Hollow Sun St David's Day Special...
A bit late I know but it's been a jolly weekend...
March 1st is St David's Day here in Welsh Wales. It's a day (or three) of Eisteddfods (eye-steth-vodz) where music and poetry and dancing are celebrated and performed and primary school children girls are forced to dress in the Welsh national costume...
Ooops... not that one - that's from my private collection. This...
Daffodils and leeks (two of the national emblems of Wales along with the dragon) are worn about our person and we all eat Welsh Rarebit (a fancy cheese on toast dish) and 'cawl' (a Welsh stew) and copious amounts of Brains SA (a local brew of beer) are drunk (by the adults, not the primary school children obviously ... although there was a time...).
Actually, we don't - it can be a bit dreary (especially for those poor girls who have to turn up at primary school dressed in medieval clothing!) and it can all be a bit parochial ... but it's a good occasion for a jolly.
And so it was here at HS Towers. I went for a curry with a programmer friend of mine to discuss iPad apps and somehow, we ended up in a local pub afterwards where we were dragged off to a 'twmpath', the Welsh equivalent of a ceilidh or barn dance. Let's just say that that drink was taken from which we have only really recovered this morning ... just about. Hence the late announcement - the jollity continued over the weekend! :?
But prior to that, we thought to commemorate the day.
Now, Wales is well (or stereotypically) known for male voice choirs and harps. We couldn't lay our hands on a male voice choir (in a manner of speaking!) but I had some Celtic harp samples I took a few years back which I thought would be appropriate.
In a former residence, a neighbour hand built these harps. They were things of great beauty (and cost) but he let me sample one of them. It's quite extensively multi-sampled at every minor third or so. There are no velocity layers or round robins but that doesn't stop it from being eminently playable and useful.
With a bit of GUI tweaking of our new FreePack engine for the occasion, we came up with this...
And it's surprisingly flexible. You wouldn't think that a simple little Celtic harp could be versatile but with some adjustments, you can be in all sorts of sonic territories such as pads and plucks, soft basses and so on as this simple audio demo should show...
http://soundcloud.com/hollow-sun/calon-lan 100% harp and nothing else.
The St David's Harp is available now for a mere £4.00
DETAILS Cheers,
Stephen