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The Interface

The GUI for Bells & Whistles consists of several sections to control instrument selection, reverb, microphone mixing and EQ.

The Instruments

This library contains not only bell and whistle sounds but a whole variety of percussive and tonal / atonal special effect instruments…

Wah Tubes, Big Siren, Bullfrog, Crash cymbal, Cricket, Crocodile, Duck, Flexatone, Galaxy Shaker, Galaxy Stick, Water Shaker, Water Triangle, Nightingale, Rattle, Crow, Kukuk, Nar, Plastic Whistle & Slide Whistle.

Playing Bells & Whistles

The basic method of playing Bells & Whistles is to play notes within ranges of the coloured notes. You will find notes coloured either yellow, blue or green. The range varies depending on the chosen instrument.

The yellow range indicates a multi-sampled pitched version of the instrument, playable on your keyboard.

The blue / green ranges indicate effects and other tonal / atonal sounds. Articulations are grouped together for clarity and these are shown by alternating blue and green groups.

Instrument Selection

It’s easy to select an instrument from the available 20 different ones. Just click the left / right arrows shown here and the instrument will be displayed. We’ve sampled not only bells and whistles, but a variety of other crazy instruments including rattles, percussion and other effects.

Grab Bag Mode

Click on the robot to activate “grab bag mode”. This assigns a random selection of instruments across the entire key range. Each time you click you’ll get a different random selection.

EQ and Microphone Mixing

Choose either EQ or microphone mixing mode by clicking on the legend at the bottom right of the interface.

EQ Controls

The EQ section, shown here, allows you to quickly and simply tweak the levels of the high, mid and low frequencies. Simply click and drag. Cmd / ctrl click to reset.

Microphone Mixing

The instruments of Bells & Whistles were sampled using 3 different mic positions: Close, Middle and Far. This section the interface gives you control over the mixing of those positions. Click-drag the dials to control the the levels. Ctrl / cmd click to reset the dials to default.

Note that you can set completely independent microphone mix settings for each instrument - and these settings will be remembered each time you return to a particular instrument.

Reverb

Bells & Whistles comes preloaded with a convolution reverb sampled from an actual space to simulate a realistic playing environment. This control makes it easy to quickly dial in some realistic reverb without too much fuss. Adjust the wetness (amount) and size of the reverb by click-dragging on the dials shown here. Ctrl / cmd click to reset the levels to default.

From the Kontakt configuration window (shown below) you can adjust many other aspects of the reverb including wet/dry levels, pre-delay, dampening and width. You can also swap out the preloaded impulse response for one of your own.