic colors. This library also comes with a large collection of hand-crafted atmospheric pads, ambient textures, and 20 custom sound-designed factory presets.
Soundiron’s Bowed Bucket
- One master NKI instrument bank in open Kontakt format
- 579 Stereo Samples
- 662 MB installed
- 24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wave samples
- 22 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets
- Unlocked Kontakt presets and wave samples to allow user customization
- Sustains, Staccato, and Percussion articulations on a bright orange bucket
- Flexible and intuitive multi-layer user interface controls, with LFO, filter, glide, and arpeggiator
- Full FX rack with convolution reverb with custom rooms, halls, chambers & FX environments
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 to 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.
Soundiron 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, we manipulated all the raw material to create a variety of playable atmospheric pads and ambiances 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 growls, low end, and a nice clear bite. Its sound is a little similar to an electric cello, but with a unique rawness and body. For Soundiron’s percussion, we simply banged on it like idiots, with results just as you’d expect – plastic bucket drums. We captured various bowed articulations from both inside and outside of the bucket. And of course, as a bonus, we’ve also created a variety of very cool lead, pad, ambient droning, and FX presets to expand your creative options.
