Church Bells

Real church bells sampled. Natural bell sounds and processed dark atmospheres.

The story

Trailer/sound samples:

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.

Reviews

  • Deep, dark & delicious.

    These aren't your grandparents' church bells - unless of course your ancestors were all into the black arts. Nice work, AV. Everyone DL this, assuming you have "all of" 12mb drive space!

    Safren on 21 October 2025
  • Delightfully Haunting.

    This library is haunting in a delightful way, the raw sound is amazing! When you turn that knob in the middle... you get a whole different instrument in a cool way. Thank you for making this and I look forward to seeing more releases. ;)

    Mark (Nowa) TaylorCreator on 25 October 2025
  • Awesome bells

    It's just like the end of times... perfect for apocalyptic music. One of the best bells that I've heard!

    cksandthecakewalkband on 18 November 2025