Our love letter to music makers. We started our vaults scheme over a year ago with a simple idea. Give away one a month, keep it available for six months and then in strict “last in last out” rotation retire them to an archive.
This was we encourage people to come back with us, stay in touch with us and engage with us.
However as we retired older vaults, originally planned as mere solid gold morsels, but rapidly becoming part of people’s everyday arsenal. We also felt frustrations grow. What happens when you decide to collaborate with someone. You hire a new assistant or you simply want to recommend us on the basis of a recent compliment about your use of a piano, or orchestral effect, or the amount of brown you’re producing with a new bass sound. All made more difficult and frustrating by the fact that these gems were here today, likely to be gone tomorrow.
So we thought we’d bring them back, but in the spirit of our love letter, and that desire to keep people coming back, wanting more, engaging more, checking out more of our resources and tools. We have decided to release batches of the vintage vaults in return for a small donation to charity. Every penny spent on these vintage, archive vaults will go to this charity and the one we have picked is an amazing scheme called (appropriately) Love Music.
Here’s an excerpt from their website:
“Love Music is a dynamic music inclusion and education charity which increases its participants’ wellbeing, confidence, and musical skills through an exciting range of open-access projects. We strive to remove all barriers to participation and we actively seek to increase diversity within our activities. We offer free places and additional support wherever required.
We work with communities and young people offering inclusive music participation opportunities for people of any level of ability or experience. Our focus on inclusion tackles social isolation and supports community building. Bringing people from all backgrounds together helps to build stronger and better integrated communities.
We use our experience to envision, devise and deliver strategic work which helps to grow the wider community music sector, especially community singing, and supports those who deliver this work across Scotland. Our portfolio includes research, providing training, commissioning resources and collaborative opportunities, and facilitating the sharing of best practice for music leaders and teachers. We successfully connect and work collaboratively with our peers, individuals and organisations, to better understand the impact and need for this work, and to help it become sustainable.
We are committed to the highest quality of engagement in all aspects of our work, using the experience and skills of our core team to design music participation projects where people feel welcome, valued and creatively enriched. We invest time and care ensuring our work is accessible and in supporting those with additional needs, which enables people to take part on an equal footing. We collaborate with the best musicians and work in the best environments because we believe that everyone deserves to experience the life enhancing benefits of taking part in inspirational music making.”
To find out more about this charity visit their website HERE.
We’re certain this will be the first of many ventures into spreading our wings beyond the possibilities of our own efforts and following. So watch this space.
None of this, our vaults FREE or charity initiative wouldn’t be possible without our technical partners at Ujam their trust, belief and understanding of what we’re trying to deliver here is a fundamental component to the enterprise’s success. We thank them wholeheartedly not only for use of the technology, but also the many unbilled man-hours they’ve put into our efforts!
In the meantime here’s a quick rundown of the Vaults we’re brought back. No is the time to tell your friends and colleagues to check us out and we hope by being a little more flexible on our original conception of the project we not only encourage ANYONE to make music THEIR music but to also share in the heavenly experience that is the act of making music with collaborators. Not least ones made through engaging in the many challenges, podcasts and our vibrant forum here at Crow Hill.
So, the rundown.
Attic Grand – One of the most downloaded samples in the history of sampling is Henson’s SOFT PIANO. On having a rummage around his vault from that time (around 18 years ago) he forgot that he had also sampled a baby grand. In what has become a go-to / workhorse piano for many Attic Grand is another sample classic recorded on that historical day.
R&D Strings – R&D Sessions are what we do before ploughing huge amounts of investment into large sample projects. Here we have a gem from our vault that marks the beginning days of our gestures range of products. Not phrases but not straight notes either, R&D strings offers micro movements between notes within a scale (in this case C major / A minor / D – Dorian… all the white notes basically). It feels like a string band is jamming with your ideas whilst you compose them.
Studio Drums – We visited our favourite studio “Castle Sound” with Harris Le Derf and a retro kit to record something that provides an alternative to bright snappy and clean drum libraries. This one is pure punk.
Chorus Synth – Our most downloaded Vault yet. The idea is simple. You use this vintage keyboard for one sound and one sound only. So here it is. The maker starts with an R and the synth is the sixth of a range that starts with a J! We get you straight to “that” sound recorded on Henson’s piece of history at our HQ
Celestatone – We call it the “Harry Potter Effect”. Anytime you hear a celeste regardless of the context or composition you can’t help but think of Harry Potter. Here is our solution an ultra rare Electric Celeste layered with a Dulcitone. The latter a tuning fork piano which inspired the mechanics of the electric celeste. Rumour has it Mozart had written Papageno’s motif for Dulcitone in his Magic Flute. But it wasn’t loud enough to balance with the orchestra hence electing the celeste and casting the Dulcitone onto the vault of vintage instruments labelled “unused”. We hope the fragile tuning of this gem gives you what you desire from a celeste without you having to put on your wizard hat.
Shimmer Guitar – Pure British indy guitar played by Theo Le Derf. A wonderful addition to your guitar collection.
Go HERE to download your free VAULTS