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There is a crisp agility to the strings on that album and a very romantic vibrato that isn't very common in virtual instruments. The first thing I thought of when I listened was Performance Samples' Vista. Here's one of the Vista demos that seemed applicable: The only drawback there is the...

I am 100% in agreement with Guy here. I loaded up Kontakt after the new update, went to start a track as I usually do by loading a bunch of instruments into a multitimbral K7 instance, and was immediately very confused and annoyed by the new instrument-replacing behavior. Naturally, I came...

@Bee_Abney and @doctoremmet thank you for your kind comments! (btw that Jouhikko library Bee mentioned above has some potential, too. I'll keep my eye on that.) It's often very hard to objectively evaluate the value of a sample library or virtual instrument, and the prospective purchaser's...

I think that if someone is trying to elicit a virtuoso tagelharpa performance from Three Tagelharpas, such an endeavor might be difficult. What you get with the library, though, is certainly worth the very reasonable asking price in my opinion. I love the rough sound of the shorts and the bite...

... and his Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within score, where he wrings all sorts of noises out of the brass.

That's fair, so I'll revise and say that BTC is an 'asset.' The point was made in reference to it having 'no utility,' and that remains a viable utility. An asset that has guaranteed scarcity, extreme portability, is unconfiscatable, and exists on a decentralized network has utility. I'll be...

The factual parts of the video are not ones I dispute. Separating the facts from his opinion, presented as fact, is difficult. I don't particularly care to take the time to point-by-point address it all. He very clearly thinks crypto has not achieved anything positive, and won't. I disagree. If...

Does some degree of objectivity have to equal appeasement? I already watched the whole thing once, and don't really intend to go back to cite specific parts. There was plenty of solid, factual accounting of stuff that is legitimately bad behavior. There was also a whole lot of invective, mockery...

I have no argument against boring index funds. They largely do what they're intended to do, which is provide a low-risk investment that gradually moves upwards over a long period of time. Regulation will benefit the crypto space, if it's done right... which is a really big topic, but in general...

Bolded emphasis added by me, and selectively quoted because I want to address some specific things here. First, though, since it's the topic of this thread: The Folding Ideas video was a well-researched, skillfully delivered one-sided hit piece. He cites a lot of very valid problems with the...

I'm definitely interested in a deep sampled tagelharpa, too. Orcophony is great, but limited. What I'd be really happy with is something akin to what Westwood Instruments did with their solo strings Untamed series. A combination of deep, precise, playable articulations along with the rough...

Chillbot hit most of the historic high points. A couple more mentions... Dan Dean also had ensemble brass. The tone of the french horns was a favorite of mine. I always felt he should have reworked them for Kontakt and took advantage of scripting, especially SIPS. I eventually did assemble some...

Discount culture is well entrenched in VIs and other related industries. Most of my output is making music as videogame assets, or essentially targeted stock media. The various branches of stock media have all taken the race to the bottom for pricing. Game assets were a late entrant into the...

Lots of great recommendations in this thread! I would be remiss, though, if it went unremarked upon that Iron Maiden dropped a new album. They are old. Very, very old. Their style is old, their approach is old. They practically invented a genre. These primordial metallurgists are master...

It's funny that this thread surfaced right while I'm listening to a band I'd never heard of before but am immediately very impressed by. If you like late 80s - early 90s thrash, there's a lot to enjoy on Angelus Apatrida's eponymous new album. Their technical skills are top notch, the production...

So, I love Sawano's Gundam Unicorn music, but my holy grail has always been Kow Otani's score for Gundam Wing. My 'still pretty holy but slightly less so' grail is Toshihiko Sahashi's Gundam SEED Destiny score. Ok, fine, my holiest of all grails is Yoko Kanno's Turn-A Gundam score but that's a...

looks at my hard drive(s)... ...weeps. My answer to that is: "an infinite number, as long as there is some measurable improvement or distinction between each iteration of the same concept." I mean, I could still be using the 16 CD set of Garritan Orchestral Strings that I purchased back in...

I just bought the Century Strings and Brass 2.0 updates from 8Dio. The updates addressed the issues I had with the initial releases, and added some really nice new stuff. For me, at least, they are 'fully fixed.' I also updated a few of their other libraries that had newer versions released...

I think the official 8Dio videos for Century 2.0 do a pretty good job presenting its sound and capabilities, especially the one Colin did of the track he composed. They're in the threads for the product elsewhere on the forum here. But I'll give my opinion, too. The biggest difference is that...

Fast passages were definitely not its strong suit... until the 1.3 update. I am very happy with the new marcato patches and chamber spiccatos that are broken down by section. To me, they offer a level of detail and energy for quick passages that was missing before. It won't do runs as well as...

@re-peat I've read your posts on various virtual instrument forums for a rather large number of years. Seeing your graphic design work adds a surprising amount of context to your opinions on music and VIs. It's a pleasure to find such beautifully kerned and arranged typography, and the...

Seems like there's a lot of art talent around here, coming from a lot of different stylistic approaches! I self-published a comic book back in the 90s, and have kept illustration as a professional pursuit alongside music and video editing. I guess you could say the following is all three at...

I've used Cakewalk/Sonar since Cakewalk 9 back in some year that is a distant memory. Still using Cakewalk by BandLab currently. It does everything I need it to, which is 'handle a bunch of VIs and synths.' I don't work much with audio in large quantities, so I can't comment on its capacity...

Because it was a fun challenge for me musically, and I like the filmmaker and his sensibility. And he does recognize the benefit of a custom score over stock music, and appreciated my work. There are a lot of very creative people out there in the world who do not have much money at their...

This is the crux of the matter, though, isn't it? There is a really, really vast range of 'people who need music for their productions' who might be looking to hire a composer. You could justifiably feel ripped off by a production company making a feature film that will get a theatrical release...

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that if composers all started setting a $500/min floor regardless of context, and recommend that those who can't afford that fee go use RF libraries, you're just training people to not bother working with an actual composer again. Companies like Epidemic and...

I was never on AJ, but my Pond5 catalog still generates sporadic sales. My catalog there is comprised of the same tracks that are on a bunch of non-exclusive RF sites, so I see no benefit in removing it. I don't mind surprise money every now and then. No other RF site generates sales for me...

Who establishes the broader industry interests? And are those interests the same as the interests of those who want into the market? Who sets fair market value? The industry? Which part of it? Or is it the market participants/consumers who establish that? I can speak only from my own personal...

@construer Addressing a few points: If you can find a trusted mentor, it probably doesn't hurt, assuming that person is worth the trust and knows what they're talking about. It's not a necessity, more a luxury, and probably something of a rarity these days. With all the prospective composers...

With the game industry, there's an ample supply of specifically targeted abuse based on personal characteristics, and also an equal bounty of non-specific hideousness driven by avarice. It does often punch down with greater fervor on minority groups, but overall it's an equal opportunity...

Sadly, you could take this statement and directly apply it to the videogames industry as well. It's rife with truly abusive behavior especially perpetrated by the high-end AAA game developers. Sexual abuse, extremely unhealthy work practices, financial malfeasance. There's a reckoning going on...

The royalty payment system is weird, if you're not used to it... maybe even if you are used to it. Those tracks are definitely earning me money, and if I was really diligent I could figure out exactly how much each one of them has earned over their life. Every quarter, BMI sends a statement that...

I can only speak from my experience, but getting that trailer cue picked up is hard. Has been for me, anyway, though it's not a big focus of my work currently. That's an extremely competitive field. There are a lot of library models. Ones that focus on sync licensing often don't pay up-front...

I'm curious why you flatly rule it out. What are your reasons? I am not advocating for or against it, but there are a lot of different types of libraries, different working arrangements, different things they need for their market segment. I've had frustrating experiences with them, but good...

I'd like it if it wasn't that way. I don't have a clue where someone would start changing that from the composer's side of things, unless it involved unionizing and a full overhaul of the way media is produced. The way media is produced is changing, though not in ways that seem to favor the...

I should probably clarify that to me, the OP's fictitious conversation is certainly depicting infuriating and frustrating behavior, but that doesn't always equate to being abusive. Using the term 'abusive' implies ill intentions, and often it is just a result of the realities of the industry...

...followed by "Every conversation I have ever had with a client or A&R rep or music supervisor, ever" So, maybe not all have been that bad, but a whole lot of them are. It often comes down to people being unable to communicate their needs or ideas, or the language of communication having...

Seems I was unclear, myself. I was referring only to the combined runners-up and winner. Three of the runners-up were more conventional hybrid modern action score. Two of the runners-up chose to go with the genre-bent interpretation. Andrew Morgan Smith had a cool Williams/Silvestri action...

Half the winners scored it straight, half scored it within the context of the episode in which the scene appeared. Should people who watched the show have ignored the context of the scene? Clearly, people were not penalized for scoring it as straight 'serious sci-fi action.' Should those who did...

I really enjoyed the winning track, and it fit the scene 100%! Maybe this was said somewhere in the volumes of posts about the contest, but it bears repeating: that episode was structured around the conceit that the guy with the gun was dosed with a party drug that made him hallucinate that he...

Last year, I became interested in videography. As one does these days, I turned to YouTube for education and information. I found the channels of some exciting, creative people who make tutorial and gear-review content. They have a big audience. Peter McKinnon (4.19M subscribers), Maati Haapoja...

01 Afflatus Strings 02 Majestic Horn 03 Century Brass 04 Bohemian Violin 05 Emotional Cello 06 Metropolis Ark 4 07 Keyscape 08 Superior Drummer 3 09 Rinascimento 10 Sable Strings 11 Adagio Strings 12 Joshua Bell Violin 13 SWAM Solo Woodwinds 14 Dominus 15 Ample Guitar M 16 Prominy Hummingbird 17...

Since I'm not a WSJ subscriber, I couldn't read the rest of it, but Mooney's thesis seems solid. Guitar heroes are not the driving force in pop culture they once were. Van Halen hasn't been relevant to contemporary popular music in what... twenty five years? That's a whole generation ago. The...

That's the part that I find most relevant. If sample libraries were delivered to the end user in a perfectly secure container (whether digital or physical) that could inviolably hold the data, then it would make perfect sense from the developer side of things to allow resale or returns. There...

If there was a 100% secure and convenient way to preview a library that delivered a flawless end-user experience, I think developers would probably jump all over that. I've not used TrySound, but I'd be surprised if it gave a perfectly representative experience of how a library would perform...

There was a very long, very heated argument about this exact topic here on this forum just last year. You could probably save yourself about twenty pages of rehashing identical stuff by unearthing it, but if you watch movies you might surmise that reanimating the dead usually doesn't end well...

I have it, and have used it in a number of tracks. I also have 8dio's Adagio, Agitato, and Century Strings. The conclusion I have come to in regards to their rather sprawling line of string things is that to get the most out of them, and to find a sound I am quite happy with, I must treat them...

I don't think the 12FH are taken from 8W/Majestica, which has a single combined-brass patch and no legato. They're unique to Century, they're just... a bit oddly presented. Maybe they're best viewed as an 'extra' color in the palette. I'll admit it's a bit perplexing that they don't have a FF...

To the OP, this ^ trying different mic options, particularly on the 6 horns, might change your opinion of them. They get really bright, which I love. If you don't love that, try using mainly the wide mics and play around with the others to get your own mix. It affects the tone a lot, and could...

I didn't feel like making a big comparison of sustain patches, but here's a small piece with Century Brass sustains. Since you mentioned you were mocking up Williams stuff, I just played in a few motifs from memory. 2 trumpet sustain + 4 trumpet staccato (stacked) for the Superman riff 2...

Unusable? Really? (I'll actually agree with the 'unusable' descriptor there, in a limited way, since their concept for marcatos controlled by the Speed knob doesn't fit at all with my workflow, but we've set those aside, so...) OMG! I know, right? They're great! Wait... you meant it the...

I agree with the Oceania praise. It ended up replacing the Ark marcato syllables as my 'dramatic nonsense choir.' I like the Oceania sound a bit better and think it has just a little more oomph to it at its most intense. Of course, you also get legatos (and the whole rest of the library) with...

FTS Edge Bass is very cheap ($30) and effective. I like using the DI version through various amp sims. It probably can't pull off virtuoso bass playing, but if you want it for filling out the mix in a supporting role, you probably won't find a quality instrument at less expense. No refunds. I...

Isn't much of all the 'extra' music treated as wallpaper in the mix? The most recent two movies I saw in the theater are Solo and Infinity War. I'm only going off of memory, and have no direct study or data, but in my recollection so much of the music in both was buried under the dialogue and...

There's also the relatively recent issue of GDPR compliance governing how a developer may communicate with anyone in the EU. If you are a resident of the EU, unless you explicitly opt-in to a developer's newsletter/mailing list, they can't collect that info (say, from a purchase) and communicate...

It handles them pretty well, with a bit of work. The first passage is set up like so: V1 SUS molto vibrato + V1 spiccato feathered V2 SUS vibrato + V2 spiccato feathered Vla SUS vibrato + Vla spiccato feathered C SUS vibrato + C spiccato feathered at :16 there's a brief use of the V1 + V2...

edit: apparently Saxer types faster than me, we want the same thing... Is there any chance that you could also add in versions of certain articulations which currently do not respond to key-release to have a more standard response? For example, the Crescendo Sfz patches play all the way through...

These tracks use 100% Century Brass* *the sole exception is in a few instances I used the Trumpet Ensemble Triplets articulation from Berlin Brass because CB's repetitions and/or stacs weren't quite as clearly defined at very high tempos. You can listen to 8 more tracks using CB here...

I can't direct you to a detailed review, but I will give you a somewhat thorough opinion on Century Solo and Ensemble Brass. Century Brass is the first brass library I've used that plays how I want it to and sounds how I feel brass ought to sound. I am happier with my CB purchase than with any...

Thanks! Coming from a prolific synth-sound crafter such as yourself, the compliment is appreciated : ) I think a lot of people overlook Massive's capacity for making expressive sounds that work in a cinematic context. It's so ubiquitous, and seems pretty well represented in EDM genres, but it's...

Hello composers, sound designers, synthesists, aliens, et al. Massive is an old synthesizer. Despite this oldness, it remains vital and able to produce sounds with great depth, nuance, and useful character for cinematic music. If you're not considering it for such purposes, you're missing out...

Salutations, creative humans. It is time to advertise a new product release! I found recent discussions on here to be enlightening in regards to what is the best approach for marketing a new thing. Now, I am convinced that every one of you could find a use for Effexor in your arsenal of...

Since the month is drawing rapidly to a close, so too is the window in which you can get the ODDMOBUNDLE (containing both volumes of Oddmospheres) for $24. Sometime tomorrow, I'll be bumping the price up to $29, which is still a fine deal... but $24 is better! Don't miss out.

Greetings, composers of music. I have returned to your haven with news of a new set of 55 instrument patches for Massive, branded Oddmospheres 2 for the purpose of convenient identification. As you might guess, it is a sequel to my Oddmospheres library which was released last year... and it...

I will risk being 'that guy who is the only one that posts in his own threads' to mention that The Audio Spotlight just put up a review of Weird Ambient Stuff 2 and they really liked it. You might, too! Perhaps their review will persuade you.

Thanks for mentioning this. This is indeed the first time I've run a sale. Maybe it won't be the last! The discount period is still ongoing until Friday June 6th, and all you need to get 20% on anything (including the new Weird Ambient Stuff 2) is this little code: X1GIXM41 If you're...

Re: SampleOddity releases WEIRD AMBIENT STUFF 2! Weirder! Ambienter! Stuffier! I just produced a video that goes over the interface and sound design tools of WAS2, so I thought you guys might like to take a look! You'll get ideas for how to make your own sounds and explore what WAS2 has to...

Everyone loves sequels, right? Weird Ambient Stuff 2 is the bigger, better, bolder followup to the original Weird Ambient Stuff... and it's got a lot more to offer than its predecessor. The coolest thing about WAS2 is the modular, three part interface you can use to mix, mangle, move and...

Hi G.E. , I produced a Massive set called Oddmospheres that has a lot of patches I think would work well in hybrid cinematic tracks. I focused on making sounds with character and motion, creating mostly pads... but many of the pads can work as leads, too. They're all very tweakable. I'm...

That sounds great, and if it had not been identified as sampled guitar I wouldn't have guessed it. It's not easy to program convincing guitar parts, and Hozo did an outstanding job with the composition and programming. What sort of effects chain was used to get the tone on the lead and rhythm...

@John - thanks! You might be surprised at the kinds of interesting sounds Massive is capable of. For the longest time, I didn't think much of it at all, and assumed that it was mainly for EDM sounds. I actually was thinking about learning how to make some dubstep sounds when I gave Massive...

Hello, fine composers of VI Control! You may remember me from such sample libraries as Thrash DI, Epic Laundry, and Monster Cookie Tins. Ok, probably not from Monster Cookie Tins given the sales numbers... but that is neither here nor there. What is here is Oddmospheres, a new library that has...

I just bought this last night, and I must say I'm very pleased with it. It actually works well in metal, too. You can get a sound kind of like D.D. Verni from Overkill using the slap/pop articulation and a little amplification. That said, I'd love it if you did a picked bass with a focus on...

I have it, and use it a lot. It has a tone that is definitely distinct from other software amp sims. I like it primarily for use in metal, though it certainly covers other genres. I've found that it can deliver a very tight, focused crunch that works very well if you want articulate riffs that...

One guy that is sadly not known nearly as well as he should have been is Shawn Lane. He died in 2003 at age 40 from complications related to chronic psoriasis, and nearly every video of him is low quality but worth watching just to see his hands in action. He was incredibly fluid...

Re: "The Pillars of Creation" - Tone Poem for Orchestra This is a fantastic piece! I really enjoyed it, particularly starting around 2:10 and through the rising strings and resolution of that part. I have a feeling Jerry Goldsmith would have liked it too, you have a similar take on space to...

Hey guys, I've just uploaded a video that shows off the Riffmaker, which is a pretty cool step sequencer programmed for Thrash DI by scripter extraordinaire Adam Hanley. It's up at the top of the thread, too, but I'll post it here to save you the effort of scrolling all the way up there!

Re: SampleOddity RELEASES Thrash DI Metal Guitar library! Yep, pre-amped was $49, is currently $49, and will remain $49 after its renovations. It still lives here: https://www.sampleoddity.com/thrash/ and is indeed purchasable. Any and all additions to it are going to come in the form of a...

Re: SampleOddity RELEASES Thrash DI Metal Guitar library! @Niah: Thanks! There could well be enough people like you that want the sound without the fuss of dealing with amp sims. I'm definitely going to give the old pre-amped Thrash a makeover and see how scripting can improve the sound...

Re: SampleOddity RELEASES Thrash DI Metal Guitar library! Hi Niah, thanks for asking! Technically, the original Thrash is still around at https://www.sampleoddity.com/thrash/ and the freebie version of Thrash DI can even still be downloaded here: https://www.sampleoddity.com/thrashdifree/...

Greetings, denizens of VI-Control THRASH DI Metal Guitar is available right now for $49 It has been some time since I last appeared amongst you, in an age long past when I offered up a cheery selection of musical cookie tins. Now, though, I bring you a whole different beast... multisampled...

Re: Dream Audio Tools announces REPETITIVE BASS for Kontakt This is a cool idea. I have definitely found myself wanting repetition samples when using other bass libraries. Any chance you've recorded (or could record) patterns with triplets, for metal? I'm looking forward to hearing more details...

Just wanted to say that I totally agree with the following points: I am particularly dismayed every time I try to do anything in the tempo map. It worked better in previous versions, though was not great even there.

I use it. I upgraded from Sonar Producer 8. There are several points worth noting: 1. I was looking forward to using VEPro to manage my battery of orchestral sample sets, like most people here seem to do. I didn't realize, until I ran into a brick wall, that you really need VST3 to make use...

If you're looking for pre-amped, my Thrash: Metal Rhythm Guitar library is indeed a pre-amped metal guitar. As the posts above mentioned, that approach does have drawbacks, but depending on your needs it may not matter too much. I made the library for people who didn't have amps sims or...

Thanks, Miguel. I'm glad you are enjoying the library! I definitely will be sampling more ridiculous, weird, and/or unusual stuff in the future. One of the things that I am most happy with about this release, other than the fact that it is cool to make music with cookie tins, is that I...

Thanks, Barrie! I'm glad you can get some use out of them right away. I'm hoping to find more tins, actually, so I can assemble a xylophone-esque range of them. I have four different tall cylindrical ones (two I have yet to record) but they seem to come in a fairly standard set of sizes...

In that first FH example it's three instruments stacked, the close and ambient mics for the FH ensemble NV sustains and the solo horn NV sustain. Each has between 6-8 velocity levels that are being morphed through with the AET filter. Here's the thing, though: It's always morphing the FF or F...

It's a feature in Kontakt4 that nobody uses. Or, to be more precise and informative I'll quote the NI website: "AET (Authentic Expression Technology) is able to capture specific spectral characteristics of samples and gradually apply them to another samples in real-time." So what I did is use it...

I was pretty curious about just what you could do with scripting and old samples, and a while back the DD Ensemble brass were put on sale for something like $200. Now, for an old Giga library, his standard price of $700 for the brass ensembles seems... very unrealistic these days given what the...

I have spent a considerable amount of time banging on cookie tins of various shapes and sizes. It is unclear what this says about the state of my mental health, but at least I recorded it so you can enjoy this library! You may be surprised at how nice a bunch of decorative tin cans can sound. I...

A long time ago in a post far, far away, I promised a DI version of Thrash. And nevermind the fact that it was roughly a year ago that I made that pledge... I now deliver! And for free, to boot. So now you can enjoy the same control scheme I set up in Thrash and run it through your favorite...

Re: Live Stream ONLINE NOW! (LASS, SYMPHOBIA, EVOLVE) I caught the last hour or so of the show. It was very informative and fun to listen in and see your creative process and hear about the instruments you were using. Thanks for broadcasting!

https://joelsteudler.com/downloads/demo/Joel_Steudler_Epic_-_Total_War_136s_v3.mp3 Total War v3 Once again, I really appreciate the comments and critique. This new version has the following changes: - Improved the dynamic range. The opening is a bit softer and builds up more than the...

Thanks, guys, for the compliments and comments. I've been reworking things a bit and have this new version of the track: https://joelsteudler.com/downloads/demo/Joel_Steudler_Epic_-_Total_War_136s.mp3 Total War v2 Changes include: - Generally more 'taking it to 11'-ness - sped up the...

I was so happy that Play 2.0 finally made Symphonic Choirs usable for me that I decided to put together a track with some wordbuilding action. It seems fairly relevant now to look at SC in the light of all the new choir releases that seem to be sprouting like weeds this spring. I rather hope...

On the positive side of things, I just thought I would add that Play 2.0 has finally made Symphonic Choirs Wordbuilder usable on my system. In Sonar, I previously couldn't get it to render the audio properly either in quick bounces (where there were constant dropouts and pops) or realtime...

Who doesn't want more weird ambient stuff for their sonic toolbox? I know I'm always looking for more. It seems like no matter how much I have, there is always some new bit of inspiration that comes from fresh sounds. I can't hit the download button fast enough when Spectrasonics drops more...

Merry Christmas! The spirit of Yule demands that gifts be given, and I am powerless to deny such a festive force. With that in mind, I offer an unusual present. No, not a sweater, or socks, or a lump of coal (though maybe I should sample those too...) but rather some Peculiar Percussion...

I'll join in singing the praises of the Westgate oboe. I use it all the time. The legato is very nice and I like the tone. I have their horns module as well, but I don't find myself using it all that often. It actually has a very nice selection of articulations, and the tone isn't bad...