Drop Bows On Em

This instrument is the actual thing I sought to make when capturing audio for my previous releases, Tonewoods Marimba and Xylophone. I am a guitarist and have always been jealous of both other stringed instruments that leverage bows and all the toys percussionists have. So, I decided to make my own fun by doing some detailed sampling of bowed marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, glock and crotales, smash them together into one over complicated interface and here you have it: Drop Bows On Em.

While the general effect of bowing a mallet instrument has similar characteristics from one to the next, each of these has a very distinct overtone response, resulting in an immensely rich palette to dance around in.

Each layer has independent controls such as pitch shift, stereo width, panning, LPF, HPF, reverb send and the ability to enable/disable looping. The interface is… a lot, but I hope the layout is logical. To help you navigate, I’ve included 26 presets for inspiration and there’s a full tutorial on YouTube linked below. I hope you enjoy dropping bows on them.