The story

On the Cumnor side of the picturesque Boars Hill between the market town of Abingdon and Oxford lies this gate in the middle of a field. On a blustery day, the wind blows over the open-topped gate post and a little opening half way down the post turns it into a massive organ pipe.

As luck would have it, the day I went back to record it, there wasn’t any wind in sight. Nary a fleeting gust or stiff breeze. Turns out, blowing over the top of the post produces a similar effect, so that’s what I did for about half an hour, much to the bemusement of passing ramblers.

Once back home, I found a section that sounded halfway decent, paulstretched it, and ran it through a host of Soundtoys plugins. What’s especially nice, is I’ve kept in my intake of breath for the next blowing session at the end of my chosen sample, so along with the airy nature of the sample itself, the whole thing sounds organic and elemental.

Reviews for Boars Hill Gate Post

  • Sound
  • Character
  • Playability
  • Inspiration
  • GUI

Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!

  • Just awesome drone soundscape pad!

    Almost perfect , I would love some type of control with this one , maybe just and adsr will be awesome , thank you so much Ash!

    ARKAN13 October 2021
  • Nice drone sound!

    I really like this drone sound. It is like a windy, far distant voice. I think this can be useful for many projects. It would have been nicer if ADSR parameter was available to control sustain.

    Asuka Amane17 October 2021
  • Amazing but limited ambience

    In short, excellent quality and character, and very inspiring to me. This is a lovely sound that offers an amazing airy soundscape, and the patch is very barebones so it is up to you and your imagination to make the most out of it, either on its own, or with some extra processing that you can think of.

    Alex Raptakis28 October 2021
  • Unsettling Pads

    These pads are pretty weird, spooky and unsettling. There have a kind of drone unison harmonic quality to them similar to Sirin Pads. Even when playing a major chord it sounds creepy and slightly dissonant. There isn't much control over this sound, it would have been nice to have a release control because it does ring out for a while but other than that no complaints. for what it does its a well made instrument. I recently changed the name in my folder from Unsettling Pads to Unsettling Beautiful Pads because on second listen i found them to be less dissonant than i originally thought and pretty beautiful and ethereal while still having that drone like quality

    septemberwalk30 October 2021
  • A Chorus of the Spirits of the Departed

    This sound is haunting and is reminiscent of a choir. it's lovely. i found it to be far more playable once I'd reduced the attack down to the minimum and cut the release time drastically as well. It would have been cool to have had those controls in the GUI, but it's really not too much trouble to open up Kontakt to find them. This is a simple pad, but it's lush, well recorded, and well programmed. I'll absolutely use this in the future!

    Sam EcoffSamplist 01 November 2021
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