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!