First let me note that I was asked if I would like to review Dominus Choir and was given an NFR review copy but was not compensated otherwise. I had already spent probably an hour listening to demos and watching reviews and was aware that this was a quality choir, so I was happy to review it.
Dominus is in my opinion a superb virtual instrument and a labor of love. The tone is excellent and the samples well recorded. The two choral groups, male and female, have solid enunciation and are consistently in tune. The legato is heavily sampled and cleverly scripted resulting in a legato that is as good as any in the business and, given the complexities of voice, quite easy to use. The Word Builder is quite intuitive and there are plenty of pre-made words.
I have nothing negative to say and I love to nitpick. Listen to a few demos and watch a few video reviews to make sure the sound is right for you. It is a Latin choir, not English, and as a Christian who has gone to church for many years and was once a radio guy for a Christian / Classical station, the choir sounds very much like what I think of when I think of a Latin church choir. It should do very well for movies or video games where you want a medieval or fantasy feel. I mess about with RPG Maker and was thinking as I was playing Dominus that is would be perfect for wandering a Cathedral or cranking up the Bass and going down to the crypts. Clever classical or soundtrack composers should find many uses for Dominus.
As with virtual every VI, take some sit down with a keyboard time with Dominus just to get the feel for the instrument, the Word Builder and especially the Legato. It gets pretty intuitive fairly fast, but any vocal VI is inherently more complex than say a string instrument as you have added syllables, words and phrases to the normal issues of melody, harmony and rhythm.
Learn the interface and play with the length of the notes which is very important for getting a realistic sound. Also the Release/Legato slider is important to adjust for your playing style / DAW midi as it tells the instrument how long to wait for the next note before deciding you don't want legato for the next syllable. Watch the Syllable / Vowel Legato scroll to get a feel for when to change notes as you want to transition on the Vowels. Oh don't forget those Modwheel swells. Get it just right and you will get goose-pimples. It is actually fun enough that you might lose a bit of productivity for a couple hours as you just make the choir sing.
The Mix part of the interface lets you try the four mic positions. They are similar but not the same and the default Mid mic works well most of the time. Do remember that Dominus is using a lot of samples and even with streaming and compression is not a small beast so if you add all the mic positions in at once it will eat memory. The Convo Reverb can also change the sound. I like halls in general, but cranking up the Cathedral can be useful effect. Also Choir Balance and Intensity can change the sound quite a lot. Bass it up for those scary moments unless of course Sopranos frighten you.
As a reviewer I'm something like a mechanic and amateur go cart builder reviewing a new car. I break things apart and look at what makes the instrument run. Sometimes I see little oddities and shortcuts, probably recognizing them because I use them myself. In Dominus there aren't short cuts just good solid European engineering. The Fluffy is becoming the Lamborghini of sampling houses and Dominus is a big step along that path.
Go indepther with the links below as I look at the functioning of the legato, the samples, tone and for a vocal instrument the all important wordbuilder.
Legato
Tone
Wordbuilder
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Dominus - Legato, Timing and Volume
The trick in all vocal libraries is to try for some level of realism in the words and phrases. This has only really become possible since the rise of 'real' legato. I actually tried to do a spoken words using vowels and syllables instrument in Kontakt years ago as an experiment. It was horrible. It sort of worked for very short words, but once you got to those pesky two and three syllable words forget about it. When we speak or sing we do not sep-a-rate eve-ry syl-la-ble and give roughly the same emphasis to each.
So the issues for a singing simulator are :
1. Use legato to get most if not all the the syllables after the first one to sound smooth instead of choppy.
2. Get the timing down so it sounds like natural singing and not just rhythmic chanting in the same cadence (unless you are trying for rhythmic chanting of course).
3. To get the volume of each syllable right to add emphasis to the syllables that need it and allow the less emphasized ones to gentle on by.
Now this clever chap can do it in real time, well after using word builder to make the words.
It takes a bit more time than that to get it just so in my DAW, but that is true of every word builder I've tried. Like any VSTi, once you get the hang of Dominus it starts going faster. With a word builder you have the extra learning experience of verbal language on top of musical language, but I think Dominus makes it relatively easy.
For me it is good to know something of what I want so I might google up Latin Mass or phrases to get a good phrase to start with. Then see if the words are on the pre-built list or use Word-builder to get them into Dominus. Next I hold a single note for the whole word just to hear the pronunciation and the general sound of the word. Next is the tricky bit, I can't sing so I look both ways to make sure there are no innocent victims and then softly sing the Latin word.
Try different tempos and notes. So I'm doing Gloria as my first word on the top line of the wordbuilder. At first I try it kind of fast and each syllable as one note. Not good. Then I try Glo and hold the O as I go up. A quick descent on Re and down to AH. A bit of a hold on Ah. Much better.
Now to translate that into the DAW. I make a long note and let the word play to see where the vowels kick in. Then I break the one long note into three notes, one for each syllable. The first being really long versus a short Re and a slightly longer Ah. Also Re needs a slight volume boost. Now to bust up the O in Glo and move up a note at a time from C to G.
Now it is starting to sound like a real choir! I think the reverb is a bit much and go to the shorter church reverb and drop the verb volume a bit. Wow now I have a church choir singing Gloria right on my computer and I am smiling as I listen to it half a dozen times. Of course you can do it faster, but if you put a little bit into it you can really get a wonderful result.
Fluffy Audio is becoming known for their legato. It is heavily and carefully sampled and sounds really good. Legato is what separates the men from the boys in things like choral and string packages. You can sort of do vowel and Mm choirs without it, but there is no way to do word builders without good legato.
As one of the boys, I'm amazed just at looking at what Fluffy has done here. Take a gander at the various vowel sound groups inside Kontakt. It will blow your mind. There is Sustain, Variable Sustain, Release, After Legato and of course Legato with hundreds of samples all sort of packed tightly in what looks like a microscopic game of Tetris with only flat pieces. And it is repeated for both male and female and for four mic positions. You are getting your money's worth out of this.
Actually it is fun just to watch the different groups trigger and release as you play through a word. Starter sounds trigger and play part way before going into vowels that go into vowel sustains and legatos before playing part of another consonant, another vowel legato combo and seguing into an outro syllable. It is crazy and it all sounds so seamless. Sometimes when you look behind the curtain of a magic show it loses its magic (if you hold the ropes just right they appear to be the same length), but here if anything the magic impresses you more.
If that doesn't do it take a look at the script. Just reading through some of it gave me carpel tunnel syndrome. It is a never ending list of definitions, properties, positions, control settings and case statements. A labor of love folks. Yeah it costs some cash and the guys like to eat and even splurge on some gelato on occasion, but there are easier ways to make a living than this.
And all those samples triggering through hundreds of groups controlled by endless scripts... they sound bloody amazing! Well done Fluffy!
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - The Samples
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
So the issues for a singing simulator are :
1. Use legato to get most if not all the the syllables after the first one to sound smooth instead of choppy.
2. Get the timing down so it sounds like natural singing and not just rhythmic chanting in the same cadence (unless you are trying for rhythmic chanting of course).
3. To get the volume of each syllable right to add emphasis to the syllables that need it and allow the less emphasized ones to gentle on by.
Now this clever chap can do it in real time, well after using word builder to make the words.
It takes a bit more time than that to get it just so in my DAW, but that is true of every word builder I've tried. Like any VSTi, once you get the hang of Dominus it starts going faster. With a word builder you have the extra learning experience of verbal language on top of musical language, but I think Dominus makes it relatively easy.
For me it is good to know something of what I want so I might google up Latin Mass or phrases to get a good phrase to start with. Then see if the words are on the pre-built list or use Word-builder to get them into Dominus. Next I hold a single note for the whole word just to hear the pronunciation and the general sound of the word. Next is the tricky bit, I can't sing so I look both ways to make sure there are no innocent victims and then softly sing the Latin word.
Try different tempos and notes. So I'm doing Gloria as my first word on the top line of the wordbuilder. At first I try it kind of fast and each syllable as one note. Not good. Then I try Glo and hold the O as I go up. A quick descent on Re and down to AH. A bit of a hold on Ah. Much better.
Now to translate that into the DAW. I make a long note and let the word play to see where the vowels kick in. Then I break the one long note into three notes, one for each syllable. The first being really long versus a short Re and a slightly longer Ah. Also Re needs a slight volume boost. Now to bust up the O in Glo and move up a note at a time from C to G.
Now it is starting to sound like a real choir! I think the reverb is a bit much and go to the shorter church reverb and drop the verb volume a bit. Wow now I have a church choir singing Gloria right on my computer and I am smiling as I listen to it half a dozen times. Of course you can do it faster, but if you put a little bit into it you can really get a wonderful result.
Fluffy Audio is becoming known for their legato. It is heavily and carefully sampled and sounds really good. Legato is what separates the men from the boys in things like choral and string packages. You can sort of do vowel and Mm choirs without it, but there is no way to do word builders without good legato.
As one of the boys, I'm amazed just at looking at what Fluffy has done here. Take a gander at the various vowel sound groups inside Kontakt. It will blow your mind. There is Sustain, Variable Sustain, Release, After Legato and of course Legato with hundreds of samples all sort of packed tightly in what looks like a microscopic game of Tetris with only flat pieces. And it is repeated for both male and female and for four mic positions. You are getting your money's worth out of this.
Actually it is fun just to watch the different groups trigger and release as you play through a word. Starter sounds trigger and play part way before going into vowels that go into vowel sustains and legatos before playing part of another consonant, another vowel legato combo and seguing into an outro syllable. It is crazy and it all sounds so seamless. Sometimes when you look behind the curtain of a magic show it loses its magic (if you hold the ropes just right they appear to be the same length), but here if anything the magic impresses you more.
If that doesn't do it take a look at the script. Just reading through some of it gave me carpel tunnel syndrome. It is a never ending list of definitions, properties, positions, control settings and case statements. A labor of love folks. Yeah it costs some cash and the guys like to eat and even splurge on some gelato on occasion, but there are easier ways to make a living than this.
And all those samples triggering through hundreds of groups controlled by endless scripts... they sound bloody amazing! Well done Fluffy!
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - The Samples
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Dominus - The Samples
It is fairly easy to say that Dominus has over 20,000 samples and they weigh in at 28 gigs compressed (30 gigs disk space). I can tell you that every other note is sampled with two velocity layers for syllables and the vowels have heavily sample legato with 320 samples for each vowel along with groups for after legato and release samples. I can note 4 mic positions and 24/48 samples. All these can be mathed and we generally know that more is better.
What is hard to express is HOW an instrument sounds. What is its tone? Across the years I've come up with two questions about tone. Does the recording sound good? Does the instrument sound good?
Early in the history of sampling the answer to the first was almost always no. Now as we have pushed samples toward very high fidelity the answer tends to be based on the mic setup and the quality of the engineering. Happily Dominus seems to be well miced and well recorded all the way around. I will note that I don't hear quite as much of a difference between the 4 mics as I can in non-vocal instruments. I've noticed this with other vocal instruments as well. I think this is because of the voice itself and convolution reverb. Turning off the reverb seems to emphasize the difference a bit more. Also the syllables seem a touch crisper on the closer mics.
The answer to the second is more toward personal taste, but often most folks can agree that an instrument just doesn't sound particularly good or that an instruments has a wonderful tone. In this case the instrument(s) is the combined voices of a male and female ensemble and to me they sound lovely. There is a fullness and richness to the choir that I find downright exciting. If I were to go to an Italian cathedral that was known for having a fine choir on a Sunday this is what I might expect to hear.
That leads to a third question I have dared to ask more recently. Could I imagine this to be a real instrument being played live? Are we climbing up the other side of the Uncanny Valley? With convo reverb, somewhat pro level sound interfaces and speakers or headphones along with improved recordings, legato and other developers' tricks it seems like you really can get the illusion of a live performance. Dominus gives me something of that illusion and that is intended as quite a compliment.
In my listening to Fluffy Audio instruments and demos, they seem to be exceptional at tone and legato which is a testament to skill, taste and insanely hard work. I congratulate them on the tone of Dominus as it seems to be as good if not better than any other choir on the market.
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - Legato
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
What is hard to express is HOW an instrument sounds. What is its tone? Across the years I've come up with two questions about tone. Does the recording sound good? Does the instrument sound good?
Early in the history of sampling the answer to the first was almost always no. Now as we have pushed samples toward very high fidelity the answer tends to be based on the mic setup and the quality of the engineering. Happily Dominus seems to be well miced and well recorded all the way around. I will note that I don't hear quite as much of a difference between the 4 mics as I can in non-vocal instruments. I've noticed this with other vocal instruments as well. I think this is because of the voice itself and convolution reverb. Turning off the reverb seems to emphasize the difference a bit more. Also the syllables seem a touch crisper on the closer mics.
The answer to the second is more toward personal taste, but often most folks can agree that an instrument just doesn't sound particularly good or that an instruments has a wonderful tone. In this case the instrument(s) is the combined voices of a male and female ensemble and to me they sound lovely. There is a fullness and richness to the choir that I find downright exciting. If I were to go to an Italian cathedral that was known for having a fine choir on a Sunday this is what I might expect to hear.
That leads to a third question I have dared to ask more recently. Could I imagine this to be a real instrument being played live? Are we climbing up the other side of the Uncanny Valley? With convo reverb, somewhat pro level sound interfaces and speakers or headphones along with improved recordings, legato and other developers' tricks it seems like you really can get the illusion of a live performance. Dominus gives me something of that illusion and that is intended as quite a compliment.
In my listening to Fluffy Audio instruments and demos, they seem to be exceptional at tone and legato which is a testament to skill, taste and insanely hard work. I congratulate them on the tone of Dominus as it seems to be as good if not better than any other choir on the market.
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - Legato
Dominus - Latin is a Snap
Dominus Latin is a snap
When you kick up the Word Edit tab of Dominus you will see 50 little 'puzzle pieces' that are flat on the left and have a little connector on the right. These are the word starters. Click on one of these pieces and you are taken a page of connecting pieces based on the vowel in the word starter. So clicking VE takes you to the E page, VI to the I Page and VO can you guess... yup to the O page. You are good!
Once you are on the vowel page you can choose connector pieces on the left or word ending pieces on the right. If you choose a connector piece you are transported to the vowel sound for the new ending vowel. So I chose VO which took me to the O page and now I try the OMA connector and am whisked away to the A vowel page.
Now I pick ANNA, because I knew an adorable lady named Anna, and since this ends in A, I stay on my current page. Now I try ANE because now I'm thinking of the lady. This takes me (R U Ready) to the E page.
Now my word is getting pretty long so I'm going to choose an end piece from the right. ENTUM seems alright. End pieces are special in that the vowel will hold until you release the key and then the final vowel will sound. So here I'll get the Oooo sound until I release for an Mmmm. Now I have my non-sense Latin word Vomannanentum.
Look under the word and you will see lots of little half notes. When I play Vomannanentum, each of the five syllables has exactly the same length. Well expect the last which I can control with my release.
This gets boring so lets change the note length. Click on the note you can go from a sixteenth to a double note or even custom lengths. So my word might have this cadence when I'm done. Note that you can also choose note length when you are picking your syllables in the Word Builder. I just prefer to do it this way as I listen to the whole word. Also when getting cadence I suggest just holding one note.
As you can see from my little picture, Dominus can do real Latin words as well. In fact it comes with a whole list of real words and with a little experimentation you can make many more.
It's a but hard to see in my picture but when you hit presets you get a scroll-able list of tons of words that are ready for use. This is where I got Gloria and Deo from.
Now in trying to do 'Gloria in excelsis deo', I had a problem finding an In, but then I realized I could just attach it to the from of Excelsis. So there in three words is a pretty good version of my phrase.
I find the Word Builder to be quite clever and fairly intuitive. Once you figure out that the vowels are the legato connectors and you are basically jumping between vowel pages, you can get what you want pretty quickly.
The note length is easy and seems to work. I was worried that going too long or short might mess up the sound if the words, but it really doesn't. The only suggestion is for the longer intro and outro words I wouldn't go down to sixteenth notes as you need to give the singers enough time to get in all those vowels.
Varying the note lengths really adds some life to the words. At first I was just using the default half notes and it sounded good enough but a bit digital. When I started messing with the word lengths it started sounding much more like the real choir. Also remember to give yourself space for your ending syllable. You need to hear that last vowel (if you have one) on each word to really sell the word.
Dominus - Overview
Dominus - Legato
Dominus - The Samples
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Swing More Intro, Outro and Overview
Swing More has a large number of instruments, about 25 depending on how you count, that fill an interesting niche in the Big Band field. The instruments are variable in quality and usually work better together as a band than as solo instruments. Many of the articulations are quirky sometimes in useful ways and sometimes in ways that seem to create more problems than they solve.
Brass
Guitars
Multis
Strings
Percussion
Brass
Guitars
Multis
Strings
Percussion
Swing More Woodwinds
This is in many ways the heart of the collection with four Saxophones and a Clarinet.
Friday, August 25, 2017
Swing More Brass
Moving on to even more ways to blow your brains out using Swing More.
Tenor Trombone - Basics kicks in with 2300 samples in 600 megs compressed. It has 4 articulations Staccato, Marcato, Sustain and Fall. There are three mic positions Direct, Ambient and Wide. I suspect these three mic positions will persist through the entire Brass section, if that changes I'll let you know. Staccato and Marcato have 3 round robins, Falls 4 and Sustain doesn't have any. Staccato has 3 velocity layers while everything else has 2.
The Sustain has some vibrato baked in and is somewhat strident. The Marcatos have a nice overall sound and I think are the best of the four. The Staccato just sounds like an OK short note. The Rips for some reason are far louder than the other articulations.
Where the Trombone fails is in tone and dynamic range there just isn't that soft gentle tone that sounds like the player is barely blowing up to the nasty blowing the instrument away sound. This is more of a range of medium soft to medium loud.
I've listened pretty extensively to the solo trombones in Swing More, Session Horns Pro and even more orchestral trombones like the ones in Bravura Scoring Brass, Symphony Essentials and even the older Kirk Hunter Orchestra. The trombone in Swing More sadly seems to have less life and be less expertly played than the others. Aside from the Symphony Essentials Trombone, the others seemed to be more heavily sampled and often have better legato.
Session Horns Pro seems to be the closest direct competitor to the Swing More Brass. When I compare the trombones, the SHP just seems brighter and more lively. It also has many more options. If you want to blend in with Swing More, need more mic positions or happen to like the sound of this Trombone, you might use it. Other than mic positions, I can't see any advantage to using it over the Session Horns Pro which just seems like a vastly superior solo instrument.
The Tenor Trombone - Longs has a shade under a 1000 and 700 megs of samples. There are 3 articulations, Fast Vibrato, Slow Vibrato and No Vibrato. The Slow and No have 3 velocity layers and the Fast has 2.
As you would expect this sounds similar to the Sustain from the Basics patch, but the good news is that the Non Vib articulation does lose the Vibrato almost entirely and the Fast and Slow Vibratos are what you would expect. As a more focused patch this hangs together better than the Basics.
Tenor Trombone - Shorts is very similar to the Basics patch simply replacing the Sustain with a one velocity layer, 3 RR Flutter. So the stats and comments are mostly the same as for Basics. There are 2300 samples and 400 megs compressed.
One oddity is that the patch adds a fourth Staccato round robin but it is noticeably quieter than the other three. You are better off using the Basics Staccato as it is more consistent. The new articulation is the Flutter which is really loud even more so than the Falls. To me the tone of the Flutter was poor.
Tenor Trombone - Wah is an interesting patch. As you would expect from the name it has a Wah sound for either a short or a long period of time depending on the velocity. This seems like a rarer articulation and is fun to play with.
The long is stacked on top of the short and each has a single velocity layer. There are 4 round robins and the usual 3 mics. The only negative is that there is no real volume control since Velocity controls whether long or short plays and the modwheel controls the filter. I added in a modwheel volume control which to me improved the patch. I wish it had shipped that way.
Tenor Trombone - Legato Multi-Dyn has 2500 plus samples and 800 plus megs. The slow and no vibrato articulations have 3 velocity layers and the fast vibrato articulation 2. The patch gets its name from the no and slow vibrato having p, mf and ff velocity layers. All the transitions are sampled both up and down for every transition from a single step to an octave. All three articulations use the same transition samples which works fine for on and slow vibrato but sounds a touch odd for the fast vibrato.
As with all legato patches it take a bit of getting used to as you want to hold both notes for part of a second to ensure a smooth transition. While not quite to the level of the best samples legato, it definitely sounds better than the fake legato that I use in my instruments.
Tenor Trombone - Legato Versatile replaces the p, mf and ff layers with Bend on the top velocity and either Staccato or Marcato on the soft velocity and a single velocity layer legato in the middle velocity range. It weighs in at 2800 samples and half a gig.
This is a strange but fun patch. The bend makes its only appearance and is a cool effect as it bends up and down fairly effortlessly unlike the falls which seem more forced. It would have been a natural addition to the Wah patch as they sound like cousins. You do have to strike your key firmly to get the bend to trigger as it is at the very top of the velocity range.
The Vibrato articulations have the marcato while the non vibrato has the staccato. Since I prefer the former to the later, I think slow vibrato is my favorite here and one of my favorites in the Swing More trombone line.
Trombones in Octaves is one of those funky patches that gives Swing More some of its unique flavor and value. It seems to have two Trombones playing an octave apart. At higher velocity are the Falls and at low velocity the Crescendos. I can definitely see these being useful in the right situations as the whole thing has a distinctive sound that I don't recall hearing in another Kontakt instrument.
The falls and short crescendos have 2 RR and the long crescendos have 1. Again since the articulations are stacked there is basically one velocity layer and there isn't much volume control.
Bass Trombone - Basics has 2200 samples and is over 400 megs compressed. There are Staccatissimo samples along with Staccato, Marcato and Sustain. All the shorts have 4 RR while the Sustain has 1. Sustain has 3 velocity layers and the other 2. They tend to go from moderately loud to very loud so no soft passages played here.
Tonally most of the instrument has a nice growl to it with the top octave starting to be a touch more smooth. There are some tonal inconsistencies in the round robins but not enough to create a problem. Overall I think the Bass works better than the Tenor. There are no overly loud articulations and the Staccatos sound fine.
Bass Trombone - Longs has 870 samples in 370 megs. It is another of Swing mores odd patches in that is has SFZ - Crescendo (loud short followed by slow build) on top off all four articulations. Sustain, Slide Up, Fall and Flutter would be those four. Sustain has 3 velocity layers and the other 2. Again all are loud to louder.
Like the Basics patch the Bass seems to be better than the Tenor Trombone. The Flutter especially seems to work for me here. Also the Stage mic setting seems quite solid. Maybe you need a bit of space to appreciate a Bass Trombone.
Bass Trombone - Shorts has almost 2500 samples and 400 megs. All four articulations are setup pretty differently from each other so we will take them in order.
XT Short has Marcato F on top and Marcato P on bottom with Staccatisimo F and P in the middle. Each has 4 round robins and two velocity layers.
Short has Fall F on top and Fall P on bottom with Staccato F and P in the middle. Falls have 2 RR and Staccato 4 with both having two velocity layers.
SFZ - Crescendo has an articulation all to itself and with 2 RR and 1 velocity layer.
Finally Slide Up has Slide F on top and Slide P on the bottom for a surprisingly traditional articulation with 2 RR and 2 velocity layers.
Overall a fairly odd patch.
And now moving on to the Trumpet Section with 3 Trumpeters giving it all they have. The reason that a trumpet section and not a Solo Trumpet is in Swing More is that the original Swing library had the solo trumpet and they didn't want to duplicate content.
Trumpets - Basics has 2600 samples in two thirds of a gig of memory. The four articulations are Staccato, Marcato, Sustain and Fall. The Staccato and Marcato are similar with 4 round robins and 2 or 3 velocity layers depending on the note. The Sustain is actually quite different with the modwheel being used for the crossfade between the three velocity layers. The Fall has four round robins and one velocity layer with the Shake kicking in at the softer velocities above C3.
As a three instrument section, the trumpets have a fuller sound than the solo instruments we have been talking about. This generally works to Swing More's advantage and at the low and middle range the Trumpets sound quite good. The last octave to half octave depending on the articulation really falls apart though and becomes cringe worthy. The Sustain and Marcato are the best sounding to me and the modwheel crossfade gives the Sustain a much smoother velocity curve than most of the other instruments and also the ability to do swells at will.
Trumpets - Longs is a departure in that it has only one articulations this has Shakes at the top upwards from C4 and Marcatos at the bottom with the sustains at mid-velocity. It uses 786 samples and 400 megs. This patch baffles me as Marcatos aren't longs in anyone's book and they and the Shakes could have been given their own articulations. Possibly this patch makes sense for performance in ways I don't understand. I much prefer the Sustain on the Basics patch.
Trumpets - Shorts has a really funky set of articulations. All four start with a Staccato and then from left to right play Marcato, Fast Fall, Slow Fall and Doit. The Marcato covers the same range as the Staccato but the Falls and Doit don't, so going too low on those articulations merely triggers the Staccato. This feels sloppy. Still full points for creativity as I'm not aware that I've ever seen another Kontakt instrument quite like this one. It certainly creates a lot of movement and flair.
The stats are 2500 samples in 500 megs. The Staccatos and Marcatos have 2 or 3 velocity layers while everything else has 1. There are 3 or 4 round robins.
Trumpets - Legato is another confusing patch. The Legato is in the mid velocity with Shake from C4 upwards at high velocity and Marcato at low velocity. It is just too easy to play a shake or a marcato when you are trying to do a smooth legato. I just don't get the point. There are Fast and Run legato. The Fast feels like a traditional legato while the Run sounds like a marcato is being played on each transition. Again this feel like a performance patch for a specific situation that I don't understand, but it seems ill chosen to be the only Trumpets Legato patch. If you can get it sorted out there is a lot here to play with as there are 4700 samples in over a gig of memory.
Overall there is certainly a lot here, but at the risk of beating a dead horse when comparing the close mic on these instruments to the Session Horns Pro, the Swing More sounds tonally OK while the SHP sounds very good. Tone is hard to quantify, but SHP just seems to have that IT factor that is missing in SM. However Swing More has both Wide and Ambient mics which can be used by themselves or mixed with the Close mic to give a sound that SHP cannot achieve. With some reverb and EQ work I think that the SM brass and SM in general can sound like a solid backup band with the SHP taking the closer solo lead.
Some of the patches are quite clever and fill unusual niches, others seems just odd for the sake of being odd. The brass would benefit from some more traditional patches and the Trumpets Sustain with modwheel control showed just how much this collection misses modwheel crossfade articulations.
Tenor Trombone - Basics kicks in with 2300 samples in 600 megs compressed. It has 4 articulations Staccato, Marcato, Sustain and Fall. There are three mic positions Direct, Ambient and Wide. I suspect these three mic positions will persist through the entire Brass section, if that changes I'll let you know. Staccato and Marcato have 3 round robins, Falls 4 and Sustain doesn't have any. Staccato has 3 velocity layers while everything else has 2.
The Sustain has some vibrato baked in and is somewhat strident. The Marcatos have a nice overall sound and I think are the best of the four. The Staccato just sounds like an OK short note. The Rips for some reason are far louder than the other articulations.
Where the Trombone fails is in tone and dynamic range there just isn't that soft gentle tone that sounds like the player is barely blowing up to the nasty blowing the instrument away sound. This is more of a range of medium soft to medium loud.
I've listened pretty extensively to the solo trombones in Swing More, Session Horns Pro and even more orchestral trombones like the ones in Bravura Scoring Brass, Symphony Essentials and even the older Kirk Hunter Orchestra. The trombone in Swing More sadly seems to have less life and be less expertly played than the others. Aside from the Symphony Essentials Trombone, the others seemed to be more heavily sampled and often have better legato.
Session Horns Pro seems to be the closest direct competitor to the Swing More Brass. When I compare the trombones, the SHP just seems brighter and more lively. It also has many more options. If you want to blend in with Swing More, need more mic positions or happen to like the sound of this Trombone, you might use it. Other than mic positions, I can't see any advantage to using it over the Session Horns Pro which just seems like a vastly superior solo instrument.
The Tenor Trombone - Longs has a shade under a 1000 and 700 megs of samples. There are 3 articulations, Fast Vibrato, Slow Vibrato and No Vibrato. The Slow and No have 3 velocity layers and the Fast has 2.
As you would expect this sounds similar to the Sustain from the Basics patch, but the good news is that the Non Vib articulation does lose the Vibrato almost entirely and the Fast and Slow Vibratos are what you would expect. As a more focused patch this hangs together better than the Basics.
Tenor Trombone - Shorts is very similar to the Basics patch simply replacing the Sustain with a one velocity layer, 3 RR Flutter. So the stats and comments are mostly the same as for Basics. There are 2300 samples and 400 megs compressed.
One oddity is that the patch adds a fourth Staccato round robin but it is noticeably quieter than the other three. You are better off using the Basics Staccato as it is more consistent. The new articulation is the Flutter which is really loud even more so than the Falls. To me the tone of the Flutter was poor.
Tenor Trombone - Wah is an interesting patch. As you would expect from the name it has a Wah sound for either a short or a long period of time depending on the velocity. This seems like a rarer articulation and is fun to play with.
The long is stacked on top of the short and each has a single velocity layer. There are 4 round robins and the usual 3 mics. The only negative is that there is no real volume control since Velocity controls whether long or short plays and the modwheel controls the filter. I added in a modwheel volume control which to me improved the patch. I wish it had shipped that way.
Tenor Trombone - Legato Multi-Dyn has 2500 plus samples and 800 plus megs. The slow and no vibrato articulations have 3 velocity layers and the fast vibrato articulation 2. The patch gets its name from the no and slow vibrato having p, mf and ff velocity layers. All the transitions are sampled both up and down for every transition from a single step to an octave. All three articulations use the same transition samples which works fine for on and slow vibrato but sounds a touch odd for the fast vibrato.
As with all legato patches it take a bit of getting used to as you want to hold both notes for part of a second to ensure a smooth transition. While not quite to the level of the best samples legato, it definitely sounds better than the fake legato that I use in my instruments.
Tenor Trombone - Legato Versatile replaces the p, mf and ff layers with Bend on the top velocity and either Staccato or Marcato on the soft velocity and a single velocity layer legato in the middle velocity range. It weighs in at 2800 samples and half a gig.
This is a strange but fun patch. The bend makes its only appearance and is a cool effect as it bends up and down fairly effortlessly unlike the falls which seem more forced. It would have been a natural addition to the Wah patch as they sound like cousins. You do have to strike your key firmly to get the bend to trigger as it is at the very top of the velocity range.
The Vibrato articulations have the marcato while the non vibrato has the staccato. Since I prefer the former to the later, I think slow vibrato is my favorite here and one of my favorites in the Swing More trombone line.
Trombones in Octaves is one of those funky patches that gives Swing More some of its unique flavor and value. It seems to have two Trombones playing an octave apart. At higher velocity are the Falls and at low velocity the Crescendos. I can definitely see these being useful in the right situations as the whole thing has a distinctive sound that I don't recall hearing in another Kontakt instrument.
The falls and short crescendos have 2 RR and the long crescendos have 1. Again since the articulations are stacked there is basically one velocity layer and there isn't much volume control.
Bass Trombone - Basics has 2200 samples and is over 400 megs compressed. There are Staccatissimo samples along with Staccato, Marcato and Sustain. All the shorts have 4 RR while the Sustain has 1. Sustain has 3 velocity layers and the other 2. They tend to go from moderately loud to very loud so no soft passages played here.
Tonally most of the instrument has a nice growl to it with the top octave starting to be a touch more smooth. There are some tonal inconsistencies in the round robins but not enough to create a problem. Overall I think the Bass works better than the Tenor. There are no overly loud articulations and the Staccatos sound fine.
Bass Trombone - Longs has 870 samples in 370 megs. It is another of Swing mores odd patches in that is has SFZ - Crescendo (loud short followed by slow build) on top off all four articulations. Sustain, Slide Up, Fall and Flutter would be those four. Sustain has 3 velocity layers and the other 2. Again all are loud to louder.
Like the Basics patch the Bass seems to be better than the Tenor Trombone. The Flutter especially seems to work for me here. Also the Stage mic setting seems quite solid. Maybe you need a bit of space to appreciate a Bass Trombone.
Bass Trombone - Shorts has almost 2500 samples and 400 megs. All four articulations are setup pretty differently from each other so we will take them in order.
XT Short has Marcato F on top and Marcato P on bottom with Staccatisimo F and P in the middle. Each has 4 round robins and two velocity layers.
Short has Fall F on top and Fall P on bottom with Staccato F and P in the middle. Falls have 2 RR and Staccato 4 with both having two velocity layers.
SFZ - Crescendo has an articulation all to itself and with 2 RR and 1 velocity layer.
Finally Slide Up has Slide F on top and Slide P on the bottom for a surprisingly traditional articulation with 2 RR and 2 velocity layers.
Overall a fairly odd patch.
And now moving on to the Trumpet Section with 3 Trumpeters giving it all they have. The reason that a trumpet section and not a Solo Trumpet is in Swing More is that the original Swing library had the solo trumpet and they didn't want to duplicate content.
Trumpets - Basics has 2600 samples in two thirds of a gig of memory. The four articulations are Staccato, Marcato, Sustain and Fall. The Staccato and Marcato are similar with 4 round robins and 2 or 3 velocity layers depending on the note. The Sustain is actually quite different with the modwheel being used for the crossfade between the three velocity layers. The Fall has four round robins and one velocity layer with the Shake kicking in at the softer velocities above C3.
As a three instrument section, the trumpets have a fuller sound than the solo instruments we have been talking about. This generally works to Swing More's advantage and at the low and middle range the Trumpets sound quite good. The last octave to half octave depending on the articulation really falls apart though and becomes cringe worthy. The Sustain and Marcato are the best sounding to me and the modwheel crossfade gives the Sustain a much smoother velocity curve than most of the other instruments and also the ability to do swells at will.
Trumpets - Longs is a departure in that it has only one articulations this has Shakes at the top upwards from C4 and Marcatos at the bottom with the sustains at mid-velocity. It uses 786 samples and 400 megs. This patch baffles me as Marcatos aren't longs in anyone's book and they and the Shakes could have been given their own articulations. Possibly this patch makes sense for performance in ways I don't understand. I much prefer the Sustain on the Basics patch.
Trumpets - Shorts has a really funky set of articulations. All four start with a Staccato and then from left to right play Marcato, Fast Fall, Slow Fall and Doit. The Marcato covers the same range as the Staccato but the Falls and Doit don't, so going too low on those articulations merely triggers the Staccato. This feels sloppy. Still full points for creativity as I'm not aware that I've ever seen another Kontakt instrument quite like this one. It certainly creates a lot of movement and flair.
The stats are 2500 samples in 500 megs. The Staccatos and Marcatos have 2 or 3 velocity layers while everything else has 1. There are 3 or 4 round robins.
Trumpets - Legato is another confusing patch. The Legato is in the mid velocity with Shake from C4 upwards at high velocity and Marcato at low velocity. It is just too easy to play a shake or a marcato when you are trying to do a smooth legato. I just don't get the point. There are Fast and Run legato. The Fast feels like a traditional legato while the Run sounds like a marcato is being played on each transition. Again this feel like a performance patch for a specific situation that I don't understand, but it seems ill chosen to be the only Trumpets Legato patch. If you can get it sorted out there is a lot here to play with as there are 4700 samples in over a gig of memory.
Overall there is certainly a lot here, but at the risk of beating a dead horse when comparing the close mic on these instruments to the Session Horns Pro, the Swing More sounds tonally OK while the SHP sounds very good. Tone is hard to quantify, but SHP just seems to have that IT factor that is missing in SM. However Swing More has both Wide and Ambient mics which can be used by themselves or mixed with the Close mic to give a sound that SHP cannot achieve. With some reverb and EQ work I think that the SM brass and SM in general can sound like a solid backup band with the SHP taking the closer solo lead.
Some of the patches are quite clever and fill unusual niches, others seems just odd for the sake of being odd. The brass would benefit from some more traditional patches and the Trumpets Sustain with modwheel control showed just how much this collection misses modwheel crossfade articulations.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Swing More Guitars
Afterward added note. Throughout this guitar review, I was annoyed at having so many slides so I made my own little nkis without slides. You are welcome to try them. No warranties asserted or implied and your mileage may vary etc...
No Slide nkis
You should be able to unzip these into your guitar directory. They all end with No Slide so they won't overwrite any other nkis. You will probably have to tell Kontakt where your Swing More samples are and then resave.
Lets start with that fairly eclectic instrument, the Ukelele. I have over 24,000 results that come up in my Kontakt database. When I type in Ukelele this is the only instrument that pops up. To be fair I googled and 8Dio has a Kontakt Uke Pack for $150 bucks, but I think I'll stick with this one included in a pack that cost me only $100 more than just the 8Dio Uke by itself.
This Uke weighs in at over 2000 samples and about 400 megs. It has Close and Room mic settings. There are supposed to be four articulations, Long, Short, Fall and Triplets, but unless I'm misunderstanding what Triplets means I don't think that articulation is correct as it sounds like a slide type thing to me. The staccatos have 6 round robins and everything else seems to have 3. I am assuming the slide must be important in the big band uke as it sits on top of every single articulation.
The Long articulation has two velocity layers while the Short adds in a mute at low velocity for a third velocity layer. The others have one velocity layer. The Longs also uses the mod wheel to switch between vibrato and non-vibrato.
The sound seems right for a Uke. The Longs have a nice tail fading out while the Shorts have that abrupt feel that I usually associate with a Uke. Having the mutes is a nice touch. I wish there were an nki that had just the Longs and Shorts without the slide on top velocity layer of everything and the mutes and vibrato as separate articulations.
Again I'm not sure what triplets should be but I'm assuming three notes should be struck in rapid succession and the Triplets articulation sounds nothing like that. It isn't that big a deal since you can just hit the Short three times, it is just odd.
There is another glitch the slide doesn't go all the way down to C3.
This is a solid instrument that is good enough for some solo work and as a fairly rare instrument definitely adds value to the pack. Just be careful not to whack your keyboard too hard and get the slide by mistake.
The Mandolin is more lightly sampled than the Uke with the 'Single' nki having 1000 samples and 280 megs. There are Long, Short and Tremolo articulations and again Close and room Mics. The Longs and Shorts have a Slur at the highest velocity and one regular velocity layer. The Longs have 2 round robins and the Shorts 4. The Tremolo which is basically really fast picking of the same note has two velocity layers, one with an accent and one without.
The Mandolin seems more inconsistent than the Uke, for instance the Long D3 doesn't really even sound like the same instrument. While some variance is expect do to open strings and such, this just feels like it was sampled by an inexperienced player with the sound being all over the place on both Long and Short. The quick strumming of the Tremolo is the best part of this patch.
The Mandolin Strums patch is quite nice. After disliking the main patch, I didn't expect much, but this was a pleasant surprise. Strums are available for each key in Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished and a little on screen display shows you which you are playing. There are Longs, Shorts and Arpeggios to choose from in your strums. The Shorts have 4 round robins and the Longs 2. If you use the Longs give them plenty of time to breath otherwise go Short. You might also pull the Attack back to 0.
The Arpeggios are pretty interesting. You get 4 notes in sequence each time and you could almost use them to write yourself a little 4/4 melody.
There is more consistency in the round robins and across the keyboard than in the main patch. The tone is quite pleasant. The only question might be why the mod wheel wasn't used as the selection method for the three types of strums and the velocity allowed to dictate the volume. As it stand the modwheel opens and closes the filter and there is no volume change whatsoever.
The Mandolin Tremolo Sync patch is a clever patch that as the name suggests will sync the offered Fast and Slow picking to match the tempo selected in your DAW. It gets a wee bit odd below about 80 but works well above that. Both the Fast and Slow have an accent at the higher velocities and no accent at the lower. In a nice touch you can choose half or double speed if you prefer it to regular tempo.
This is a fun picking and grinning patch with clever use of Kontakt's time machine. I prefer a tempo of about 100 but you can go nuts and really crank it up. Again you might pull the attack to 0.
And now the Banjo. I guess there is less to do with a Banjo than a Uke or Mandolin as the Main or 'Single' nki is just a single articulation with a Slide at high velocity and a single velocity layer pluck on the lower velocity. Both have 2 round robins and per usual a Close and Room mic. A banjo expert could probably give you a run down on the tone, but to me a banjo played with even moderate competence sounds like a banjo and this sounds like a slightly flat banjo. To test this all banjos sound alike theory out, I tried the Realitone Banjo (thanks Mike Greene) and the free Philharmonica banjo. While the Realitone might have sounded slightly better than the other two, I wouldn't have wanted to swear to it under oath. They was all rootin' tootin' banjos.
One little quirk is that you can only play down to G3 and yet there are samples down to D3. Why would you record and include samples with no way to play them? I don't know.
So on to the Banjo Strums and the Banjo Groove. Like the Mandolin Strums above, the Banjo Strums have Long, Short and Arpeggio strums. The Banjo Groove patch replaces the short strum with a 130 bpm groove. Other than that the two nkis are identical. I must admit I've never been much on pre-recorded grooves, if you are into them I reckon these sound fine and since there are grooves for every key in Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished, you can't fault the effort.
Much like the aforementioned Mandolin Strums, the Banjo Strums sound quite nice, probably better than the single notes. Everything has 4 round robins. Again you have Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished strums in every key.
So there you have the Ukulele, Mandolin and Banjo. The Uke is the best of the bunch in my opinion and I can see it being your go to Ukulele for all your varied Uke needs. The Banjo sounds like a banjo and is not bad. The single note Mandolin is not the best, but both the Mandolin and Banjo strums sound pretty good.
And now on the the Jazz Guitar and its five patches. The Lead nki seems to be the standard single note patch. The has Long, Vibrato, Short and Mute. Again there are Close and room mics. The Short and Mute have 4 round robins and the Long and Vibrato have 2. Each articulation has one velocity layer with a slide at the high velocity of each. The mod wheel adds in some oscillation based vibrato. I prefer the sound without added vibrato since it has a natural vibrato articulation anyway.
I quite like the sound of this guitar. While I know that no virtual instrument has really captured the soul of the guitar, which is more obvious to me because I have a buddy who is a superb guitarist, this instrument has a very pleasant acoustic sound. While held back by a lack of velocity layers, it could be used as a solid jazz or even classical guitar for backup or brief solo work.
As you might expect the Jazz Guitar - Octaves gives you the ability to use the popular technique of playing your root and an octave above the root at the same time. From what I read this is pretty tough in real life, but this patch makes it easy. There are Longs and Shorts here with the usual slide on top. These slides are different however as they are specifically octave slides and there is a different type for Long and Short. The Longs have a single velocity layer under the Slide, but the Shorts have both a regular Staccato note in the middle velocity and a Marcato note at the soft velocity. The Longs have 2 round robins and the Shorts 2.
There are some inconsistencies in this patch probably because of the difficulty of playing the octave style. The overall effect is pretty good though and like the Uke this adds something I don't already have in any other instrument to my library.
The Jazz Guitar - Strums and Groove are much like the Mandolin and Banjo Strums. The Groove is a 90 bpm loop that again doesn't thrill me but might be useful if you are more of a loop person. The Strums are Long, Short and Arpeggio in every key in Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished as we have become accustomed to. Both the Longs and Shorts have 4 round robins while the Arps don't have any. There are some inconsistencies here for instance the Arps range from 4 to 6 notes and the longer round robins can vary in style a bit. Still they should work fairly well for tossing chords into songs without playing each note individually. The overall pleasant tone of the Jazz /guitar continues to be evident in these patches as well.
Finally we come to Jazz Guitar - Phrases which is a collection of about a 100 5 to 10 second guitar phrases across various keys. Unless you use the wrench to open the instrument and look at the group names you have no real way of knowing what keys and chords are being used. Well unless you have a good ear. This is so far from what I'm used to that I'll just let you draw your own conclusion about its usefulness to you.
Overall this is a nice guitar with a good tone. Most everything has a fair number of round robins, though not much in the way of velocity layers. If you don't have much in the way of acoustic guitars this might come in handy for many uses outside this collection, though I'm not sure you would want it to solo a whole song. Even if you have better acoustic guitars, it can be a nice change of pace or background instrument. The octaves patch has an interesting feel and might fit a few places.
The Bass Guitar - Fretless weighs in at 2500 samples and 400 megs. The groups have the name Fodera and so I'm assuming that are samples from the Fodera Bass Guitar. The included articulations are Sustain, Staccato, Mute and Glissando with the Close and Room mics. The Sustain and Staccato patches include Slides but in odd ways as the notes C1 and above have an upward slide at the highest velocity layers while the lowest velocities from C1 to B1 slide down. This a bit bizarre by anyone's standards. Also Vibrato samples can be triggers in place of Sustain by using a foot pedal.
Aside from the obvious of being a bass, the Fretless Bass Guitar feels a bit different than the previous guitars as if it were sampled by a different group. It has a good solid tone and it feels more like an instrument that could be used outside of the pack and could be sold by itself. Aside from the slides it has two velocity layers. The Staccatos and Mutes have 6 round robins while the Sustains have 2.
Like the Uke, a Fretless Bass can be harder to find so this adds some more value to Swing More. Just watch those slides, or you can try the little no slide patches at the top of the page, when you are jamming with this bass.
The Bass Guitar - Electric feels much like the Fretless. It has almost 3000 samples and again about 400 megs of compressed samples. Again we get Sustain, Staccato, Mute and Glissando articulations with no slides this time. Instead there are 3 velocity layers to go with 6 round robins for Staccato and Mute and 2 for Sustain.
Like the Fretless, the Electric seems to be a solid instrument that could be used for many things outside the pack as well as blending nicely within Swing More. Of course the Electric Bass is a pretty common instrument, so you might already have your preferences in this area well covered.
In Summery a quirky set of guitar and guitar-like instruments. Some are better than others, but you can get some mileage out of these especially the rarer instruments. If you love Slides you are really set!
No Slide nkis
You should be able to unzip these into your guitar directory. They all end with No Slide so they won't overwrite any other nkis. You will probably have to tell Kontakt where your Swing More samples are and then resave.
Lets start with that fairly eclectic instrument, the Ukelele. I have over 24,000 results that come up in my Kontakt database. When I type in Ukelele this is the only instrument that pops up. To be fair I googled and 8Dio has a Kontakt Uke Pack for $150 bucks, but I think I'll stick with this one included in a pack that cost me only $100 more than just the 8Dio Uke by itself.
This Uke weighs in at over 2000 samples and about 400 megs. It has Close and Room mic settings. There are supposed to be four articulations, Long, Short, Fall and Triplets, but unless I'm misunderstanding what Triplets means I don't think that articulation is correct as it sounds like a slide type thing to me. The staccatos have 6 round robins and everything else seems to have 3. I am assuming the slide must be important in the big band uke as it sits on top of every single articulation.
The Long articulation has two velocity layers while the Short adds in a mute at low velocity for a third velocity layer. The others have one velocity layer. The Longs also uses the mod wheel to switch between vibrato and non-vibrato.
The sound seems right for a Uke. The Longs have a nice tail fading out while the Shorts have that abrupt feel that I usually associate with a Uke. Having the mutes is a nice touch. I wish there were an nki that had just the Longs and Shorts without the slide on top velocity layer of everything and the mutes and vibrato as separate articulations.
Again I'm not sure what triplets should be but I'm assuming three notes should be struck in rapid succession and the Triplets articulation sounds nothing like that. It isn't that big a deal since you can just hit the Short three times, it is just odd.
There is another glitch the slide doesn't go all the way down to C3.
This is a solid instrument that is good enough for some solo work and as a fairly rare instrument definitely adds value to the pack. Just be careful not to whack your keyboard too hard and get the slide by mistake.
The Mandolin is more lightly sampled than the Uke with the 'Single' nki having 1000 samples and 280 megs. There are Long, Short and Tremolo articulations and again Close and room Mics. The Longs and Shorts have a Slur at the highest velocity and one regular velocity layer. The Longs have 2 round robins and the Shorts 4. The Tremolo which is basically really fast picking of the same note has two velocity layers, one with an accent and one without.
The Mandolin seems more inconsistent than the Uke, for instance the Long D3 doesn't really even sound like the same instrument. While some variance is expect do to open strings and such, this just feels like it was sampled by an inexperienced player with the sound being all over the place on both Long and Short. The quick strumming of the Tremolo is the best part of this patch.
The Mandolin Strums patch is quite nice. After disliking the main patch, I didn't expect much, but this was a pleasant surprise. Strums are available for each key in Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished and a little on screen display shows you which you are playing. There are Longs, Shorts and Arpeggios to choose from in your strums. The Shorts have 4 round robins and the Longs 2. If you use the Longs give them plenty of time to breath otherwise go Short. You might also pull the Attack back to 0.
The Arpeggios are pretty interesting. You get 4 notes in sequence each time and you could almost use them to write yourself a little 4/4 melody.
There is more consistency in the round robins and across the keyboard than in the main patch. The tone is quite pleasant. The only question might be why the mod wheel wasn't used as the selection method for the three types of strums and the velocity allowed to dictate the volume. As it stand the modwheel opens and closes the filter and there is no volume change whatsoever.
The Mandolin Tremolo Sync patch is a clever patch that as the name suggests will sync the offered Fast and Slow picking to match the tempo selected in your DAW. It gets a wee bit odd below about 80 but works well above that. Both the Fast and Slow have an accent at the higher velocities and no accent at the lower. In a nice touch you can choose half or double speed if you prefer it to regular tempo.
This is a fun picking and grinning patch with clever use of Kontakt's time machine. I prefer a tempo of about 100 but you can go nuts and really crank it up. Again you might pull the attack to 0.
And now the Banjo. I guess there is less to do with a Banjo than a Uke or Mandolin as the Main or 'Single' nki is just a single articulation with a Slide at high velocity and a single velocity layer pluck on the lower velocity. Both have 2 round robins and per usual a Close and Room mic. A banjo expert could probably give you a run down on the tone, but to me a banjo played with even moderate competence sounds like a banjo and this sounds like a slightly flat banjo. To test this all banjos sound alike theory out, I tried the Realitone Banjo (thanks Mike Greene) and the free Philharmonica banjo. While the Realitone might have sounded slightly better than the other two, I wouldn't have wanted to swear to it under oath. They was all rootin' tootin' banjos.
One little quirk is that you can only play down to G3 and yet there are samples down to D3. Why would you record and include samples with no way to play them? I don't know.
So on to the Banjo Strums and the Banjo Groove. Like the Mandolin Strums above, the Banjo Strums have Long, Short and Arpeggio strums. The Banjo Groove patch replaces the short strum with a 130 bpm groove. Other than that the two nkis are identical. I must admit I've never been much on pre-recorded grooves, if you are into them I reckon these sound fine and since there are grooves for every key in Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished, you can't fault the effort.
Much like the aforementioned Mandolin Strums, the Banjo Strums sound quite nice, probably better than the single notes. Everything has 4 round robins. Again you have Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished strums in every key.
So there you have the Ukulele, Mandolin and Banjo. The Uke is the best of the bunch in my opinion and I can see it being your go to Ukulele for all your varied Uke needs. The Banjo sounds like a banjo and is not bad. The single note Mandolin is not the best, but both the Mandolin and Banjo strums sound pretty good.
And now on the the Jazz Guitar and its five patches. The Lead nki seems to be the standard single note patch. The has Long, Vibrato, Short and Mute. Again there are Close and room mics. The Short and Mute have 4 round robins and the Long and Vibrato have 2. Each articulation has one velocity layer with a slide at the high velocity of each. The mod wheel adds in some oscillation based vibrato. I prefer the sound without added vibrato since it has a natural vibrato articulation anyway.
I quite like the sound of this guitar. While I know that no virtual instrument has really captured the soul of the guitar, which is more obvious to me because I have a buddy who is a superb guitarist, this instrument has a very pleasant acoustic sound. While held back by a lack of velocity layers, it could be used as a solid jazz or even classical guitar for backup or brief solo work.
As you might expect the Jazz Guitar - Octaves gives you the ability to use the popular technique of playing your root and an octave above the root at the same time. From what I read this is pretty tough in real life, but this patch makes it easy. There are Longs and Shorts here with the usual slide on top. These slides are different however as they are specifically octave slides and there is a different type for Long and Short. The Longs have a single velocity layer under the Slide, but the Shorts have both a regular Staccato note in the middle velocity and a Marcato note at the soft velocity. The Longs have 2 round robins and the Shorts 2.
There are some inconsistencies in this patch probably because of the difficulty of playing the octave style. The overall effect is pretty good though and like the Uke this adds something I don't already have in any other instrument to my library.
The Jazz Guitar - Strums and Groove are much like the Mandolin and Banjo Strums. The Groove is a 90 bpm loop that again doesn't thrill me but might be useful if you are more of a loop person. The Strums are Long, Short and Arpeggio in every key in Major, Minor, Dominate 7th and Diminished as we have become accustomed to. Both the Longs and Shorts have 4 round robins while the Arps don't have any. There are some inconsistencies here for instance the Arps range from 4 to 6 notes and the longer round robins can vary in style a bit. Still they should work fairly well for tossing chords into songs without playing each note individually. The overall pleasant tone of the Jazz /guitar continues to be evident in these patches as well.
Finally we come to Jazz Guitar - Phrases which is a collection of about a 100 5 to 10 second guitar phrases across various keys. Unless you use the wrench to open the instrument and look at the group names you have no real way of knowing what keys and chords are being used. Well unless you have a good ear. This is so far from what I'm used to that I'll just let you draw your own conclusion about its usefulness to you.
Overall this is a nice guitar with a good tone. Most everything has a fair number of round robins, though not much in the way of velocity layers. If you don't have much in the way of acoustic guitars this might come in handy for many uses outside this collection, though I'm not sure you would want it to solo a whole song. Even if you have better acoustic guitars, it can be a nice change of pace or background instrument. The octaves patch has an interesting feel and might fit a few places.
The Bass Guitar - Fretless weighs in at 2500 samples and 400 megs. The groups have the name Fodera and so I'm assuming that are samples from the Fodera Bass Guitar. The included articulations are Sustain, Staccato, Mute and Glissando with the Close and Room mics. The Sustain and Staccato patches include Slides but in odd ways as the notes C1 and above have an upward slide at the highest velocity layers while the lowest velocities from C1 to B1 slide down. This a bit bizarre by anyone's standards. Also Vibrato samples can be triggers in place of Sustain by using a foot pedal.
Aside from the obvious of being a bass, the Fretless Bass Guitar feels a bit different than the previous guitars as if it were sampled by a different group. It has a good solid tone and it feels more like an instrument that could be used outside of the pack and could be sold by itself. Aside from the slides it has two velocity layers. The Staccatos and Mutes have 6 round robins while the Sustains have 2.
Like the Uke, a Fretless Bass can be harder to find so this adds some more value to Swing More. Just watch those slides, or you can try the little no slide patches at the top of the page, when you are jamming with this bass.
The Bass Guitar - Electric feels much like the Fretless. It has almost 3000 samples and again about 400 megs of compressed samples. Again we get Sustain, Staccato, Mute and Glissando articulations with no slides this time. Instead there are 3 velocity layers to go with 6 round robins for Staccato and Mute and 2 for Sustain.
Like the Fretless, the Electric seems to be a solid instrument that could be used for many things outside the pack as well as blending nicely within Swing More. Of course the Electric Bass is a pretty common instrument, so you might already have your preferences in this area well covered.
In Summery a quirky set of guitar and guitar-like instruments. Some are better than others, but you can get some mileage out of these especially the rarer instruments. If you love Slides you are really set!
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Swing More Multis
Project Sam clearly had fun putting together the Swing! libraries. If they hadn't I suppose we wouldn't be looking at Swing More! would we? Part of that was creating a collection of 16 multis. Lets take a quick look at each of the multis and how they sound. Note this is made easier since Project Sam has included a description of each Multi at the top of the Multi itself.
One quirk with all the multis is that the lowest blue keys always stretch to the bottom of the keyboard even though the bottom octave or two has no notes. This confused me a bit at first.Also note that at least off regular non-SSD hard drives these do take a while to load up. Doing as Save Multi As... may help it load faster in the future. It does on my machine.
All Together Now is about that Saxy thang along with some Bass Guitar. The Bass is at the bottom with the Vibrato articulation of the Baritone, Tenor, Alto and Soprano Sax working their way up the scale. This isn't one of the best multis out of the box as the Alto Sax is way to hot and the Soprano Sax isn't playing the long vibrato at all but instead the fairly short Marcato. Pull the Alto Sax down by about 10 db and ignore the top octave and you have a nice little sax trio with bass guitar.
Alleyway is one of the quirkier Multis. It is the first one where pressing hard or in this case soft will start up a drum groove. to the far left is the Fretless Bass and Piano, move up a bit and a pitch shifted Jazz Guitar kicks in while when you hit the yellow a pitch shifted Vibraphone completes the lower ensemble. The upper side belongs to my favorite Sax, the Alto. Soft velocity is soft, medium velocity is loud and hard velocity triggers a crescendo. Yeah definitely quirky.
Am I Dreaming is a question I ask myself every time a beautiful woman smiles at me. Sadly the answer is almost always Yes! The squeaking of a screen-door opening to another dimension that is the Bass Trombone's low end starts us off. At high velocity it does the start a note then quick fade and rebuild the volume thing. The Baritone Sax and then the Tenor Trombone kick in as we move up the yellow keys. Trumpet Legato joins in as we hit the upper blue keys and then shortly after that the Women's Ooh ensemble. A bit higher and both the Chimes and the Trumpet Shake kick in at the highest velocity layers. Overall quite a complex Multi.
Unfortunately the Bass Trombone is giving me two problems. On some notes it makes an audible and sometimes fairly loud popping sound as the SFZ Long samples come to an end. Also sometimes the release samples triggers fairly loudly after the note is released. I'm writing this review backwards, so when I look at the Bass Trombone separately I'll keep and eye out for this problem. I should note that some of this might be from using regular 7200 RPM hard drives and Studio One 2 which can be a resource hog.
Ambient Mandolin is a fairly simple Multi with a dreamy sort of Mandolin joining a Vibraphone for an ethereal effect.
Ballad is about the Guitars along with a Soft Piano that plays across the entire Multi. At the bottom we start with the Bass Guitar which is joined by the Jazz guitar and high velocity slides as we move on up. On the middle blue keys we get the Ukulele on the left and the Mandolin on the right before it all faded to the soft piano. This is basically an All the Guitars patch.
Breaking the Pattern certainly is well named.the bottom half is the Celli and Basses modwheel sustain while the top is the Violins modwheel sustain with a very loud piano arpeggio. I had to crank the piano down about 8 db to even hear the violins with the modwheel cranked. I'm sure someone can put this to use, but it just seemed odd to me.
Catch Me is a big Staccato stack with all the woodwinds, strings and vibraphone all contributing their staccato articulations to the Multi. It is good for quick stabs, but the integrity of the Multi is betrayed by the odd Clarinet choice of having the Bend Up articulation at the top velocity layer. Also the mix is a bit off.
Cinematic Vivaldi is a Tremolo Multi that works nicely in the middle of the keyboard with the Violins and Mandolin Tremolo. There is also an Ambient Piano and the Celli and Basses Legato. This is a creative Multi that feels nothing like a Swing collection.
Hurry has the Bass Guitar Staccato and the Kick Drum low joined by the Baritone Sax Staccato a little ways up the keyboard. The upper half is devoted to Banjo Strums. The Drums are supposed to kick in at high velocity with the Banjos, but they never do. I have no idea what the purpose of this Multi is.
Incognito is Jazz Guitar Phrases backed by very soft Vibraphone Tremolo and Drum Hits and Phrases. I can't see ever using this.
Solitude is the Strings on the bottom and a Soft Clarinet on top. Only the soft clarinet is much to loud. Crank it down and you have a nice little split keyboard patch.
Stuck In Time is another creative non-Swing type Multi. In this case the Clarinet and at the softer velocity layers the Women's Chorus provide a low key pad.
Sunny Morning Drive is a Multi that is all about the Guitars. The Jazz Guitar, Mandolin and Banjo all give us chords at the bottom. Soft velocity yields Arpeggios, middle velocity short chord strums and upper velocity long strums. On the upper half of the Keyboard the Uke takes the lead while the Mandolin Tremolo kicks in at high velocity layers. A nice little lead with the right hand and chords on the left patch. Note the arps don't work so well as the guitar is at about half speed.
The Improbables is stacks and stacks of staccato sax and horns. Bass Trombone and Baritone Sax, then Tenor Trombone and Trumpets kick in. The Alto and Soprano Sax join as the Bass fades. The upper velocity has a good kick to it while the lower velocity has a sweeter swing. Definitely a good Swing Multi for those time when you want a bunch of brass and sax playing the same note. There are enough round robins to avoid the machine gun effect even on quick stabs on the same note.
Undercover brings to mind a panther of reddish hue, a light reddish hue... could it be pink? Plucked Celli and Bass on the bottom with Shaker and if you go high velocity Cowbell. I didn't even know Swing More! had a cowbell. High are the Staccato violins. This one is fun.
Welcome to Broadway extends its invitation with Staccato Bass Trombone and Baritone Sax, an electric Bass Guitar and throbbing Toms. The Clarinet Legato is on the high side. Well sort of legato, the top velocity bends and the upper midish is staccato.
Thus endeth the Multis. I suspect that live players will get more out of these than the more composer types. There is a little something for most everyone and some of them are quite creative. Not really my cup of tea, but still a nice bit of added content.
One quirk with all the multis is that the lowest blue keys always stretch to the bottom of the keyboard even though the bottom octave or two has no notes. This confused me a bit at first.Also note that at least off regular non-SSD hard drives these do take a while to load up. Doing as Save Multi As... may help it load faster in the future. It does on my machine.
All Together Now is about that Saxy thang along with some Bass Guitar. The Bass is at the bottom with the Vibrato articulation of the Baritone, Tenor, Alto and Soprano Sax working their way up the scale. This isn't one of the best multis out of the box as the Alto Sax is way to hot and the Soprano Sax isn't playing the long vibrato at all but instead the fairly short Marcato. Pull the Alto Sax down by about 10 db and ignore the top octave and you have a nice little sax trio with bass guitar.
Alleyway is one of the quirkier Multis. It is the first one where pressing hard or in this case soft will start up a drum groove. to the far left is the Fretless Bass and Piano, move up a bit and a pitch shifted Jazz Guitar kicks in while when you hit the yellow a pitch shifted Vibraphone completes the lower ensemble. The upper side belongs to my favorite Sax, the Alto. Soft velocity is soft, medium velocity is loud and hard velocity triggers a crescendo. Yeah definitely quirky.
Am I Dreaming is a question I ask myself every time a beautiful woman smiles at me. Sadly the answer is almost always Yes! The squeaking of a screen-door opening to another dimension that is the Bass Trombone's low end starts us off. At high velocity it does the start a note then quick fade and rebuild the volume thing. The Baritone Sax and then the Tenor Trombone kick in as we move up the yellow keys. Trumpet Legato joins in as we hit the upper blue keys and then shortly after that the Women's Ooh ensemble. A bit higher and both the Chimes and the Trumpet Shake kick in at the highest velocity layers. Overall quite a complex Multi.
Unfortunately the Bass Trombone is giving me two problems. On some notes it makes an audible and sometimes fairly loud popping sound as the SFZ Long samples come to an end. Also sometimes the release samples triggers fairly loudly after the note is released. I'm writing this review backwards, so when I look at the Bass Trombone separately I'll keep and eye out for this problem. I should note that some of this might be from using regular 7200 RPM hard drives and Studio One 2 which can be a resource hog.
Ambient Mandolin is a fairly simple Multi with a dreamy sort of Mandolin joining a Vibraphone for an ethereal effect.
Ballad is about the Guitars along with a Soft Piano that plays across the entire Multi. At the bottom we start with the Bass Guitar which is joined by the Jazz guitar and high velocity slides as we move on up. On the middle blue keys we get the Ukulele on the left and the Mandolin on the right before it all faded to the soft piano. This is basically an All the Guitars patch.
Breaking the Pattern certainly is well named.the bottom half is the Celli and Basses modwheel sustain while the top is the Violins modwheel sustain with a very loud piano arpeggio. I had to crank the piano down about 8 db to even hear the violins with the modwheel cranked. I'm sure someone can put this to use, but it just seemed odd to me.
Catch Me is a big Staccato stack with all the woodwinds, strings and vibraphone all contributing their staccato articulations to the Multi. It is good for quick stabs, but the integrity of the Multi is betrayed by the odd Clarinet choice of having the Bend Up articulation at the top velocity layer. Also the mix is a bit off.
Cinematic Vivaldi is a Tremolo Multi that works nicely in the middle of the keyboard with the Violins and Mandolin Tremolo. There is also an Ambient Piano and the Celli and Basses Legato. This is a creative Multi that feels nothing like a Swing collection.
Hurry has the Bass Guitar Staccato and the Kick Drum low joined by the Baritone Sax Staccato a little ways up the keyboard. The upper half is devoted to Banjo Strums. The Drums are supposed to kick in at high velocity with the Banjos, but they never do. I have no idea what the purpose of this Multi is.
Incognito is Jazz Guitar Phrases backed by very soft Vibraphone Tremolo and Drum Hits and Phrases. I can't see ever using this.
Solitude is the Strings on the bottom and a Soft Clarinet on top. Only the soft clarinet is much to loud. Crank it down and you have a nice little split keyboard patch.
Stuck In Time is another creative non-Swing type Multi. In this case the Clarinet and at the softer velocity layers the Women's Chorus provide a low key pad.
Sunny Morning Drive is a Multi that is all about the Guitars. The Jazz Guitar, Mandolin and Banjo all give us chords at the bottom. Soft velocity yields Arpeggios, middle velocity short chord strums and upper velocity long strums. On the upper half of the Keyboard the Uke takes the lead while the Mandolin Tremolo kicks in at high velocity layers. A nice little lead with the right hand and chords on the left patch. Note the arps don't work so well as the guitar is at about half speed.
The Improbables is stacks and stacks of staccato sax and horns. Bass Trombone and Baritone Sax, then Tenor Trombone and Trumpets kick in. The Alto and Soprano Sax join as the Bass fades. The upper velocity has a good kick to it while the lower velocity has a sweeter swing. Definitely a good Swing Multi for those time when you want a bunch of brass and sax playing the same note. There are enough round robins to avoid the machine gun effect even on quick stabs on the same note.
Undercover brings to mind a panther of reddish hue, a light reddish hue... could it be pink? Plucked Celli and Bass on the bottom with Shaker and if you go high velocity Cowbell. I didn't even know Swing More! had a cowbell. High are the Staccato violins. This one is fun.
Welcome to Broadway extends its invitation with Staccato Bass Trombone and Baritone Sax, an electric Bass Guitar and throbbing Toms. The Clarinet Legato is on the high side. Well sort of legato, the top velocity bends and the upper midish is staccato.
Thus endeth the Multis. I suspect that live players will get more out of these than the more composer types. There is a little something for most everyone and some of them are quite creative. Not really my cup of tea, but still a nice bit of added content.
Monday, July 31, 2017
Swing More Strings and Things
While Swing More! is focused on Brass and Sax, there are also three strings a bowing, two pianos a swinging, a ladies chorus singing and a drummer on a drum stool. We will get to the drummer later.
The Swing Piano has almost 10,000 samples and is over 6 gigs compressed and so it is far from an afterthought. With 6 velocity layers and 2 round robins it works well as a piano in this setting but can't compete the plethora of high end solo pianos that are sold separately by about every vendor on earth. In that regard it is your typical orchestral package piano, well if that orchestra swings. The Warm Piano is just the lower mid velocity range of the piano stripped of the high velocity samples. It is a one trick pony, but a pleasant one that will eat sugar cubes from your hand. They both have Close and Room mic settings.
The swing piano seems to be a bit sharper and brighter than my beloved Steinways but with less resonance and power. I have no idea what it is, but it seems to cut through the mix fairly well and play some little tinkly stuff at the top end. If you want some extra tinkle at the top end crank up the Sparkle knob. It has some growl on the low end, but nothing like a Concert Steinway or Bosendorfer. The piano does have a Concert setting that seems to add a bit more to the bottom end and mellow out the top a bit.
Cycling through the snapshots is fun. The Gloomy snapshot would sound great for a haunted house. The Vintage snapshot sounds like you are listening to a piano coming from an old time radio. The Modern snapshot cuts all reverb and adds the stereo effect and limiting. The Lo Ram snapshot just messes up the loaded samples which is just annoying.
The Strings are passable for background work, but they don't sound real. They are more like a nice string patch from a good synth than actual strings. Maybe this is unfair since swing strings aren't supposed to be orchestral, but when I listened to the strings in Swing More and then to the strings in Inspire and Anthology, the difference was painfully obvious. This is sad because there was obviously a ton of work put into the strings especially the legatos.
I would note that as I played with them some more I discovered some ways to improve the strings, especially the staccatos, well at least in my opinion. Pulling the Attack down to a lower level, say 0.32 ms helped to make the staccato attack more crisp and bumping up the reverb just a touch seemed to create a more pleasing sound. Don't go too high on the reverb or you will create mush. Finally going halfway on the mic slider bar so you have all three mic positions about equal seemed to create the best sound.
The All Strings Patch has 3 articulations, Sustain, Tremolo and Staccato and weighs in at over 5,000 samples and almost 2 gigs. There are violins, celli and basses, but no violas. This lack of violas hurts the transition from the meatier bass instruments to the thinner violins. Per usual there are 3 mic positions. The modwheel crossfade across the 4 velocity layers works quite well. At the top of the modwheel, the strings have a nice bite and fade easily down to the softer and smoother layers. The Staccato seems to be somewhat effected by both the velocity and the modwheel.It has 3 or 4 round robins.
About the lack of violas, while the viola isn't nearly the solo instrument that the violin is, it is an excellent support instrument and a necessary bridge in an full strings patch between the cello and the violin. The upper end of most instruments tends to become more shrill and weaker. To me this is especially true of the cello and the violin. While you are going to have to go high on the violin, you don't need to on the cello since you can transition from cello to viola while still in the cello's 'golden' range. Also the viola isn't tuned that much lower than the violin, so you can keep the viola as the violin's support instrument for many octaves. Having no violas in a string patch is like trying to play defensive football without linebackers.
The B1 and C2 Staccatos sound quite odd.
The Violins - Articulations has modwheel controlled 4 velocity Sustain, 3 velocity Tremolo and 3 velocity, 3 round robin Staccato that is velocity sensitive. These are basically the violins from the All Strings patch. Passable especially with a few tweaks and nice modwheel control.
The Violins - Legato Arco is heavily sampled with over 7,500 and almost 1.50 gigs of samples. There are a massive amount of true legato samples for both the fast polyphonic and slur monophonic legatos. The fast is pretty much what you expect out of a fast legato, but the slur is quite different with a sort if 'wah' effect as you slide along the string. I've heard slurs in brass, but I don't recall ever hearing them for strings. It is an interesting articulation that you can have some fun with. You need to understand strings in swing better than I to fully appreciate what it is for.
When you are playing Fast Legato, Do It Fast! Give it maybe a tenth of a second when both keys are held down. It is polyphonic which can be quite nice, but if you hold the go into the legato note too long it is just two notes playing at once which isn't what you want. Also I notice that the p - mf seems to sound better than the ff legato for some reason.
There is a glitch in the Slur Legato which doesn't loop, though the samples are plenty long, that the release sample will still play after the original sustain sample was faded to nothing. So if you would the notes too long you get an odd audio bump at the end. Also some of the slur sustains are noisy at the end. So I guess the lesson is don't hold the slur sustains for over 5 seconds, which to be fair you probably wouldn't do anyway.
The Violins - Legato Tremolo brings the Fast Legato to the stuttering Tremolo strings. My arm gets tired just listening to those violinists play. Like the Arco Legato this has tons of true sampled legato that seems to work fairly well. With all that high speed tremolo going on I wasn't sure how it would work, but things seem to sync up OK. There are three modwheel controlled velocity layers here.
Celli and Basses - Articulations sounds passible and quite meaty. In addition to 3 velocity layer modwheel Sustain and Tremolo articulations and the the 3 layer, 4 round robin Staccato there is a Pizzicato articulation with 4 round robins though only 2 velocity layers.
There is also a standalone version of the Pizzicato called Jazzy Pizz and Legato Arco for the low strings. Like the violin legatos these are truly sampled for each legato transition. These are the fast legato that last maybe 250 milliseconds, so once you trigger that transition release the old note fast.
Not to beat a dead horse, but this string section has passable sound for the purpose of background strings in a big band setting but nothing more. Project Sam is the sampling house that brought us Symphobia so they clearly know their way around strings, so I'm disappointed in the mediocre sound here.
Moving along to the Legato Ladies with 2,500 true legato samples and weighing in at half a gig. Sorry to mention weight ladies. These svelte ladies (forgive me now?) can sing Ooh and Mmm in both legato and polyphonic articulations. There don't seem to be any round robins or velocity layers save for the bends.
The polyphonic patch is nice, but the real star here is the monophonic legato here as it is very fine in both tone and transitions. It has much longer transition samples than violin as they push to almost a full second and this really seems to help the legato work more smoothly. It is better to play at this legato a bit slower. While only an octave and a half in range and only having two 'vowels', I can see using this little choral group for things beyond swing as they have a sweet sound.
Oddly the Oh ladies can Bend it like Beckham with whole and half tone bends, while the Mm ladies only sing a single tone. The bending can cause some odd effects on the legato side of things and you need to be careful of going too loud or soft on your velocity as the soft velocity trigger the half step and the loud velocity triggers the whole step. This is a situation where adding a separate keyswitch for the bendy notes might have been a better idea than putting them all in one articulation. Still especially when entering notes in your DAW or orchestration software it is easy enough not to trigger the bends.
So in summery.
A nice Swing Piano that doesn't have quite enough velocity layers or round robins to really stand on its own but should work nicely in the context of this package. Also a Warm Piano based on some of the softer velocity layers for a different sound.
A String Section sans violas that is passable for backup.
A sweet Legato Ladies Vocal Group that can probably be appropriated for other uses in your virtual musical world.
The Swing Piano has almost 10,000 samples and is over 6 gigs compressed and so it is far from an afterthought. With 6 velocity layers and 2 round robins it works well as a piano in this setting but can't compete the plethora of high end solo pianos that are sold separately by about every vendor on earth. In that regard it is your typical orchestral package piano, well if that orchestra swings. The Warm Piano is just the lower mid velocity range of the piano stripped of the high velocity samples. It is a one trick pony, but a pleasant one that will eat sugar cubes from your hand. They both have Close and Room mic settings.
The swing piano seems to be a bit sharper and brighter than my beloved Steinways but with less resonance and power. I have no idea what it is, but it seems to cut through the mix fairly well and play some little tinkly stuff at the top end. If you want some extra tinkle at the top end crank up the Sparkle knob. It has some growl on the low end, but nothing like a Concert Steinway or Bosendorfer. The piano does have a Concert setting that seems to add a bit more to the bottom end and mellow out the top a bit.
Cycling through the snapshots is fun. The Gloomy snapshot would sound great for a haunted house. The Vintage snapshot sounds like you are listening to a piano coming from an old time radio. The Modern snapshot cuts all reverb and adds the stereo effect and limiting. The Lo Ram snapshot just messes up the loaded samples which is just annoying.
The Strings are passable for background work, but they don't sound real. They are more like a nice string patch from a good synth than actual strings. Maybe this is unfair since swing strings aren't supposed to be orchestral, but when I listened to the strings in Swing More and then to the strings in Inspire and Anthology, the difference was painfully obvious. This is sad because there was obviously a ton of work put into the strings especially the legatos.
I would note that as I played with them some more I discovered some ways to improve the strings, especially the staccatos, well at least in my opinion. Pulling the Attack down to a lower level, say 0.32 ms helped to make the staccato attack more crisp and bumping up the reverb just a touch seemed to create a more pleasing sound. Don't go too high on the reverb or you will create mush. Finally going halfway on the mic slider bar so you have all three mic positions about equal seemed to create the best sound.
The All Strings Patch has 3 articulations, Sustain, Tremolo and Staccato and weighs in at over 5,000 samples and almost 2 gigs. There are violins, celli and basses, but no violas. This lack of violas hurts the transition from the meatier bass instruments to the thinner violins. Per usual there are 3 mic positions. The modwheel crossfade across the 4 velocity layers works quite well. At the top of the modwheel, the strings have a nice bite and fade easily down to the softer and smoother layers. The Staccato seems to be somewhat effected by both the velocity and the modwheel.It has 3 or 4 round robins.
About the lack of violas, while the viola isn't nearly the solo instrument that the violin is, it is an excellent support instrument and a necessary bridge in an full strings patch between the cello and the violin. The upper end of most instruments tends to become more shrill and weaker. To me this is especially true of the cello and the violin. While you are going to have to go high on the violin, you don't need to on the cello since you can transition from cello to viola while still in the cello's 'golden' range. Also the viola isn't tuned that much lower than the violin, so you can keep the viola as the violin's support instrument for many octaves. Having no violas in a string patch is like trying to play defensive football without linebackers.
The B1 and C2 Staccatos sound quite odd.
The Violins - Articulations has modwheel controlled 4 velocity Sustain, 3 velocity Tremolo and 3 velocity, 3 round robin Staccato that is velocity sensitive. These are basically the violins from the All Strings patch. Passable especially with a few tweaks and nice modwheel control.
The Violins - Legato Arco is heavily sampled with over 7,500 and almost 1.50 gigs of samples. There are a massive amount of true legato samples for both the fast polyphonic and slur monophonic legatos. The fast is pretty much what you expect out of a fast legato, but the slur is quite different with a sort if 'wah' effect as you slide along the string. I've heard slurs in brass, but I don't recall ever hearing them for strings. It is an interesting articulation that you can have some fun with. You need to understand strings in swing better than I to fully appreciate what it is for.
When you are playing Fast Legato, Do It Fast! Give it maybe a tenth of a second when both keys are held down. It is polyphonic which can be quite nice, but if you hold the go into the legato note too long it is just two notes playing at once which isn't what you want. Also I notice that the p - mf seems to sound better than the ff legato for some reason.
There is a glitch in the Slur Legato which doesn't loop, though the samples are plenty long, that the release sample will still play after the original sustain sample was faded to nothing. So if you would the notes too long you get an odd audio bump at the end. Also some of the slur sustains are noisy at the end. So I guess the lesson is don't hold the slur sustains for over 5 seconds, which to be fair you probably wouldn't do anyway.
The Violins - Legato Tremolo brings the Fast Legato to the stuttering Tremolo strings. My arm gets tired just listening to those violinists play. Like the Arco Legato this has tons of true sampled legato that seems to work fairly well. With all that high speed tremolo going on I wasn't sure how it would work, but things seem to sync up OK. There are three modwheel controlled velocity layers here.
Celli and Basses - Articulations sounds passible and quite meaty. In addition to 3 velocity layer modwheel Sustain and Tremolo articulations and the the 3 layer, 4 round robin Staccato there is a Pizzicato articulation with 4 round robins though only 2 velocity layers.
There is also a standalone version of the Pizzicato called Jazzy Pizz and Legato Arco for the low strings. Like the violin legatos these are truly sampled for each legato transition. These are the fast legato that last maybe 250 milliseconds, so once you trigger that transition release the old note fast.
Not to beat a dead horse, but this string section has passable sound for the purpose of background strings in a big band setting but nothing more. Project Sam is the sampling house that brought us Symphobia so they clearly know their way around strings, so I'm disappointed in the mediocre sound here.
Moving along to the Legato Ladies with 2,500 true legato samples and weighing in at half a gig. Sorry to mention weight ladies. These svelte ladies (forgive me now?) can sing Ooh and Mmm in both legato and polyphonic articulations. There don't seem to be any round robins or velocity layers save for the bends.
The polyphonic patch is nice, but the real star here is the monophonic legato here as it is very fine in both tone and transitions. It has much longer transition samples than violin as they push to almost a full second and this really seems to help the legato work more smoothly. It is better to play at this legato a bit slower. While only an octave and a half in range and only having two 'vowels', I can see using this little choral group for things beyond swing as they have a sweet sound.
Oddly the Oh ladies can Bend it like Beckham with whole and half tone bends, while the Mm ladies only sing a single tone. The bending can cause some odd effects on the legato side of things and you need to be careful of going too loud or soft on your velocity as the soft velocity trigger the half step and the loud velocity triggers the whole step. This is a situation where adding a separate keyswitch for the bendy notes might have been a better idea than putting them all in one articulation. Still especially when entering notes in your DAW or orchestration software it is easy enough not to trigger the bends.
So in summery.
A nice Swing Piano that doesn't have quite enough velocity layers or round robins to really stand on its own but should work nicely in the context of this package. Also a Warm Piano based on some of the softer velocity layers for a different sound.
A String Section sans violas that is passable for backup.
A sweet Legato Ladies Vocal Group that can probably be appropriated for other uses in your virtual musical world.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Swing More Percussion
Big Band Drum Kit here we come. Some things in music I like to believe I sort of understand, but Jazzy and Swinging type drumming doesn't fall under that category. However I've been seeking out videos of the great drummers and studying them a bit on Youtube along with using some midis and whacking on my keyboard keys as research into sound and style.
The virtuosity of some of these drummers is amazing and I get that truly great drummers of this style can do all kinds of funky things with their drum kits that can't be completely emulated in a VST. However the Big Band Drum Kit seems to capture the sound and style fairly well. Note that it uses Sticks as the Brush Kit is in the original Swing! library. The sound is very close to what I'm hearing on the videos and what I heard when I compared it to Native Instruments Vintage Drummer which I believe has drum kits from roughly the same era and also has jazz and swing presets. When placed in a well programmed midi it sounds quite realistic however if you don't do some volume variation and overuse the cymbals you might start noticing that it sounds a bit artificial.
The variety of sound is helped by a goodly number of round robins as most of the pieces of the kit have 5 to 9 round robins for each type of hit. However the velocity curve and the variety are harmed by having only 6 velocity layers for most of the drums. It is a bit of an odd trade off in that most drums tend to have 16 velocity layers and maybe 3 to 5 round robins. The NI kits mentioned earlier tend to have 12 to 20 velocity layers and usually 3 though up to 6 round robins. They also have more articulations and about 8 times the samples of this Big Band Kit. As I suspect I will say several times in this review, remember you write blogs backwards, this is a solid instrument with a good sound that fits in well with the other instruments in the package, but it isn't to the level of the high end solo drums.
That said these drums seem to have more of a live feel than the in studio sound of many other drums and that does fit in well with the whole collection which seems to strive to have the feel of a live big band. When mixed in with the bass and the horns and the rest, it certainly sounds like a solid drummer is doing his thing. Well as long as you put a little effort into the tracks.
One of the cool things about the kit is the bottom two playable keys, the mod wheel controlled Snare Rolls that let you work your way up and down through the six velocity layers in real time. They might have been a bit louder across the board, but are quite fun to play with.
As with the rest of the library the Drums have three mic positions which blend well. They are Direct, Ambient and Wide. As mentioned there are generally 6 velocity layers and 5 to 9 round robins. The raw numbers are 3,332 Samples and 0.83 gigs. That's probably pushing toward 2 gigs uncompressed.
The keys aren't exactly in GM order so here is a list of what keys make what noise...
F0: Snare Roll Long Close - Modwheel
F#0: Snare Roll Long Open - Modwheel
G0: Snare Roll Mid
G#0: Snare Roll Short
A0: Fingersnap
A#0: Drum Sticks
B0: Kick Open
C1: Kick Damp
C#1: Rim Click
D1: Snare Middle Open
D#1: Snare Rimshot 2
E1: Snare Rimshot 1
F1: Floor Tom 2
F#1: High Hat Closed Side
G1: Floor Tom 1
G#1: High Hat Pedal Closed
A1: Tom 1
A#1: High Hat Open Side
B1: Floor Tom 1 Rimshot
C2: Tom 1 Rimshot
C#2: Crash 2 Let Ring Sind
D2: Snare Rimshot 2 FF Click
D#2: Ride 1 Let Ring
E2: China Sustain
F2: Ride 1 Bell
F#2: Crash 2 Short Damp
G2: China Short Damp
G#2: Crash 1 Short Damp
A2: Crash 1 Let Ring
A#2: High Hat Pedal Half Open
B2: High Hat Pedal Open
There are also Crazy Endings and Grooves. I've never really gotten into the whole making music by dragging premade loops around thing. However if you are going to do something like that it makes the most sense for drums. Many folks I suspect use some form of premade drum track like a repeating midi pattern or such and don't play in every drumbeat themselves or, heaven for fend, enter every single drum stroke by hand into their midi. At any rate you might find some use here especially as the groove usually occupy the lower part of the keyboard and the breaks the top even though it doesn't list breaks. The breaks might sound pretty good in a production as long as you can keep them from being jarring as they are a real drummer breaking the monotony of the computerized drum beat. The Ends are just two ending breaks and / or final hits.
The Vibraphone is quite nice. Both the Sustain and Staccato articulations have 6 velocity layers. The sustains have 2 round robins while the staccatos have 6. With 4,392 samples using 1.35 gigs compressed this is a surprisingly heavily sampled Vibraphone. There are up and down runs and tremolo repeated notes. There are two mic positions, Close and Room. Other than the close being louder I can't tell that much difference. The staccatos sound a bit dull to me but you can brighten them up a bit with the sparkle Knob. The sustains have a nice bright tone but can be difficult to access, more on that below.
The irritating thing for me as that the sustains require a foot pedal to activate. The default is the staccato and there is no way get sustains without pressing down on the pesky pedal or is there...
Well an advantage to being a little dev along with being an alleged reviewer is I can roll patches and share them with you. Here is my little work around which enables Sustains by pushing the modwheel to the top. Up is sustain and down is staccato. The modwheel still also controls the filter, but there isn't anything I can do about that. Drop the patch in your percussion folder and it should work. The easiest way to open your percussion folder is to right click on the Vibraphone.nki instead of double clicking to open it and choose 'Open containing folder'.
Vibraphone Modwheel Sustain Patch
If you turn up the Motor knob when using sustain you will get a funky wah effect on the low notes especially. If you crank up Reverb and Sparkle you get a sort of other worldly crystalline effect especially on the higher notes. If you crank up Motor, Reverb and Sparkle you get the effect of a goldfish driving a motor boat.
I have a friend who loves Bongos and he would definitely enjoy the Bongo and Conga patch. To help you avoid embarrassing mistakes in live concert, the Congas are on the bottom of the keyboard and the Bongos are on the top. It is pretty easy to get a good sounding rhythm going once you play around a bit with the multitudinous variety of available hit types. Do you call them hits?
There are all kinds of fun hits, soft, hard, quick, multi and even rolls. The Congas have high and low hits for open, damped, palm, flam and tip. The Bongos high and low for stick, regular, damped, flam and mallet along with a fun stick bounce. If you know what all that means please let us know in the comment section. Except for the rolls, the bongos and congas have 4 to 6 velocity layers and 4 round robins.
Moving on, I suspect if you are a lover of percussion, the Small Percussion Kit might excite you, but I have trouble getting too pumped up about Chimes, Maracas, Cabasas, Agogos and Plastic & Wooden Shakers. They are certainly nice to have, but I doubt anyway bought Swing More! just to get their hands on a Plastic Shaker. At any rate there are fast and slow shakes and rolls depending on the instrument. The chimes have longer sweeps up all the chimes or the tinkling of individual chimes.
These have the usual three mic positions. The velocity layers and round robins are all over the place from non-existent for the chimes to 6 velocity layers and 3 round robins for the Agogos. The Cabasas are really odd in that the first RR has 5 velocity layers, the second has 4 and the third has 3.
The bulk of the small percussion is in the bottom blue area with the chimes in the middle and the individual chimes on the top. There is a glitch on D#1 where the second round robin of the Maracas Medium doesn't sound so it only plays every other time you call for it.
So in summery.
A solid Drum Kit without enough velocity layers to be a true solo kit.
Crazy Endings and Grooves which might work for something but likely not.
A surprisingly well sampled Vibraphone with Sustains that might make their way into your regular palette.
Bongos and Congos that would have Ricky Ricardo smiling.
A Small Percussion Kit that is well a small percussion kit.
For a full summery of the whole package go back to the top. Presuming of course I actually wrote the first blog post.
The virtuosity of some of these drummers is amazing and I get that truly great drummers of this style can do all kinds of funky things with their drum kits that can't be completely emulated in a VST. However the Big Band Drum Kit seems to capture the sound and style fairly well. Note that it uses Sticks as the Brush Kit is in the original Swing! library. The sound is very close to what I'm hearing on the videos and what I heard when I compared it to Native Instruments Vintage Drummer which I believe has drum kits from roughly the same era and also has jazz and swing presets. When placed in a well programmed midi it sounds quite realistic however if you don't do some volume variation and overuse the cymbals you might start noticing that it sounds a bit artificial.
The variety of sound is helped by a goodly number of round robins as most of the pieces of the kit have 5 to 9 round robins for each type of hit. However the velocity curve and the variety are harmed by having only 6 velocity layers for most of the drums. It is a bit of an odd trade off in that most drums tend to have 16 velocity layers and maybe 3 to 5 round robins. The NI kits mentioned earlier tend to have 12 to 20 velocity layers and usually 3 though up to 6 round robins. They also have more articulations and about 8 times the samples of this Big Band Kit. As I suspect I will say several times in this review, remember you write blogs backwards, this is a solid instrument with a good sound that fits in well with the other instruments in the package, but it isn't to the level of the high end solo drums.
That said these drums seem to have more of a live feel than the in studio sound of many other drums and that does fit in well with the whole collection which seems to strive to have the feel of a live big band. When mixed in with the bass and the horns and the rest, it certainly sounds like a solid drummer is doing his thing. Well as long as you put a little effort into the tracks.
One of the cool things about the kit is the bottom two playable keys, the mod wheel controlled Snare Rolls that let you work your way up and down through the six velocity layers in real time. They might have been a bit louder across the board, but are quite fun to play with.
As with the rest of the library the Drums have three mic positions which blend well. They are Direct, Ambient and Wide. As mentioned there are generally 6 velocity layers and 5 to 9 round robins. The raw numbers are 3,332 Samples and 0.83 gigs. That's probably pushing toward 2 gigs uncompressed.
The keys aren't exactly in GM order so here is a list of what keys make what noise...
F0: Snare Roll Long Close - Modwheel
F#0: Snare Roll Long Open - Modwheel
G0: Snare Roll Mid
G#0: Snare Roll Short
A0: Fingersnap
A#0: Drum Sticks
B0: Kick Open
C1: Kick Damp
C#1: Rim Click
D1: Snare Middle Open
D#1: Snare Rimshot 2
E1: Snare Rimshot 1
F1: Floor Tom 2
F#1: High Hat Closed Side
G1: Floor Tom 1
G#1: High Hat Pedal Closed
A1: Tom 1
A#1: High Hat Open Side
B1: Floor Tom 1 Rimshot
C2: Tom 1 Rimshot
C#2: Crash 2 Let Ring Sind
D2: Snare Rimshot 2 FF Click
D#2: Ride 1 Let Ring
E2: China Sustain
F2: Ride 1 Bell
F#2: Crash 2 Short Damp
G2: China Short Damp
G#2: Crash 1 Short Damp
A2: Crash 1 Let Ring
A#2: High Hat Pedal Half Open
B2: High Hat Pedal Open
There are also Crazy Endings and Grooves. I've never really gotten into the whole making music by dragging premade loops around thing. However if you are going to do something like that it makes the most sense for drums. Many folks I suspect use some form of premade drum track like a repeating midi pattern or such and don't play in every drumbeat themselves or, heaven for fend, enter every single drum stroke by hand into their midi. At any rate you might find some use here especially as the groove usually occupy the lower part of the keyboard and the breaks the top even though it doesn't list breaks. The breaks might sound pretty good in a production as long as you can keep them from being jarring as they are a real drummer breaking the monotony of the computerized drum beat. The Ends are just two ending breaks and / or final hits.
The Vibraphone is quite nice. Both the Sustain and Staccato articulations have 6 velocity layers. The sustains have 2 round robins while the staccatos have 6. With 4,392 samples using 1.35 gigs compressed this is a surprisingly heavily sampled Vibraphone. There are up and down runs and tremolo repeated notes. There are two mic positions, Close and Room. Other than the close being louder I can't tell that much difference. The staccatos sound a bit dull to me but you can brighten them up a bit with the sparkle Knob. The sustains have a nice bright tone but can be difficult to access, more on that below.
The irritating thing for me as that the sustains require a foot pedal to activate. The default is the staccato and there is no way get sustains without pressing down on the pesky pedal or is there...
Well an advantage to being a little dev along with being an alleged reviewer is I can roll patches and share them with you. Here is my little work around which enables Sustains by pushing the modwheel to the top. Up is sustain and down is staccato. The modwheel still also controls the filter, but there isn't anything I can do about that. Drop the patch in your percussion folder and it should work. The easiest way to open your percussion folder is to right click on the Vibraphone.nki instead of double clicking to open it and choose 'Open containing folder'.
Vibraphone Modwheel Sustain Patch
If you turn up the Motor knob when using sustain you will get a funky wah effect on the low notes especially. If you crank up Reverb and Sparkle you get a sort of other worldly crystalline effect especially on the higher notes. If you crank up Motor, Reverb and Sparkle you get the effect of a goldfish driving a motor boat.
I have a friend who loves Bongos and he would definitely enjoy the Bongo and Conga patch. To help you avoid embarrassing mistakes in live concert, the Congas are on the bottom of the keyboard and the Bongos are on the top. It is pretty easy to get a good sounding rhythm going once you play around a bit with the multitudinous variety of available hit types. Do you call them hits?
There are all kinds of fun hits, soft, hard, quick, multi and even rolls. The Congas have high and low hits for open, damped, palm, flam and tip. The Bongos high and low for stick, regular, damped, flam and mallet along with a fun stick bounce. If you know what all that means please let us know in the comment section. Except for the rolls, the bongos and congas have 4 to 6 velocity layers and 4 round robins.
Moving on, I suspect if you are a lover of percussion, the Small Percussion Kit might excite you, but I have trouble getting too pumped up about Chimes, Maracas, Cabasas, Agogos and Plastic & Wooden Shakers. They are certainly nice to have, but I doubt anyway bought Swing More! just to get their hands on a Plastic Shaker. At any rate there are fast and slow shakes and rolls depending on the instrument. The chimes have longer sweeps up all the chimes or the tinkling of individual chimes.
These have the usual three mic positions. The velocity layers and round robins are all over the place from non-existent for the chimes to 6 velocity layers and 3 round robins for the Agogos. The Cabasas are really odd in that the first RR has 5 velocity layers, the second has 4 and the third has 3.
The bulk of the small percussion is in the bottom blue area with the chimes in the middle and the individual chimes on the top. There is a glitch on D#1 where the second round robin of the Maracas Medium doesn't sound so it only plays every other time you call for it.
So in summery.
A solid Drum Kit without enough velocity layers to be a true solo kit.
Crazy Endings and Grooves which might work for something but likely not.
A surprisingly well sampled Vibraphone with Sustains that might make their way into your regular palette.
Bongos and Congos that would have Ricky Ricardo smiling.
A Small Percussion Kit that is well a small percussion kit.
For a full summery of the whole package go back to the top. Presuming of course I actually wrote the first blog post.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Rinascimento Intro, Outro and Overview
Just a note. I'm not the happy mouthpiece of any company trying to sell you something, though hey review copies are welcome but I'll be just as me in those reviews. (I bought Rinascimento out of my own Visa, but was given a review copy of Dominus.) I'm a slightly grumpy, poor (in many ways) composer, musician, developer who enjoys new instruments. To quote the old baseball announcer, "I calls 'em as I sees 'em." So I do nitpick and complain. Also I'm no grammarian so yes there are mistakes scattered throughout. Point them out as you find them in the comments and you will get a glorious no-prize.
Since I am a tiny dev and am learning to compose (I hope), I do tend to dig deeper into the instruments than most reviewers. I will and do open up Kontakt to see what is underneath the instrument and play individual samples. I bet no other reviewer has ever pulled a mass of legato samples apart just to see how many there were and how they sounded by themselves. The answers, a ton of samples and they sound weird by themselves. It is sort of like a mechanic writing a review of a car. A different, grubbier perspective.
Since a blog is written backwards in time, I've had a chance to listen to and play with all three dozen or so toys in this massive collection that Summer Santa and Visa brought to my computer. The verdict is a Definite Recommendation if you are looking for authentic sounding Medieval and Renaissance instruments and don't already own ERA II Medieval Legends. Even if you do own ERA II or don't exactly need realistic medieval instruments this package is still fun and potentially useful romp. More on that in a moment.
What Rinascimento covers extensively is Lutes and Flutes. There are 7 lutes and 15 woodwinds, flutes and reeds. There is also a nice set of keys with a solid organ, a little organ, harpsichord and virginal. The Brass and Strings have fewer instruments with 2 Brass and 3 Strings, but the predecessor versions of the Trombone, Violin and Viola are very nice and worth owning. Plus there is a Hurdy Gurdy which is well... a unique instrument. There is also a nice Percussion patch with four drums and other sundries.
In general the tone of Rinascimento is quite nice. I have a buddy who is an actual musician who plays these instruments and his initial thoughts based on the demos was nice Lutes and Percussion and nice but possibly unnecessary Organ, but average Flutes and poor Reeds. With my more limited knowledge I tend to agree, though the Flutes sound fine to me. The Reeds can get quite buzzy, especially close, compared to what I've heard listening to some Youtube videos. Still that makes them a bit interesting if you want a buzzier sound.
What makes this a really useful library is the Microphones. There are Close, Mid and Far mics and they can be mixed and matched in any combination. I was surprised that many of the Woodwinds actually change tone quite a lot based on the mic position. For instance in a blind test I don't think I would have known that the Alto Crumhorn was the same instrument Close and Far. Up Close it had a buzzy, gnarly, don't mess with me sound, while on Far mic it sound like a more casual, friendly horn. This of course helps address the earlier buzzy sounding complaint. I would definitely suggest using the mic mix to modify the tone as it can have a greater effect than just giving the illusion of distance.
The other huge selling point of this library is the Legato. For Woodwinds, Brass and Strings there is a true legato. That is the transitions and the held notes were recorded for each transition from tone to tone. This makes for an especially nice legato. Many instruments have a faked legato, which I use on my own instruments and while a nice effect and better than nothing, it doesn't sound 'real'. From chatting a bit via email with Paolo, one of the nicest guys in all of Europe, he explained that the legato was "full sustain legato". I won't go into the details of what this means, since I don't really understand myself, but this gives a very natural legato transition that is one of the selling points of many Fluffy Audio Instrument Strings and Woodwinds. It is almost a trademark sound.
On that note, the thing you have to do when you are playing longs in Rinascimento is to use that Legato. Repeatedly hitting say an E note for a second, releasing and hitting it again won't sound good as it is simply playing the same sustain sample. On the other hand imagine you start with the E and then go legato down to C, then D and resolve to E, then G, back to E and C and back to E. Every single E was a different sample.I'm not sure how many legato notes there are but an average 750 sample instrument might have 30 sustain, 120 staccato and 600 legato samples. This is true legato with a different recorded note for every tone across an octave or so. And the Legato really is impressive once you figure it out. Play with it, adjust the parameters and you will start enjoying the amazing tweekability and the resulting sound. And it solves the same sample too many times thing.
In my email with Paolo, he also explained that these types of primitive instruments are significantly different than modern instruments and require different sampling techniques. Most Medieval instruments apparently tended to sound good only if played in a certain way and 'at a precise dynamic'. So you don't need or even want velocity layers on many of these instruments as too much or too little force can make the instrument sound terrible. It is the ability to play dynamically that is one of the prime differences between modern and primitive instruments. Also many of these instruments were limited in scale and range and unless you wanted to drill new holes in the woodwinds you couldn't chromatically sample them. So the instruments were sampled in their natural scales and ranges and then the closest sample was used for the non-sampled keys so you wouldn't have any dead keys.
I do want to mention how much I appreciated Paolo's attitude. I questioned many design choices and other things which could justifiably upset a developer. Paolo was constantly kind and informative to a somewhat annoying customer and I was. He didn't know I was writing a review, nor did I at the time. (I will ask his permission to quote him.) So he was simply answering a customer in far more depth than an average developer would ever go. If you like good Customer relations, this is your developer.
Another thing Fluffy Audio likes to do is make interfaces that allow for a lot of customization. I like the fact that you can change the dynamic range. As mentioned earlier, these instruments tended to have a limited dynamic range and often this library reflects that with a smaller range than I'm used to. Sometimes I like, however unrealistically, to be able to go quite soft. The adjustment lets me go all the way to -102 db which is lower than you would ever want, but -60 can give you a nice dynamic contrast from pp to ff. Another nice feature is a velocity curve that you can draw in with your mouse. Make any weird curve you want.
It should be noted that Vibrato is a modern idea. In the 'olde' days if you played vibrato, you were a crummy musician who couldn't hold a tone. The legend is that Vibrato was invented to make a louder sound for the old wax cylinder recordings since they needed much louder sounds than a traditional violin could produce. Also the good Violinists refused to record and the lousy ones had a natural vibrato. So play it loud and play it vibrato became the watchword. All the kids heard this growing up and thought vibrato was the way it was done. So now we are stuck with it in violins and opera. Anyway if you want be a crummy player and emulate wax cylinder recordings, Rinascimento has a decent faked vibrato setting with some twiddle controls to adjust.
Now if you do own the ERA the Second, should you buy Rinascimento? I don't have ERA II, so my thoughts on it are based on reading the manual, reading reviews and user comments and listening to demos. After having written the previous sentence I tried the Best Service Try where they let you play with some of their instruments for 20 minutes. This is a great service for free and much appreciated. While 20 minutes isn't long especially with some lag, it still gave me a better idea of the sound and feel of some of the instruments.
ERA II has more instruments and more articulations which is certainly a plus. It only has one mic position which is the biggest negative. However the big difference to me is tone. ERA II sounds like what Hollywood thinks Medieval and Renaissance Europe sounded like. That tone is nice but unreal. The sales page for ERA II speaks about the collection being like a fantasy novel and I think this is true. For a high fantasy sound of Medieval times and movie soundscapes, ERA II is the way to go. Elves would love this.
On the other hand Rinascimento has fewer instruments and articulations and lacks sustain round robins. What it does have is authenticity. This is much closer to what it did sound like. I'm actually something of a historian and Rinascimento takes me to plague-ridden, dirt-poor peasant laden, meed in my cup after a brutal day, a motley group of traveling minstrels on stage desperately playing lutes and flutes and banging drums for a meal and tips Europe. Was that a run-on sentence? For real world and low fantasy Medieval this is the way to go. Dwarfs would love this.
Rinascimento also has 3 well recorded mic positions that blend well together in any combination and work well on their own. The other thing Rinascimento has is a killer legato. It can be hard to tell on a fairly short internet session how good ERA 2's legato is, but from what I heard it seemed decent but not to the level of the Rinascimento legato.
And it has flexibility. The Articulation Creator screen is quite nice and can add a lot if you dig into it. It lets you adjust many aspects of the legato such as what the legato fades in and out of and how long it takes and the release, add and adjust vibrato and other things. It also lets you simply roll your own articulation choosing from legato, instant (a legato insert) and polyphonic. Then you can pick from the various articulations like sustain, legato, staccato, tongued and save it all when you are done. There is also a flexible auto-strummer for the lutes.
So ERA 2 is more instruments and more fantasy. Rinascimento is more mics and more Medieval. I think they both are great projects, they are just a little different in focus.
If you are just taking a look but don't really need a more authentic Medieval and Renaissance instruments, you might be interested in these instruments to diversify your palette in much the way world instruments can add colors to your music. It has been said that the past is a foreign land and you can definitely hear that in this pack. Actually many of these instruments have their origins in or were influenced by non-European cultures. Even the instruments like the violin, viola and trombone which evolved into modern instruments have a distinct feel that can add an other worldly quality to a soundtrack or game music.
If like me you love exploring music and hearing new things, there are lots of great adventures hear. Plus these are tweak-able toys that let you take out your mad scientist hat and play. This partly because of the flexibility of the interface, the legato and being able to roll your own articulations, but also because combining the instruments into different combinations can bring out new variations on the sounds. Take a bass guitar solo and it isn't much, add it too a band with drums, keys and rhythm and lead guitars and now you have something. Ask the Beatles. Experiment and let us know your favorite combinations.
Part 2 - Lutes
Part 3 - Strings
Part 4 - Flutes
Part 5 -Reeds
Part 6 - Brass
Part 7- Keys
Part 8 - Percussion
Since I am a tiny dev and am learning to compose (I hope), I do tend to dig deeper into the instruments than most reviewers. I will and do open up Kontakt to see what is underneath the instrument and play individual samples. I bet no other reviewer has ever pulled a mass of legato samples apart just to see how many there were and how they sounded by themselves. The answers, a ton of samples and they sound weird by themselves. It is sort of like a mechanic writing a review of a car. A different, grubbier perspective.
Since a blog is written backwards in time, I've had a chance to listen to and play with all three dozen or so toys in this massive collection that Summer Santa and Visa brought to my computer. The verdict is a Definite Recommendation if you are looking for authentic sounding Medieval and Renaissance instruments and don't already own ERA II Medieval Legends. Even if you do own ERA II or don't exactly need realistic medieval instruments this package is still fun and potentially useful romp. More on that in a moment.
What Rinascimento covers extensively is Lutes and Flutes. There are 7 lutes and 15 woodwinds, flutes and reeds. There is also a nice set of keys with a solid organ, a little organ, harpsichord and virginal. The Brass and Strings have fewer instruments with 2 Brass and 3 Strings, but the predecessor versions of the Trombone, Violin and Viola are very nice and worth owning. Plus there is a Hurdy Gurdy which is well... a unique instrument. There is also a nice Percussion patch with four drums and other sundries.
In general the tone of Rinascimento is quite nice. I have a buddy who is an actual musician who plays these instruments and his initial thoughts based on the demos was nice Lutes and Percussion and nice but possibly unnecessary Organ, but average Flutes and poor Reeds. With my more limited knowledge I tend to agree, though the Flutes sound fine to me. The Reeds can get quite buzzy, especially close, compared to what I've heard listening to some Youtube videos. Still that makes them a bit interesting if you want a buzzier sound.
What makes this a really useful library is the Microphones. There are Close, Mid and Far mics and they can be mixed and matched in any combination. I was surprised that many of the Woodwinds actually change tone quite a lot based on the mic position. For instance in a blind test I don't think I would have known that the Alto Crumhorn was the same instrument Close and Far. Up Close it had a buzzy, gnarly, don't mess with me sound, while on Far mic it sound like a more casual, friendly horn. This of course helps address the earlier buzzy sounding complaint. I would definitely suggest using the mic mix to modify the tone as it can have a greater effect than just giving the illusion of distance.
The other huge selling point of this library is the Legato. For Woodwinds, Brass and Strings there is a true legato. That is the transitions and the held notes were recorded for each transition from tone to tone. This makes for an especially nice legato. Many instruments have a faked legato, which I use on my own instruments and while a nice effect and better than nothing, it doesn't sound 'real'. From chatting a bit via email with Paolo, one of the nicest guys in all of Europe, he explained that the legato was "full sustain legato". I won't go into the details of what this means, since I don't really understand myself, but this gives a very natural legato transition that is one of the selling points of many Fluffy Audio Instrument Strings and Woodwinds. It is almost a trademark sound.
On that note, the thing you have to do when you are playing longs in Rinascimento is to use that Legato. Repeatedly hitting say an E note for a second, releasing and hitting it again won't sound good as it is simply playing the same sustain sample. On the other hand imagine you start with the E and then go legato down to C, then D and resolve to E, then G, back to E and C and back to E. Every single E was a different sample.I'm not sure how many legato notes there are but an average 750 sample instrument might have 30 sustain, 120 staccato and 600 legato samples. This is true legato with a different recorded note for every tone across an octave or so. And the Legato really is impressive once you figure it out. Play with it, adjust the parameters and you will start enjoying the amazing tweekability and the resulting sound. And it solves the same sample too many times thing.
In my email with Paolo, he also explained that these types of primitive instruments are significantly different than modern instruments and require different sampling techniques. Most Medieval instruments apparently tended to sound good only if played in a certain way and 'at a precise dynamic'. So you don't need or even want velocity layers on many of these instruments as too much or too little force can make the instrument sound terrible. It is the ability to play dynamically that is one of the prime differences between modern and primitive instruments. Also many of these instruments were limited in scale and range and unless you wanted to drill new holes in the woodwinds you couldn't chromatically sample them. So the instruments were sampled in their natural scales and ranges and then the closest sample was used for the non-sampled keys so you wouldn't have any dead keys.
I do want to mention how much I appreciated Paolo's attitude. I questioned many design choices and other things which could justifiably upset a developer. Paolo was constantly kind and informative to a somewhat annoying customer and I was. He didn't know I was writing a review, nor did I at the time. (I will ask his permission to quote him.) So he was simply answering a customer in far more depth than an average developer would ever go. If you like good Customer relations, this is your developer.
Another thing Fluffy Audio likes to do is make interfaces that allow for a lot of customization. I like the fact that you can change the dynamic range. As mentioned earlier, these instruments tended to have a limited dynamic range and often this library reflects that with a smaller range than I'm used to. Sometimes I like, however unrealistically, to be able to go quite soft. The adjustment lets me go all the way to -102 db which is lower than you would ever want, but -60 can give you a nice dynamic contrast from pp to ff. Another nice feature is a velocity curve that you can draw in with your mouse. Make any weird curve you want.
It should be noted that Vibrato is a modern idea. In the 'olde' days if you played vibrato, you were a crummy musician who couldn't hold a tone. The legend is that Vibrato was invented to make a louder sound for the old wax cylinder recordings since they needed much louder sounds than a traditional violin could produce. Also the good Violinists refused to record and the lousy ones had a natural vibrato. So play it loud and play it vibrato became the watchword. All the kids heard this growing up and thought vibrato was the way it was done. So now we are stuck with it in violins and opera. Anyway if you want be a crummy player and emulate wax cylinder recordings, Rinascimento has a decent faked vibrato setting with some twiddle controls to adjust.
Now if you do own the ERA the Second, should you buy Rinascimento? I don't have ERA II, so my thoughts on it are based on reading the manual, reading reviews and user comments and listening to demos. After having written the previous sentence I tried the Best Service Try where they let you play with some of their instruments for 20 minutes. This is a great service for free and much appreciated. While 20 minutes isn't long especially with some lag, it still gave me a better idea of the sound and feel of some of the instruments.
ERA II has more instruments and more articulations which is certainly a plus. It only has one mic position which is the biggest negative. However the big difference to me is tone. ERA II sounds like what Hollywood thinks Medieval and Renaissance Europe sounded like. That tone is nice but unreal. The sales page for ERA II speaks about the collection being like a fantasy novel and I think this is true. For a high fantasy sound of Medieval times and movie soundscapes, ERA II is the way to go. Elves would love this.
On the other hand Rinascimento has fewer instruments and articulations and lacks sustain round robins. What it does have is authenticity. This is much closer to what it did sound like. I'm actually something of a historian and Rinascimento takes me to plague-ridden, dirt-poor peasant laden, meed in my cup after a brutal day, a motley group of traveling minstrels on stage desperately playing lutes and flutes and banging drums for a meal and tips Europe. Was that a run-on sentence? For real world and low fantasy Medieval this is the way to go. Dwarfs would love this.
Rinascimento also has 3 well recorded mic positions that blend well together in any combination and work well on their own. The other thing Rinascimento has is a killer legato. It can be hard to tell on a fairly short internet session how good ERA 2's legato is, but from what I heard it seemed decent but not to the level of the Rinascimento legato.
And it has flexibility. The Articulation Creator screen is quite nice and can add a lot if you dig into it. It lets you adjust many aspects of the legato such as what the legato fades in and out of and how long it takes and the release, add and adjust vibrato and other things. It also lets you simply roll your own articulation choosing from legato, instant (a legato insert) and polyphonic. Then you can pick from the various articulations like sustain, legato, staccato, tongued and save it all when you are done. There is also a flexible auto-strummer for the lutes.
So ERA 2 is more instruments and more fantasy. Rinascimento is more mics and more Medieval. I think they both are great projects, they are just a little different in focus.
If you are just taking a look but don't really need a more authentic Medieval and Renaissance instruments, you might be interested in these instruments to diversify your palette in much the way world instruments can add colors to your music. It has been said that the past is a foreign land and you can definitely hear that in this pack. Actually many of these instruments have their origins in or were influenced by non-European cultures. Even the instruments like the violin, viola and trombone which evolved into modern instruments have a distinct feel that can add an other worldly quality to a soundtrack or game music.
If like me you love exploring music and hearing new things, there are lots of great adventures hear. Plus these are tweak-able toys that let you take out your mad scientist hat and play. This partly because of the flexibility of the interface, the legato and being able to roll your own articulations, but also because combining the instruments into different combinations can bring out new variations on the sounds. Take a bass guitar solo and it isn't much, add it too a band with drums, keys and rhythm and lead guitars and now you have something. Ask the Beatles. Experiment and let us know your favorite combinations.
Part 2 - Lutes
Part 3 - Strings
Part 4 - Flutes
Part 5 -Reeds
Part 6 - Brass
Part 7- Keys
Part 8 - Percussion
Rinascimento Lutes
Among the prime loot you get with Rinascimento is this set of seven medieval Lutes along with four open string variants. This is quite a collection which should bring a smile to the lips of any aspiring bard. There are four round robins, three mic positions, two chords, fast and slow, and one really nice auto-strummer with lots of twisty knobs and eight patterns that you can adjust at will. The only thing not included are velocity layers except for the Theorbo.
The tone is quite good all the way around on these instruments. The mics are well placed and everything is recorded in high quality. The only thing to note with the mics is that the Close mics are significantly loud than the other two. With the Close setting you definitely get the feeling that you are plucking the strings yourself or else have your ear a couple inches away from the instrument and are likely to get swatted away by an annoyed Lutist. The Far setting sounds like the Lute is being played across the fairgrounds and being wafted to your ears by the cool breeze. While the Middle Mic puts you somewhere in the adoring (possibly) crowd. I think mics get overlooked sometimes, but they can make or break a sampling session.
Now on with the Lutes. Starting with the Archlute. How does a Lute become an Archlute?
The Archlute has a wildly different sound across its long range. The top half from A5 to F3 is generally a plink and a pleasant fade away across a couple seconds like a mild guitar. By the time you get below C3, the Archlute has turned into a low growl. Across four and a half octaves you can do everything from supporting the lead lute to taking over the lead for yourself. Of course Renaissance Chet Atkins would play both the bass and the lead himself. Maybe the rhythm to for all I know.
Let me mention the Auto-Strummer here. It comes with 8 preset strums and you can easily roll your own. It has twiddly knobs for Tempo Rate, Number of Steps, Humanize and Swing. Then there are sliders for Acceleration, Decay, Notes and Speed. Someday I need to figure out what they all do. I do know if you use the Strummer and hold down a chord, it makes cool strumming sounds using the lower strings. If you play with the knobs and sliders, the strumming changes pretty dramatically. You smart folks will figure it out pretty quick. Us novice Luters might take a while longer.
I'm never going to get this review done if I don't stop having fun and start writing. Too many toys with twisty knobs. On to the Baroque Guitar. This sounds like a early Classical guitar to me on the Sustain and Slow Strum articulations in particular, it has that sweet twinkly feel on single played notes. When you do a fast chord or strum it has a more standard guitar feel. This Guitar has a single strum articulation as well as the Auto-Strummer.
The Chitarrino is something like a modern 12 string guitar but with only 8 strings.
The Colascione brings us back to a more traditional Lute sound. There is a distinct plink and then a pleasant string vibration sound fading away. The Mid and Far mic positions soften the plink.
The Gallichon is a very different kind of Lute with 12 strings and a wide body. It looks like a Lute that needs to go on a serious diet. It goes down to E2 and at its lower range has a nice bass sound, well bass for era anyway. You can really hear the individual strings sounding down low even when a chord or arp isn't being played. On the mid to higher end it sounds like a warm guitar.
The Plectrum Lute surprised me. According to the handy text description that comes as part of the GUI on all these instruments, this lute isn't plucked but uses a Plectrum made from a quill, feather or bone or the like. So it is played with something like a modern guitar pick. If you use the auto-strummer is does kind of sound like strumming a guitar with a pick. I never knew there was so much variety in Lutes.
The Theorbo is a man's man's Lute. The thing is massive. The Bass strings go all the way down to G1 which in the Renaissance world was LOW indeed. The higher strings go all the way up to C5 and have a lot of power even at the highest octave. This is essentially a massive bass lute stuck on top of a good sized regular lute. And since I've been known to complain about velocity layers, let me add that this does have two velocity layers. The softer layer has a nice mellow feel, while the louder layers has some good punch. I think I'm gonna have some fun playing with this. And I'm grateful it is a digital version as I'm nut sure I could lug the real deal around with me. The next time a Double Bass Player complains show him a picture of a man playing a Theorbo.
There are Lots of good lutes in Rinascimento verging on guitars and even acoustic bass guitars. Amazing variety and good sound. Well done Fluffy Audio. I'm liking this loot. (Insert pirate laughing and saying Aurgh here please.)
Next - Strings
The tone is quite good all the way around on these instruments. The mics are well placed and everything is recorded in high quality. The only thing to note with the mics is that the Close mics are significantly loud than the other two. With the Close setting you definitely get the feeling that you are plucking the strings yourself or else have your ear a couple inches away from the instrument and are likely to get swatted away by an annoyed Lutist. The Far setting sounds like the Lute is being played across the fairgrounds and being wafted to your ears by the cool breeze. While the Middle Mic puts you somewhere in the adoring (possibly) crowd. I think mics get overlooked sometimes, but they can make or break a sampling session.
Now on with the Lutes. Starting with the Archlute. How does a Lute become an Archlute?
The Archlute has a wildly different sound across its long range. The top half from A5 to F3 is generally a plink and a pleasant fade away across a couple seconds like a mild guitar. By the time you get below C3, the Archlute has turned into a low growl. Across four and a half octaves you can do everything from supporting the lead lute to taking over the lead for yourself. Of course Renaissance Chet Atkins would play both the bass and the lead himself. Maybe the rhythm to for all I know.
Let me mention the Auto-Strummer here. It comes with 8 preset strums and you can easily roll your own. It has twiddly knobs for Tempo Rate, Number of Steps, Humanize and Swing. Then there are sliders for Acceleration, Decay, Notes and Speed. Someday I need to figure out what they all do. I do know if you use the Strummer and hold down a chord, it makes cool strumming sounds using the lower strings. If you play with the knobs and sliders, the strumming changes pretty dramatically. You smart folks will figure it out pretty quick. Us novice Luters might take a while longer.
I'm never going to get this review done if I don't stop having fun and start writing. Too many toys with twisty knobs. On to the Baroque Guitar. This sounds like a early Classical guitar to me on the Sustain and Slow Strum articulations in particular, it has that sweet twinkly feel on single played notes. When you do a fast chord or strum it has a more standard guitar feel. This Guitar has a single strum articulation as well as the Auto-Strummer.
The Chitarrino is something like a modern 12 string guitar but with only 8 strings.
The Colascione brings us back to a more traditional Lute sound. There is a distinct plink and then a pleasant string vibration sound fading away. The Mid and Far mic positions soften the plink.
The Gallichon is a very different kind of Lute with 12 strings and a wide body. It looks like a Lute that needs to go on a serious diet. It goes down to E2 and at its lower range has a nice bass sound, well bass for era anyway. You can really hear the individual strings sounding down low even when a chord or arp isn't being played. On the mid to higher end it sounds like a warm guitar.
The Plectrum Lute surprised me. According to the handy text description that comes as part of the GUI on all these instruments, this lute isn't plucked but uses a Plectrum made from a quill, feather or bone or the like. So it is played with something like a modern guitar pick. If you use the auto-strummer is does kind of sound like strumming a guitar with a pick. I never knew there was so much variety in Lutes.
The Theorbo is a man's man's Lute. The thing is massive. The Bass strings go all the way down to G1 which in the Renaissance world was LOW indeed. The higher strings go all the way up to C5 and have a lot of power even at the highest octave. This is essentially a massive bass lute stuck on top of a good sized regular lute. And since I've been known to complain about velocity layers, let me add that this does have two velocity layers. The softer layer has a nice mellow feel, while the louder layers has some good punch. I think I'm gonna have some fun playing with this. And I'm grateful it is a digital version as I'm nut sure I could lug the real deal around with me. The next time a Double Bass Player complains show him a picture of a man playing a Theorbo.
There are Lots of good lutes in Rinascimento verging on guitars and even acoustic bass guitars. Amazing variety and good sound. Well done Fluffy Audio. I'm liking this loot. (Insert pirate laughing and saying Aurgh here please.)
Next - Strings
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Rinascimento Strings
If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it... I've always wanted a reason to say that!
The Baroque Violin is an interesting predecessor instrument. On the one hand it sounds tantalizingly familiar and on the other hand just a bit alien. The notes sound wider and less precise that a modern violin. It sort of sounds like somehow the violinist is playing a string and a half. Also the top note is G6 so the range is about an octave less than the modern violin.
The longs tend to build up slowly here, so make sure you use the Staccato for your shorts. In quite a few of the Rinascimento instruments, the Sustains are quick enough to fake Staccato pretty well, but here you definitely need to do some key switching. Also here and elsewhere using the Staccato will help avoid the shotgun effect and the Staccatos tend to have 4x round robins.
I was just playing around with a melody I wrote for a class I'm taking about music for gaming. The melody was actually written for flute, but I figured I would try it with the Baroque Violin. At first it was too fast and sounded just OK. Then I cut the speed, used the Far mic and let the legatos linger and Wow it sounded like a really well played medieval violin tune. Imagine if you were in a tavern in 1700 and the violist stepped forward and said "Let us slowest this downeth with a melancholy tune.' and then played a slow lament which had everyone crying into their meed. That was the feel.
While I do have some issues with this package, as I play around a bit and try some composing, it really does hit a certain vibe that is quite rare. I put up two versions of something I did, one with instruments from Rinascimento and the other with nice modern instruments. Someone I respect said in paraphrase, that he preferred the Rinascimento version as the other version sounded like a standard medieval theme played by modern instruments while the Rinascimento sounded like it could really have been from the medieval world. I think for a more authentic feeling medieval historical or fantasy game or movie, this would be a perfect fit.
One of the great features of this interface, and it is a good one, is the ability to change the dynamic range. I would consider adjusting this for each instrument. I wasn't think of this on some earlier instruments and was frustrated by the lack of dynamic range. Then I looked at the "Instrument Settings" tab and there was a "Dynamic Range Adjustment". Just click, hold and pull the mouse up or down to change. I went with -60 for the Violin as I guess I like more dynamic range than most.
The other thing I didn't personally like was the Sustain / Legato release, so I clicked on the cogwheel beside Sustain and opened the Articulation Changer. I simply clicked the Staccato and Chose None and the little release was gone. Of course you may well like the release. Still it is nice to have the ability to change various parts of the Legato that easily. I don't own other Fluffy Audio instruments, largely because I had already spent money on other things before I knew Fluffy existed, but I suspect this Legato and the ability to customize it so much is a big selling point for their Modern Strings and Woodwinds. We'll get a little plug for Fluffy audio in there. Good People, Good Instruments. That's not their slogan but it should be. OK back to review and after that plug I'm going to gripe.
This is an instrument where I think the lack of round robins and chromatic sampling really does hurt. Judging from some little scores I've found of Medieval tunes and some midis, it isn't uncommon to go down half a step on occasion and to repeat notes. If you do these things using the Sustain without triggering Legato, you do notice that the same sample is being played repeatedly.
The Vielle is the predecessor to the Viola. Like the Viola today, it is a bit slower and more relaxed than the Baroque Violin. At the bottom of its range, it is somewhat raspy before becoming quite sweet at in the mid to upper mid range. At the very top it gets a bit shrill. The notes about the Violin generally apply here. Realistic sound for medieval use, lack of sustain round robins hurts and generally well sampled and well miced. It should work well in support of the Violin or as a mellower lead instrument.
The Hurdy Gurdy. I couldn't be more out of my depth if I were doing commentary on the Saturn versus Jupiter Interplanetary Luge Lacrosse Finals. Check this Ted Talks vid to see what one is.
So there seems to be a buzzing rhythm maker thingy called a Trompette that can be used at will to add a weird barking beat to the Hurdy Gurdy. The irony after my complaints about lack of sustain round robins and velocity layers, this has both. It also has a an arpeggiator that allows you to create your own rhythm, change speeds and choose keys. The Red 'Black' Keys change the arp patterns on the fly. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the most advanced Trompette simulator on earth today. The Trompette play key is the Purple key closest to the blue playing keys.
There are also Drone notes due to unplayed strings on the side of the regular strings on the Hurdy Gurdy. These are influenced by the playing strings and resonate with them. I think. Anyway the lower Purple Keys seem to play the drone notes. Think of them like that constant drone on a Bagpipe.
The actual notes are somewhat like a slightly higher version of a violin mixed with a touch of bagpipe. On the lower registers you get a touch of the synthesizer sine wave sound as well. A little bit does go a long way. One note is that some of the Staccato releases have some slightly odd buzzing and one sounds a bit like a horn honking. Somehow this all just adds to the Hurdy Gurdy flavor.
Depending on how you play it, the Hurdy Gurdy can be a replacement for a Bagpipe, use the Drones, and has a much wider range. It can also sub as an odd sounding violin without the Drones. Then again you can use the Trompette for bizarre rhythm. Or you can try Drone, Trompette and the Notes all together and try to make an actually Hurdy Gurdy sound. You are definitely going to need both hands to do this. A truly bizarre and eclectic instrument. I think I'm glad I own a digital version. If nothing else it makes all the other digital instruments seem normal.
And there you have a ramble about the strings. An interesting three instrument pack that is similar but different enough from solo violin and viola to be quite useful alternatives and of course the oddball instrument that is fun just to have.
Next - Flutes
The Baroque Violin is an interesting predecessor instrument. On the one hand it sounds tantalizingly familiar and on the other hand just a bit alien. The notes sound wider and less precise that a modern violin. It sort of sounds like somehow the violinist is playing a string and a half. Also the top note is G6 so the range is about an octave less than the modern violin.
The longs tend to build up slowly here, so make sure you use the Staccato for your shorts. In quite a few of the Rinascimento instruments, the Sustains are quick enough to fake Staccato pretty well, but here you definitely need to do some key switching. Also here and elsewhere using the Staccato will help avoid the shotgun effect and the Staccatos tend to have 4x round robins.
I was just playing around with a melody I wrote for a class I'm taking about music for gaming. The melody was actually written for flute, but I figured I would try it with the Baroque Violin. At first it was too fast and sounded just OK. Then I cut the speed, used the Far mic and let the legatos linger and Wow it sounded like a really well played medieval violin tune. Imagine if you were in a tavern in 1700 and the violist stepped forward and said "Let us slowest this downeth with a melancholy tune.' and then played a slow lament which had everyone crying into their meed. That was the feel.
While I do have some issues with this package, as I play around a bit and try some composing, it really does hit a certain vibe that is quite rare. I put up two versions of something I did, one with instruments from Rinascimento and the other with nice modern instruments. Someone I respect said in paraphrase, that he preferred the Rinascimento version as the other version sounded like a standard medieval theme played by modern instruments while the Rinascimento sounded like it could really have been from the medieval world. I think for a more authentic feeling medieval historical or fantasy game or movie, this would be a perfect fit.
One of the great features of this interface, and it is a good one, is the ability to change the dynamic range. I would consider adjusting this for each instrument. I wasn't think of this on some earlier instruments and was frustrated by the lack of dynamic range. Then I looked at the "Instrument Settings" tab and there was a "Dynamic Range Adjustment". Just click, hold and pull the mouse up or down to change. I went with -60 for the Violin as I guess I like more dynamic range than most.
The other thing I didn't personally like was the Sustain / Legato release, so I clicked on the cogwheel beside Sustain and opened the Articulation Changer. I simply clicked the Staccato and Chose None and the little release was gone. Of course you may well like the release. Still it is nice to have the ability to change various parts of the Legato that easily. I don't own other Fluffy Audio instruments, largely because I had already spent money on other things before I knew Fluffy existed, but I suspect this Legato and the ability to customize it so much is a big selling point for their Modern Strings and Woodwinds. We'll get a little plug for Fluffy audio in there. Good People, Good Instruments. That's not their slogan but it should be. OK back to review and after that plug I'm going to gripe.
This is an instrument where I think the lack of round robins and chromatic sampling really does hurt. Judging from some little scores I've found of Medieval tunes and some midis, it isn't uncommon to go down half a step on occasion and to repeat notes. If you do these things using the Sustain without triggering Legato, you do notice that the same sample is being played repeatedly.
The Vielle is the predecessor to the Viola. Like the Viola today, it is a bit slower and more relaxed than the Baroque Violin. At the bottom of its range, it is somewhat raspy before becoming quite sweet at in the mid to upper mid range. At the very top it gets a bit shrill. The notes about the Violin generally apply here. Realistic sound for medieval use, lack of sustain round robins hurts and generally well sampled and well miced. It should work well in support of the Violin or as a mellower lead instrument.
The Hurdy Gurdy. I couldn't be more out of my depth if I were doing commentary on the Saturn versus Jupiter Interplanetary Luge Lacrosse Finals. Check this Ted Talks vid to see what one is.
So there seems to be a buzzing rhythm maker thingy called a Trompette that can be used at will to add a weird barking beat to the Hurdy Gurdy. The irony after my complaints about lack of sustain round robins and velocity layers, this has both. It also has a an arpeggiator that allows you to create your own rhythm, change speeds and choose keys. The Red 'Black' Keys change the arp patterns on the fly. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the most advanced Trompette simulator on earth today. The Trompette play key is the Purple key closest to the blue playing keys.
There are also Drone notes due to unplayed strings on the side of the regular strings on the Hurdy Gurdy. These are influenced by the playing strings and resonate with them. I think. Anyway the lower Purple Keys seem to play the drone notes. Think of them like that constant drone on a Bagpipe.
The actual notes are somewhat like a slightly higher version of a violin mixed with a touch of bagpipe. On the lower registers you get a touch of the synthesizer sine wave sound as well. A little bit does go a long way. One note is that some of the Staccato releases have some slightly odd buzzing and one sounds a bit like a horn honking. Somehow this all just adds to the Hurdy Gurdy flavor.
Depending on how you play it, the Hurdy Gurdy can be a replacement for a Bagpipe, use the Drones, and has a much wider range. It can also sub as an odd sounding violin without the Drones. Then again you can use the Trompette for bizarre rhythm. Or you can try Drone, Trompette and the Notes all together and try to make an actually Hurdy Gurdy sound. You are definitely going to need both hands to do this. A truly bizarre and eclectic instrument. I think I'm glad I own a digital version. If nothing else it makes all the other digital instruments seem normal.
And there you have a ramble about the strings. An interesting three instrument pack that is similar but different enough from solo violin and viola to be quite useful alternatives and of course the oddball instrument that is fun just to have.
Next - Flutes
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)