Christmas Tree Bells

Well, now that the Halloween decorations are out of the malls the Christmas trimmings have arrived in full bloom. One of the more pleasant by-products of this seasonal paraphernalia is the delicate tinkling of Christmas Tree Bells. These bells are usually struck by little plastic figurines who never seem to know more than a handful of songs.

I thought it would be fun to emulate these bells on the K2000 / K2500 instruments and create my own song list.

While shopping around I found that the Mickey Mouse version had the most bells. I brought them to our Sweetwater Recording Studio and sampled each bell with an AKG 414 mic. Using VAST, I was able to get nice panning tricks to create a 3D image.

After the Christmas Tree Bells programs were made, I sequenced arrangements of my favorite holiday songs and saved the entire file as XMASBELZ.KRZ.

We hope you enjoy these sounds and wish you a very happy and productive Holiday Season.

Daniel Fisher, and everyone at Sweetwater Sound!
Chief Soundware Engineer
Sweetwater Soundware Development Facility

Winners!

For the past month we have been receiving K2000/K2500 Songs for the Sweetwater Sound Christmas Bell Contest. Today, after our staff enjoyed all of the sequences, we selected a winner from each of the three categories:

For Best Holiday Sequence Using Only The Christmas Tree Bells:
"Good King Wenceslas" arranged by: Dave Nedwek

For Best Holiday Sequence Using The Bells plus Kurzweil ROM:
"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" arranged by: Michael Carnes

For Best Original Sequence using Bells With or Without ROM:
"Adam's Bell Song" composed by: Adam Smith

These three winners will be able to select any one of our 5 Sweetwater Sound Series II CD-ROMs for the K2000/K2500.

To celebrate the release of our latest CD-ROM for the K2000/K2500,"The RSI Sample Library Series II", we have decided to give one to each of the Winners and to the Honorable Mention finalists as well.

This RSI CD-ROM contains Acoustic Guitars, 12-Strings, Distorted and Lead Guitars, plus Brass and Winds, Orchestral Strings and Brass, and includes many Sound Effects and Wild Percussion Instruments as well as various Keyboard and Synth Instruments.

We at Sweetwater Sound thank all of you who submitted sequences for this contest and would like to wish all who read this a joyous and productive Holiday Season.

Sincerely,

Daniel Fisher
Director of Soundware Engineering
Sweetwater Soundware Development Facility