# 20 years and a little courage finally



## Stringtree (Feb 12, 2020)

It was the Soundblaster Live, wavetable memory. Then Garrison Orchestral Strings. It’s funny that things used to come in the mail. After soundfonts, this beautiful binder came with its impossible number of discs, with my maestro name on it. I was hooked. In the early 2000s, VSL promised legato, repetitions, alternation between two round robins. 

Coming from hardware sampling, I knew the tech would eventually catch fire. It did, but not like I expected.

So then there was Gigastudio. VSL sent me books filled with articulations, along with Dual-layer DVD media crammed with dry patches. Seriously. Books that I still have, in boxes. Like bound volumes.

I like Tascam hardware. But the unthinkable happened and, while Halion and Kompakt and Fruity Loops and all this weirdware was flying around, the biggest sampler dumped fuel and crash landed.

It was a few years until I had licked my wounds enough to look back into it. The future was here. Northernsounds was no more, but I read it diligently while it existed. Then all you were carrying on, all levels of proficiency. 

Ham radio ops call it “reading the mail,” and in lol speak it’s known as “lurking.”

Having derived a great deal of value from this platform, I thought I might give a little. 

I’ve done some commercials, some phone stuff, a few little short film things. I love the greats, I love people who can orchestrate using these future tools. I enjoy talk about how to be better and strive. Know the instruments and their ranges. Play them in real life, then orchestrate using libraries. 

I like mics and preamps. I work in live sound. Been in bands and played with a variety of ensembles.

I have Albion and Loegria. And VSL legacy and Horizon. Why on planet Earth are these extinct? 

Anyway, me in a short introduction. 

I hope to be decent and friendly, and offer some of my own perspectives. Toss a ball. This can be incredibly lonely! But hearing your banter all these years has informed my solitude and trajectory.

Greg


----------



## Thundercat (Feb 12, 2020)

I'm fairly new here too.

Welcome! You sound very interesting!

Mike


----------



## Jimmy Hellfire (Feb 12, 2020)

Don't throw away those VSL manuals! That's so cool. It's almost a little hobby of mine to treasure old, physical stuff and look at it from time to time. It's nostalgic. Like a peek into the world we used to live in, and a piece of personal history.


----------



## Alex Fraser (Feb 13, 2020)

Great story. I remember waiting impatiently for days for my VSL Special Edition to arrive in the mail. Seems a lifetime ago. Welcome to the forum!


----------



## Stringtree (Feb 13, 2020)

Thanks, guys! I remember ILIO distributed all that stuff, and I'd open this big package with the Vienna Symphonic stuff, and there were cards, books, beautiful cases. Heck, they probably could have minted banknotes if they'd wanted to. Everything had a very professional gloss to it. I came across my copy of Gigastudio 3 that I never got working. I think three discs of additional content that I'll eventually throw into GPlayer, or try on a Windows XP laptop I recently built. 

At the height of my insanity, I had three Windows 98 machines going at the same time. 80-Gig hard drives max, remember? VSL mostly, but Liquid Grooves, World Winds, GOS, everything from Worra's Place (iirc). 

Luckily I never throw anything like that away. I got my Kontakt copy of EWQL Silver running, and said, hm. Okay, I have a slide whistle now. Other than that, some neato percussion, but there have been so many advancements since then. 

The beautiful artwork (yay, Christian) was back when I met Albion. It so perfectly matched the imperfection and magic of that mystical collection of sounds. No box, but hey. Every library is now presented in a 3D carton today to give these binary products some body and illusion of physicality. 

What a great time to be doing this, with all the YouTube videos and other resources!

Again, thanks for the warm welcome. 


Greg


----------



## ChrisSiuMusic (Feb 15, 2020)

Love the intro Greg. Welcome!


----------



## Loïc D (Feb 15, 2020)

Welcome.
Been through a similar path. Proud owner of Kontakt 1. I still have the CD somewhere.


----------



## Jaap (Feb 15, 2020)

Welcome and nice introduction (made me feel old as I thought, oh yes Soundblaster!)
Enjoy your stay here Greg.


----------



## sinkd (Feb 15, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> And VSL legacy and Horizon. Why on planet Earth are these extinct?


----------



## jonathanparham (Feb 15, 2020)

welcome


----------

