14 DAY TRIAL // In celebration for the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, Microsoft has made available for download a new theme on the Windows Personalization Gallery designed to allow Windows 7 users to celebrate Ireland. The new Windows 7 Ireland theme is not just a collection of beautiful imagery from the island, but also an acoustic experience complete with sounds generated by uilleann pipes, fiddles, whistles, etc.
I’ve included screenshots with the 17 wallpapers contained by the Ireland theme pack at the bottom of this article.
Users can certainly have a look and decide whether to download the theme or not, but what I can’t possible deliver a preview of is the sound scheme which also ships with this theme pack.
Microsoft has turned to Tom Creegan to give Windows 7 users a sound scheme based on traditional Celtic music.
Creegan has been playing uilleann pipes for most of his life, certainly more than the 21 years that it supposedly takes to master this instrument.
He “is widely recognized as one of the foremost Irish pipers in North America. Although he’s lived in the Seattle area for a long time, you can still hear Dublin in his voice. He’s a member of the Irish trio Crumac, which you can hear play around the Pacific Northwest, when you are lucky.
“Jan Strolle, a fiddler, has been playing the instrument for about 20 years, and has been a member of several Seattle-area Celtic bands including Keltoi, Western Shore, and a Celtic-rock outfit called Barking Monkey,” revealed Microsoft’s Jennifer Shepherd.
Strolle and Creegan worked with producer Dave Gross in one of the recording booths at Microsoft Studio to replicate the sounds in Windows 7 using instruments designed for Celtic music.
Users can grab the theme for Windows 7, which is offered free of charge, install it and judge for themselves whether the images and sounds capture the essence of Ireland.
The Windows 7 Ireland theme is available for download here.
