Church Bells
Real church bells sampled. Natural bell sounds and processed dark atmospheres.
ByAV-Ylänne
The story
Trailer:
A few years ago, I received phone call. There was a church that didn’t have its own bells — instead, the sound was played back from tape. Their playback device had broken down and file was corrputed, so I was asked to re-record the strikes of the bell at Puolimatkan chapel.
When I was creating my very first Decent Sampler instrument, the Handpan, I noticed something similar in its resonance to church bells. That gave me the idea to turn these recordings into a new instrument.
The original recordings were requested in mono, but since there were multiple strikes available, I layered two of them together, panned 100% left and 100% right, and created stereo versions. To add even more versatility, I also experimented with a reverb plugin’s freeze function. This produced a pad-like texture, transforming the bell strikes into long, atmospheric tones. Quite unexpectedly, when played at higher pitches, these tones resemble a choir.