One String. Many Sounds

The 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), about 4 to 5 feet long 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 8DIO Berimbau takes this wonderful instrument to an entirely new level of depth and represents the deepest sampled Berimbau available anywhere. We recorded both multi-samples and loops – and played it with traditional stick as well as a 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 round-robin variations.