The Crow Hill Company relaunches free VAULTS

The Crow Hill Company kicks off ‘Season Two’ rebrand, relaunching free VAULTS… sample libraries for all to make music with for the rest of their lives.

Rebranding 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 is proud to kick off ‘Season Two’ of its own evolving journey by relaunching the much-vaunted VAULTS… sample libraries as new and improved versions — free for all to download and make music with for the rest of their lives (or free for all to download and make music with for the rest of their lives in return for a small charity donation), duly reimagined from a visual standpoint with a more hand-drawn, homegrown feel to the GUI (Graphical User Interface) that is hopefully a real joy to play with while retaining the same sounds and parameters under the hood.

The Crow Hill Company’s VAULTS… vision is simple, believing that access should never be a barrier to creativity. And although VAULTS… are free sample libraries, they are always curated with the same care and attention to detail as their creator’s paid-for releases. Remarkably, though, they effectively started life on an old hard drive dumped in Christian Henson’s basement, which, when rediscovered, turned out to be packed with samples from way back in 2008. Fast forward, then, to 2023 and beyond… that lucky discovery resulted in (the original versions of) VAULTS - ATTIC GRAND, a baby grand recorded around 18 years ago on the same fateful day as Christian Henson’s so-called ‘Soft Piano’ — itself one of the most downloaded samples in the history of sampling — and acknowledged by many as another sample classic in its own right; VAULTS - CELESTATONE, an ultra-rare electric celeste layered with a dulcitone, the latter keyboard instrument’s series of tuning forks being struck by hammers, having inspired the mechanics of the former; and VAULTS - MALLET PIANO, another piano library, albeit one with an unusual twist by being formed from a piano played with mallets!

More recently, The Crow Hill Company released a single guitar recorded in Lyndhurst Hall’s hallowed acoustic at London’s legendary AIR Studios (VAULTS - SHIMMER GUITAR), an iconic Eighties synth (VAULTS - CHORUS SYNTH) — clue: the maker starts with an R and the synth in question introduced a partly numerically-named range that starts with a J, and much more besides.

But VAULTS… has now evolved as part of The Crow Hill Company’s ‘Season Two’ rebranding, representing an extensive exercise that Christian Henson himself has clearly given much thought to, as attested to when writing, “We have refined our brand to echo our desires as creative individuals. That is, to make a place — not a shop, not a download location — to come to be inspired, to learn, to change one’s thinking, to have it challenged, to meet new people, jump at new opportunities, and to just hang. A place where the emphasis is on an ever-growing set of resources, networking opportunities, and tools. All are made possible by selling some of the best and most interesting sample plug-ins available today, so by buying our stuff — whether it be a T-shirt or a string library — you get to help us carry on, which we thank you for.” That thank you evidently extends to The Crow Hill Company relaunching those much-vaunted VAULTS… sample libraries for free as new and improved versions, having worked long and hard to develop an aesthetic that it is honestly happy with. While retaining the same sounds and parameters under the hood, the new-look GUI has a more hand-drawn, homegrown feel that is hopefully a real joy to play with and applied to all VAULTS… released so far.

As a love letter to music-makers, The Crow Hill Company started its VAULTS… scheme over a year ago with the simple idea of giving one release away each month and keeping it available for six months before being retired to an archive, adhering to a strict ‘newest in, oldest out’ rotation policy in the process of doing so. The thought behind this was threefold — encouraging engagement, returning to the company’s website with regularity, and staying in touch. Feeling frustrations grow, The Crow Hill Company consequently decided that those ‘rested’ VAULTS… taken out of rotation should periodically reappear as donation-ware on its website. Six such releases are already available as VAULTS ARCHIVE N°01 (https://thecrowhillcompany.com/vaults-archive-no01/) for a small donation to Love Music (https://lovemusic.org.uk), a Scottish dynamic music inclusion and education charity that strives to increase its participants’ confidence, musical skills, and well-being through an exciting range of open-access projects designed to remove all barriers to participation and increase diversity in music-making, an admirable cause close to The Crow Hill Company’s collective hearts. However, it should be noted for the sake of clarity that any VAULTS… downloaded during their available-for-free period can continue to be kept forever, and every month The Crow Hill Company will be dropping a new VAULTS… release, ready for all to download for free to make music with for the rest of their lives.

Concludes Christian Henson — in typically thoughtful prose: “Prince once said no one should be denied the chance of making their own music, because that is ‘heaven’. I fully subscribe to this and hate the idea that a piano library we sell costs an average monthly wage in, say, Brazil. So, for as long as we can afford to keep going, we will always create something beautiful every month for people to use to make their own music — for free, for life. Whether they be Beyonce or someone who has been inspired by her but is prevented from getting on that journey simply because of technology not being affordable and accessible to all, everyone has the right to experience heaven.”

Become better acquainted with The Crow Hill Company’s new and improved versions of the much-vaunted VAULTS… sample libraries as part of its ‘Season Two’ rebrand while watching this visionary video:

VAULTS… releases from The Crow Hill Company are free for all to download and make music with for the rest of their lives from here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/vaults/

Although anyone adding a VAULTS… release to their account (https://thecrowhillcompany.com/my-account/) for free can make music with it for the rest of their lives, only six such releases are available to download at any given time — the oldest being ‘rested’ whenever a new monthly release is added. All is not lost for those who may have missed the boat, so-to-speak, since those VAULTS… taken out of rotation periodically reappear as donation-ware, with six rested releases already available as VAULTS ARCHIVE N°01 (https://thecrowhillcompany.com/vaults-archive-no01/) for a small donation to Love Music (https://lovemusic.org.uk), a Scottish dynamic music inclusion and education charity that strives to increase its participants’ confidence, musical skills, and well-being through an exciting range of open-access projects designed to remove all barriers to participation and increase diversity in music-making.









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