Tonehammer Forgotten Voices - Barbary

Barbary Grant is a highly renowned vocalist and harper within Celtic communities. She sings- and articulates fluently- in all three Goidelic languages: Scots Gaelic, Irish, and Manx. This homage won her first place in the sean nós competition at the 1998 Great American Irish Fair. Sean nós – “old style” in Irish – is a highly ornamented style of a cappella singing.

This vocal library is constructed from over 1450 different vocal phrases covering over 12 hours of recording material. The majority phrases in the library are based on majority of classic (public domain) songs from the Celtic, Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Welsh and Manx music folklore. Additionally the library contains a variety of more experimental phrases, including whisper songs, chantings, lullabys, elwish whispers and basic sustained notes.

The library follows programming and editing techniques introduced in our Forgotten Voices: Francesca library. The programming allows user to sculpt- and morph phrases by adjusting the mod-wheel and pitch bender. The mod-wheel controls the sample starting point, so users can trigger off-set anywhere they want in the phrases. The pitch bender allows you to time-stretch / compress the phrase. Special key-switching also allows you to adjust to root pitch of all phrases in a patch by up to +/- 3 semitones. The combination between sample off-set control, root pitch control and time-stretch / compression allows users to seamlessly morph different phrases together, which brings endless possibilities for creating new phrases.

In addition Barbary contains a bonus set of vocal ambiences made by Steven Tavaglione (Instrumentalist and Sound Designer; Wall-E, American Beauty, CSI, Supernatural and 100s other movies/shows/games). Most core vocal phrase and ambient instrument patches are now also available in the EXS24 format, although time-stretching and sample offset features are not supported.

Note: All demos are played live using one vocal ambience and one set of vocals pr. demo, so they literally took 3-5 minutes to compose. We wanted to show a completely “naked” approach to using the vocals.

Tonehammer Forgotten Voices: “Barbary”:

       * Traditional folklore categories for all phrase types, including:
          o Gaelic phrases
          o Celtic phrases
          o Scots Gaelic phrases
          o Scots phrases
          o Welsh phrases
          o Irish phrases
          o Old English phrases
          o Manx phrases
          o Improvisational chanting
          o Improvisational whisper songs
          o Harp Songs (Vocals sung through resonance chamber of a celtic harp)
          o Whisper Songs (Extremely soft songs between singing and whispering)
          o Bonus: Non-extensive section of sustained (oh, ah, eh) notes at mezzo-piano
          o Bonus: Gaelic (Elwish) Whispers and breath FX
          o Bonus: Vocal ambient banks by Steven Tavaglione.
    * Intelligent editing and programming (off-set,  time-stretch and root pitch control)
    * Extensive read me install, patch and hint documentation (.pdf) (download here)
    * Listen exclusive interview w/ Barbary Grant/ Vocalist  (mp3 interview)
    * 46 instrument patches, 1.566 samples, 1.37 GB installed, 924 MB .rar download
    * Sample resolution: 44.1Khz/24Bit mono- and stereo .wav format
    * Format(s): Kontakt 2, EXS24 and .wav
    * Note: Native Instruments Kontakt 2 / 3 / 4 full retail versions required for all Kontakt instruments.
    * Note: Free Kontakt Player will only work for 30 minutes with this product. Full version required to remove this restriction.
    * Note: Read more about Barbary Grant here or buy/listen to her music here