8DIO PRODUCTIONS Berimbau

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 Afro-Brazilian 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 microhammer berimbau takes this wonderufl instrument to an entirely new level of depth and represents the deepest sampled Berimbau in the history of sampling, since we both recorded it as multi-samples and loops – and played it with traditional stick and 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 repetition (aka round-robin) pr. layer.