The Crow Hill Company works with Bleeding Fingers to proudly present PREHISTORIC STRINGS as unique string library built from bespoke instruments
EDINBURGH, UK: working with award-winning composers collective Bleeding Fingers, Edinburgh-based enterprise The Crow Hill Company is proud to present PREHISTORIC STRINGS as a truly unique string library — literally built from one-of-a-kind bespoke instruments incorporating horns and teeth with a few ancient bones thrown in for good measure, making for hybrid monstrosities to create tones that are haunting, primordial, and staggeringly beautiful in their truly primitive nature — as of September 25…
Putting PREHISTORIC STRINGS into its rightful perspective involves delving deep into the past in more ways than one — not least The Crow Hill Company’s ongoing relationship with its collective friends at Bleeding Fingers. For it all started when the latter’s talented Anže Rozman and Kara Talve worked with Hollywood hotshot Hans Zimmer — arguably one of the greatest, certainly one of the most prolific film composers of our time, noted for his innovative integration of electronic sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements — on the primetime television series Prehistoric Planet (2022-2025). As always with both Bleeding Fingers’ and Hans Zimmer’s approach to composition, the creation of truly unique sound-worlds played a fundamental role in the development of said score. An audacious project, indeed, it involved the construction of a selection of string instruments built with bones, horns, skulls, and cannibalised classical instruments, including a cello, frame drum, resonating dulcimer, and many more besides. But credit where credit’s due to the killer composing team involved in instinctively understanding that the resulting score’s success merely represented the tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential of their unique inventions and agreeing to share them with the rest of the composing community.
"This is a dystopian space ambient, featuring a GR-1 granular synthesizer from Tasty Chips Electronics for soundscapes, generated from my own sound samples. In addition a Kalimba running through a DigiTech Genesis 3 were used for the solo plays, a Stylophone Theremine were used for the radio-like background tweet, the Dimmed Light Devices Radio Module for another radio-noise and the Spitfire Audio LABS for the deep bass
I used for the recording the following effects devices:
DigiTech Genesis 3, Gamechanger Audio Motor Pedal, Boss Slicer SL2, Hologram Microcosm, Pigtronix Echolution² Deluxe and a GFI System Specular Reverb². Depending on the recorded track some FX are deactivated.
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. The final song was then mastered with a bit EQ and compression on some tracks and some limiting on the master track using iZotope Ozone. The picture in the video I created with Midjourney."
"I had the idea of transforming classical music into space ambient. This one is Gymnopédie No. 1 composed by Eric Alfred Leslie Satie in 1888.
I used for the recording the EMU Planet Earth with the following effects devices: Hologram Microcosm, Pigtronix Echolution² Deluxe and a GFI System Specular Reverb². Depending on the recorded track some FX are deactivated.
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. The final song was then mastered with a bit EQ and compression on some tracks and some limiting on the master track using iZotope Ozone. The picture in the video I created with Midjourney."
"Explore LoFi Strings, the latest free addition to the Vaults collection from The Crow Hill Company. We ran lush orchestral string recordings through a vintage cassette deck to capture authentic tape compression, saturation, wow & flutter, hiss, and drop-outs - bringing nostalgic warmth to the orchestral world."
Press release follows:
The Crow Hill Company lets loose …LO-FI STRINGS as latest VAULTS… virtual instrument release, free for all to download with no strings attached
EDINBURGH, UK: readily representing a quite literal realisation of company co-founder and composer Christian Henson’s heartfelt dream of encouraging people to make music and help them on their journey, regardless of whatever point they were at and wherever their journey began, as the latest addition to the free-for-all-to-download-and-make-music-with-for-the-rest-of-their-lives-styled collection curated with the same care and attention to detail as the Make Music, Your Music motto-abiding Edinburgh-based enterprise’s paid-for releases, The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of its VAULTS - LO-FI STRINGS virtual instrument — introduced with no strings attached, albeit actually, in this case, there are, but only of the lo-fi musical kind that are central to the tool in question seriously satisfying those who like the sound of their recorded strings to be unrefined by being fully adulterated through a knackered cassette tape with just a pinch of wobble in the process of doing what it easily does so well — as of August 14…
A synthesizer from Sony. You might remember the DPS-F7 & other units in the series from this previous post.
This video appears to be the first demo of the Sony DPS-F7 featured on the site.
"This is the first recording with the Sony DPS-F7. As far as I know, it's the only synthesizer ever made by Sony. However, it's only part of the DPS-F7, which can also be a percussion synthesizer, as well as a fading parametric equalizer, dynamic filter, compressor/limiter, sub-harmonic generator, vocoder, and saturator.
The features sound interesting for a monophonic digital synthesizer. It has two oscillators with classic waveforms AND two Karplus-Strong oscillators, which can be routed to any of the four filters (LPF, HPF, BPF1, BPF2). You can optionally connect the HPF and the two BPFs in front of the LPF. Six ADSR envelopes are available as VCAs and VCFs. The (unfortunately) only LFO is permanently linked to the pitch. The audio signal then passes through a stereo delay and a soft clipper.
I used for the recording the following FX pedals:
Pigtronix Echolution 2 Deluxe, GFI System Specular Reverb 2.
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. On some tracks Compressor and EQ where added in Cubase. The final song was then mastered using iZotope Ozone."
"The track Wonderland by Christian Halten is composed and performed on the very rare Yamaha VP1 Virtual Acoustic Synthesizer released in 1994. The arrangement was recorded using live overdubs, no other instruments nor external effects were used. The visuals for the track derive from the game Solitude by Jerboa Entertainment with kind permission. Solitude is available on Steam from the link below.
The VP1 is a 16 voice synthesizer that creates sounds based on Physical Modeling technique resulting in pseudo-acoustic tones. All sounds can be altered in real time (even material properties) with a lot of onboard controllers including three tactile expression pedals. Yamaha created a custom 64 core computing architecture for the VP1. At the time it was a very expensive instrument and only a few of them were built.
Christian Halten is a film music composer and creative director based in Berlin. He started his career at the age of 17 scoring a cinematic documentary published by National Geographic. Ever since he is passionate about exploring and expressing sound in music to picture. He worked in Los Angeles in various teams around Hans Zimmer. His latest work is a collaboration with composer Michael Stearns.
"(c)2007-25 by RetroSound
supported by UVI: http://bit.ly/retrosound-uvi
❤️ Support #RetroSound channel: https://retrosound.creator-spring.com
One of my favorite movie themes from the early 80s.
Captain Future Suite by Christian Bruhn (1980)
Featured the Moog Minimoog and the Oberheim OB-Xa Synthesizer
This cover song series contains my own recreations of my favourite songs from the last 50 years. The original music from which I take inspiration belong to their respective owners. I recreate tracks only for personal passion and to pay homage to these tracks.
My intention is not to create covers that sound exactly like the original (if you want to hear identical sounds, please listen the original). It's more of an inspiration with my sounds from the old synthesizers from the past and of course the great appreciation for the original performers and producers."
"The Crow Hill Company creates POCKET STRINGS as no-barrier-to-entry-styled string library plug-in produced without compromise… with added ‘synthy spice’
EDINBURGH, UK: having recently rebranded itself with an aesthetic that truly realises company co-founder and composer Christian Henson’s heartfelt dream of encouraging people to make music and help them on their journey, regardless of whatever point they were at and wherever their journey began, The Crow Hill Company continues its journeying into ‘Season Two’ as a producer of resources and tools to protect, inspire, support, and provide opportunities for music-makers the world over, believing that music is, and should remain, a wholly human experience, one that is by far one of the most powerful forms of expression, escape, comfort, and remembrance, of which its newly-created POCKET STRINGS — styled as a definitive string library plug-in that opens the doors to collaboration between anyone anywhere, creatively combining live cinematic orchestral recordings with some rarefied vintage synth classics made to measure for added body, depth, and character — readily represents the cornerstone of this ethos, as of July 10…
“A string library that’s accessible to all without compromise — a distillation of the last 25, nearly 30, years that I’ve been working as a media composer, which means that I write music for film, TV, and computer games, giving you the very basic necessities to write pro-end string arrangements. Whether that be adding to productions, songs, collaborating with others, or, indeed, creating professional film scores — whether that be to demo for an orchestra to play, or, indeed, to go to broadcast, there’s been no compromises here. But accessibility is the key — not just with the price point, but with usability.” So says Christian Henson himself, perfectly positioned — as The Crow Hill Company’s original founder, forging forward by building upon his extensive experience gained from founding Spitfire Audio to originally offer a palette of sounds he had created for his own use as a professional composer to his film world colleagues by invitation only, though the rest, as they say, is history — to proudly introduce POCKET STRINGS as a never-tried-before strings library plug-in that aims to bring broadcast-grade string possibilities to everyone.
"Sorry about the long title, but the problem in saying that you play a Wersi organ is that they all came in several versions. Most of them were sold as kits that you assembled yourself and often people upgraded them with new circuitry that Wersi released over the production run.
The Comet was initially released with another drum machine called Wersimatic IV and no 'Magic Fingers', which is a unit that adds arpeggio, automatic chords, and a (primitive) sequencer to the organ. I demonstrated that in an earlier video • Wersi Comet Magic Fingers MFX 5 demo [below]
In this demo I play eight songs using a reasonable amount of the features in the Comet. I am not using multitrack so everything is played 'straight'. I did make quite a few edits along the way, as I am not capable of playing eleven minutes without goofing up something. But it is possible to play the entire demo as it is, because I have added drum fill-ins that are long enough to make it possible to change the settings between songs - the Comet doesn't have user presets, so if there isn't one of the 20 'Wersi Registrier System' fixed presets that suits the song, you have to press a lot of buttons to change the sound.
The songs I play are:
Abracadabra (Steve Miller)
Här kommer Pippi Långstrump (Astrid Lindgren / Jan Johansson)
Τα Παιδιά του Πειραιά / Never on a Sunday (Μάνος Χατζιδάκις)
Chattanooga Choo Choo (Harry Warren / Mack Gordon)
Gungorna och karusellen / Gyngerne og karrusellen (Karl Gerhard / Dix Dennie / Herbert Steen)
Kald det Kærlighed (Lars Lilholt)
Krummes sang (Michael Hardinger / Rasmus Schwenger)
Flower-Power-Kleid / Flower power tøj (Hans Christian Bruhn / Georg Buschor)"
"Since my Wersi Comet started to come back to life again there are three questions I have been asked surprisingly often in the comments: "Does your Comet have a 'Magic Fingers' MFX5 module, does it work, and what does it actually do?"
The first part was easy to answer: Yes, it does have an MFX5. However, until recently it seemed like it wasn't working and I nearly gave up on trying to repair it. But then I noticed a wire that had detached from one of the plugs on the backside of the MFX5 circuit boards in a hard to see and even harder to reach place.
After reattaching it the magic started - once I found a cryptic German user manual online. And so to answer the third part of the question I have now made this video where I go through the things it can do:
Arpeggiator 0:00 Song: "Da' Ya' Think I'm Sexy" (Rod Stewart/Carmine Appice/Duane Hitchings) 2:30 Marimba effect 3:50 Song: "Blue Spanish eyes" (Kämpfert/Singleton/Snyder) 4:35 Automatic Organ Chords 6:13 Song: "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" (Frederick Loewe/ Alan Jay Lerner) 6:55 Sequencer 9:00 Song: "Tjo Och Tjim Och Inget Annat" (Ulf Peder Olrog) 11:05
The only things I don't demonstrate is step-recording of a sequence - which is basically entering the notes one by one followed by a tap on a pedal, and saving/loading from a cassette. I cannot do that because the cassette interface plug is connected to the drum machine and I don't have the instructions on how to connect the MFX5 module to a cassette recorder. The person who build the organ just left the connections on the circuit boards unconnected."
"In this short documentary (3'48") Simone of Frap Tools from Italy expands on the company's history and how the Magnolia 8 voice polyphonic thru-zero frequency modulation synthesizer came to life. The film contains short audio examples of the instrument as well. Filmed on 2025/05/09 at Superbooth25 in Berlin.
Cinematographer, Director and Producer Christian Halten"
"This is the first recording with the Wersi M.A.X.1. Almost nothing is known about this small desktop sound module. It's 16-voice, 8-way multitimbral. The minimal, somewhat non-self-explanatory UI allow you to adjust a few parameters, as long as you have access to the manual, which unfortunately isn't available online. However, the 96 preset sounds are simple but surprisingly useful. The drum sounds are clearly ROM-based, but everything else sounds like a real FM synth to me.
I used for the recording the following FX pedals:
Hologram Microcosm, Pigtronix Echolution 2 Deluxe, GFI System Specular Reverb 2.
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. On some tracks Compressor and EQ where added in Cubase. The final song was then mastered using iZotope Ozone.
Well, I decided to go back to the basics, but at the same time make something useful for the synth community and do a kind of competition (I like competitions;-). What's my best synth for ambient music :-)
Check out my Best Ambient Synth Shootout Playlist:"
"In this 5 minutes film Tats of Korg Berlin recalls the development journey their team started a few years ago breaking new ground in electro-acoustic instrument creation. Phase 8 Acoustic Synthesizer has reached production state. The film contains short audio examples of the instrument as well. Filmed on 2025/05/09 at Superbooth25 in Berlin.
Cinematographer, Director and Producer Christian Halten
"In this 5 minutes episode Fred of Analog Sweden and Albert of Nyström tell the story behind the creation of the new Crum2 Drum Synthesizer. It was presented at last year's Superbooth and now it's close to final production and release. The film includes stereo audio examples and also close-up photos of the instrument. Filmed on 2025/05/09 at Superbooth25 in Berlin.
Cinematographer, Director and Producer Christian Halten
More information about Crum2
https://analogsweden.com/
The Crow Hill Company creates VAULTS - ACID SYNTH as an homage to the revered Roland TB-303 Bass Line synth and associated Acid House genre
EDINBURGH, UK: music-making community tools-maker The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of VAULTS - ACID SYNTH as the latest entry into its lengthening line of free and accessible virtual instruments arising from company co-founder and composer Christian Henson effectively opening his ‘vaults’ for everyone to enjoy — this time creating an homage to the revered Roland TB-303 Bass Line, launched with high hopes in 1981 as a so-called Computer Controlled bass synth by the Japanese giant of electronic musical instrument manufacturing responsible for its creation before being deemed a commercial failure and discontinued quite quickly thereafter, though it was later instrumental in driving Acid House into the musical mainstream as a whole new EDM (Electronic Dance Music) genre and associated cultural movement, the popularity of which triggered a dramatic rise in the price of used units — as of March 19…
It is fair to say that when Roland released its TB-303 Bass Line in 1981 as a so-called Computer Controlled bass synth with the intention of mimicking the characteristics of an electric bass guitar, there were far fewer tools to create electronic music available. But buyers of the TB-303 Bass Line were possibly swayed by the fact that it could be time-synced — using Roland’s proprietary five-pin DIN sync interface (later superseded by MIDI) — to its contemporarily-released Computer Controlled sibling, the TR-606 Drumatix drum machine, making for an affordable rhythm section that could conceivably fit into a small briefcase as a beautiful backing combination for the solo gigging musician, further helped by both devices being battery operated as an attractive alternative to their (included) AC adapters… or so Roland had hoped.
Though the engineers involved tried their best to imitate the sound of an electric bass guitar with the technology of the time, the TB-303 Bass Line fell short in capturing its subtleties as an instrument, sadly, so it was discontinued within a couple of years, with Roland cheaply selling off the last of the 10,000 units manufactured. Now, normally this would be the end of the story, yet something incredible happened…
Helpfully, for the benefit of anyone not already in the know, The Crow Hill Company’s Theo Le Derf picks up what is an incredible story in itself: “DJ Pierre and his band called Phuture found a used TB-303 in a music shop in Chicago for a bargain price. They started experimenting with the bass sequencer and a drum machine while playing about randomly with the filter and resonance knobs. The sound they produced was so unique and, frankly, weird that they decided to commit the jam session to tape. With the release of this experiment on Trax Records in 1987, they unwittingly birthed a new genre: Acid House. This slimy, hypnotic, subversive sound subsequently built a cultural movement, and was the soundtrack to many illegal warehouse parties of the late Eighties — all of this from a tiny synth that was used ‘incorrectly’.”
Thanks to VAULTS - ACID SYNTH’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) being as intuitive as always, correct — or ‘incorrect’ — usage of the virtual instrument in question comes quickly. “The first large dial — CUT OFF — is a 24dB lowpass filter that controls what high frequencies you cut out, and it is automatically assigned to MIDI CC1.” So starts Theo Le Derf by way of an appropriately quick guided tour, before continuing: “RESONANCE determines the peak of the filter as it opens and closes, which creates that characteristically ‘squelchy’ sound that the synth is known for. The small dials are more concentrated effects — MOD controls how much voltage is being sent to the filter, so you can get some really interesting sounds by adjusting the CUT OFF dial and MOD simultaneously; DECAY controls the decay for all the envelopes; and, of course, there is also our standard ECHO and SPLOSH, with the SPLOSH being an algorithmic imitation of a cave, which suits this synth so brilliantly.”
It is as easy as that, though Theo Le Derf is keen to add: “Another thing to mention is that you can obviously play staccato, but when you play legato — MIDI notes overlapping with one another, you get a glide between the notes. This glide effect is another characteristic that the ’303 is renowned for.”
No need, necessarily, then, to risk dropping a bank-balance-busting four-figure sum on a decades-old Roland TB-303 Bass Line when The Crow Hill Company’s ‘tribute’ truly captures the essence of its distinctive sound for all to enjoy for literally nothing. Notes Theo Le Derf, ending on a high note: “The story arc of this synth is so amazing — from its unpromising beginning to completely defining a genre and an era, it’s so exciting to have this celebrated instrument at my fingertips for free!”
VAULTS - ACID SYNTH is free for everyone — as are all VAULTS… releases from The Crow Hill Company — from here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/vaults/
"This is the first, quite relaxing recording with the Modal Skulpt. It is a unique sounding, little 4-voice polyphonic virtual analogue synthesizer. The size of the Modal Skulpt is somewhere between the Korg Volca and the Sonicware Liven.
I used for the recording the following FX pedals:
Pigtronix Echolution 2 Deluxe, GFI System Specular Reverb 2.
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. On some tracks Compressor and EQ where added in Cubase. The final song was then mastered using iZotope Ozone."
"This is the first, quite relaxing recording with the Behringer WASP Deluxe. It is a gnarly, little monophonic synthesizer with two digital oscillators, an analog filter switchable between LPF, HPF, notch and bandpass filters, an LFO with 6 waveforms, including random and noise, and two envelope generators with repeat function.
I used for the recording the following FX pedals:
Gamechanger Audio AUTO Chorus, Pigtronix Echolution 2 Deluxe, GFI System Specular Reverb 2.
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. On some tracks Compressor and EQ where added in Cubase. The final song was then mastered using iZotope Ozone."
"(c)2007-25 by RetroSound
supported by UVI: http://bit.ly/retrosound-uvi
❤️ Support #RetroSound channel: https://retrosound.creator-spring.com
Famous Minimoog Sounds
0:06 Michael Jackson - Rock With You
0:17 The System - You Are In My System
0:24 Michael Jackson - Thriller
0:31 Visage - Fade To Grey
0:39 Christian Bruhn - Feinde Greifen An (Captain Future)
0:46 Paul Hardcastle - Rainforest
0:57 Ultravox - Mr.X
1:05 Michael Jackson - Billy Jean
1:10 Gary Numan - Me
1:20 Supermax - Love Machine
1:32 Paul Hardcastle - 19
1:40 Kraftwerk - Radioactivity
1:47 The Sweet - Love Is Like Oxygen
1:55 Madonna - Into The Groove
2:03 Kraftwerk - The Robots
2:12 Lift - Nach Süden"
The Crow Hill Company kicks up storming sample instrument in close collaboration with virtuoso namesake as TINA GUO - STORM CELLO
EDINBURGH, UK: The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of TINA GUO - STORM CELLO — closely collaborating with virtuoso cellist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, and entrepreneur Tina Guo, one of the most recorded solo cellists of all time in film, TV, and game soundtracks, who teamed up with multi-talented composer and producer Steve Mazarro to create her first sample instrument supervised entirely by herself according to the needs of ‘AAA-list’ composers with whom she has worked during the last decade, before turning to the music- making community tools-maker to help them storm over the finish line with what brings to the musical masses the seriously sought-after and undeniably unique sonic capabilities of her electric cello that has graced so many iconic scores in recent times — as of January 29…
As a GRAMMY and BRIT Female Artist of the Year nominee, Tina Guo herself hardly needs much more in the way of introduction. It would perhaps be remiss not to mention recent projects (both on and off the big screen) that include Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (2023), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), Dune: Part One (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024), Gran Turismo (2023), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) — not forgetting, of course, that she co-composed ‘Wonder Woman Main Theme’ with long-time friend and collaborator Hans Zimmer. Duly dedicating his life to creating music and soundscapes using synthesisers together with orchestral sounds, the so-called godfather of orchestral sampling has over 150 big screen credits to his notable name, including a sizeable slice of the biggest blockbusters witnessed worldwide, as well as associated sellout arena tours on the grandest of scales — with none other than Tina Guo joining him onstage.
"This is the second (lazy sunday) recording with the Roland V-Synth. The V-Synth was Rolands flagship synthesizer released in 2003. It is 16-part multitimbral with up to 24-voices polyphony, featuring analog modeling and PCM waveforms with user sampling that can independently manipulate pitch, time and formant thanks to Rolands VariPhrase technology.
I used for the recording the following FX pedals:
Pigtronix Echolution² Deluxe, GFI System Specular Reverb², Sony DPS-V77
The signal went through a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 into the PC via USB for recording. To create the complete song I recorded consecutively several stereo tracks. On some tracks Compressor and EQ where added in Cubase. The final song was then mastered using iZotope Ozone.
Well, I decided to go back to the basics, but at the same time make something useful for the synth community and do a kind of competition (I like competitions;-). What's my best synth for ambient music :-)"
