IT’S STICKBREAKING!
In all seriousness, the lali drum has a really cool and unique sound that, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet been sampled. There are a lot of instruments very similar to it… almost every island nation in French Polynesia and Micronesia has their own log drum of some sort-- not to mention Africa-- but the lali drum is unique to Fiji.
Traditionally used in churches and ceremonies, especially as a call to gather at the center of a village, the sound is very piercing and would travel throughout villages and into the mountains. These days they are mostly used to entertain tourists, every hotel in Fiji has a few and puts on nightly entertainment with fire dancers and whatnot. Though if you travel off the beaten path where the tourists don’t go you will still see one in the center of almost every town or village. Here’s a pic I took in one such town:
Anyway over the past three years I’ve been fortunate enough to spend about 4 or 5 weeks in Fiji recording local singers and musicians, it’s an amazing place and an amazing culture, full of amazing talent as well. And we’ve managed to bring back four lalis of various sizes. We did a very rough sampling a ways back that I’ve been using in my personal library for the past couple years, but now that I (finally) figured out how to get the big lali into the country (wasn’t easy, weighs about 150lbs) we thought it was time to release a slightly more ‘polished’ version. All sampling and programming credit goes to
@Jdiggity1 (aka
jdog).
I like to layer the lali with taikos or other big drums as a top layer to cut through, almost like a snare or a bucket drum but the lalis have that wooden ethnic quality. A word of warning: a little lali goes a long ways! They seem to be at a frequency that really pierces through a mix, especially on television. I’ve been asked several times to turn down the lali in a mix.
The lali drums are yours, free of charge, compliments of Botdog Samples.
Though I would like to ask that if you can afford it, you could donate $5 (or more) via paypal to botdogsamples [at] gmail.com.
100% of all donations will go directly to Education Through Music: Los Angeles (etmla.org). You’re obviously welcome to donate direct to ETM:LA if you’d rather, though you have my word we will pass on all donations. (You can also save us the small fee if you donate direct from paypal and select friends & family instead of using the donate link on the site.)
And yes we did actually break a couple of sticks sampling these dang things.
Visit out new website for links and demos:
botdogsamples.com
Or here is the direct download link if you can't be bothered:
https://bit.ly/GimmeLali
(Requires full version of Kontakt 5.8.1)
And if you missed the trailer, catch it here:
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/new-from-botdog-samples-trailer-lalis.74137/