Berimbau

Berimbau Percussion VST-AU-AAX – Kontakt Instruments & Samples overview

The Berimbau is a single-string percussion instrument, a musical bow, from Brazil.The Berimbau’s origins are not entirely clear, but there is not much doubt on its African origin, as no Indigenous Brazilian or European people use musical bows, and very similar instruments are played in the southern parts of Africa.The berimbau was eventually incorporated into the practice of the AfroBrazilian martial art capoeira, where it commands how the capoeiristas move in the roda.

The Berimbau consists of a wooden bow (verga – traditionally made from biribá wood, which grows in Brazil), about 4 to 5 feet long (1.2 to 1.5 m), with a steel string (arame – often pulled from the inside of an automobile tire) tightly strung and secured from one end of the verga to the other. A gourd (cabaça), dried, opened and hollowed-out, attached to the lower portion of the Verga by a loop of tough string, acts as a resonator.

The 8DIO Berimbau takes this wonderful instrument to an entirely new level of depth and represents the deepest sampled Berimbau available anywhere.We recorded both multi-samples and loops – and played it with traditional stick as well as a bow.The core patches are divided into four main groups: Berimbau Stick (multi-samples), Berimbau Stick (loops 80-140 BPM), Berimbau Bow (multi-samples) and Berimbau Bow (loops 80-140 BPM).The majority of multi-samples are played in multiple velocity layers and with an average of 8-10 round-robin variations.

Tech Specs

• BPM-based Stick/Tap grooves w/ host-sync
• BPM-based Bowed grooves w/ host-sync
• Bonus: SFZ File
• 1.0GB harddrive space
• Full Retail version of Kontakt 4.2 or later required

Core Articulations

• Traditional stick tap multi-sample programs
• Bowed multi-sample programs
• BPM-based bowing grooves w/ host-synch
• BPM-based stick tap grooves w/ host-synch
• 76 Kontakt Instruments (.nki)
• 36 SFZ files
• 994 Samples
• 947 MB Installed
• Sample resolution: 44.1Khz / 24Bit stereo .wav format