BerimbauBass

Lately I've been exploring sound design on Korg Monologue inspired by accoustic sounds and instruments, especially the ones from my country.

The Berimbau

The berimbau is a single-string percussion instrument from Brazil (originally from Africa with different names as the Angolan m'bulumbumba). Despite its simple structure and limited tuning it can be, altogether with a caxixi (shaker), not only rhythmic but melodic as well.

It has basically 3 sounds: a buzz (when playing the string with a stone/coin), a high sound (when firmly pressing the string with a stone/coin) and a loose string sound. The player also manages the distance between the gourd and their body in order to control the cutoff and resonance of the sound.

The BerimbauBass

To make a berimbau inspired synth bass, I had to weight between the metallic string sound and the percussive buzz and caxixi (shaker) and somehow control the different ways to play it. Probably would be easier to make 2 different patches (1 bass and 1 percussive) to get a more realistic result, but I also wanted a similar playing experience and the Monologue slider works great to emulate the dobrão (coin/stone used to touch the string).