A number of our current DVD products are now available for instant download! Everyone kept asking, so this is our way of letting you know that your feedback is appreciated and doesn’t go unheard. No more waiting for the Fedex truck to arrive on these Big Fish top sellers; purchase, download, and get crankin’ on those tracks!
Now available for download:
Ambient Skyline, Cinematic Percussion, Crank’d: Urban Rock, Detroit Soul, Earth Tone: World Percussion, Elemental Studio Percussion, Funk Soul Horns, G-Suite, Impressions: Jazz Construction Kits, Kings of the South: Dirty Crunk Kits, Mirrorball: Silky House Music, Nashville Sessions, Off the Hook Dirty South 2, Platinum Essentials 3, Remix Revolution, Studio Guitars: The Michael Ripoll Project, Symphonic Manoeuvres 2, and Vintage R&B.
Be sure to keep checking in here and our website for more Big Fish Audio everything.
The “Two Mikes” of Cinesamples Talk About VOXOS and More… Interview by Peter Alexander
Cinesamples‘ Michael Barry (above left) and Michael Patti (above right), two classically trained pianists and film/game composers, joined the growing trend of composers expanding their talents into developing sample libraries. Their company, Cinesamples, has released such brilliant and critically acclaimed libraries as CineHarp, CineToms, Drums of War, CineSnare, Iron Guitars and their most recent release, Hollywoodwinds. The duo is hard at work on their next library, VOXOS, a detailed vocal library scheduled to release late summer. Read the full interview at soniccontrol.tv.
Check out the latest from Nova Loops, including “In My Hood: East Coast Edition” and “Platinum Synth Melodies“. Enter the coupon code below and get $7 off any Nova Loops download. Offer good for a limited time only!
(Offer Expired)
The month of May brought the release of several new products for Big Fish
Audio, none more anticipated than Vir2’s Electri6ity. With more than 24,000
24-bit samples and the most advanced scripting to date, it’s no surprise that
Electri6ity quickly claimed the top instrument spot of the month, even though it was released two weeks in. Judging from the initial response from its user base, I have a feeling this product is in for a long
ride at the top.
On the loop side of things, Cinematic Percussion grabbed the top honors, followed
closely by Kings of the South: Dirty Crunk Kits and Urban Inspiration. Also
breaking into the top ten were two new products from Nova loops, Urban Pop
Heat and Hustla Anthems.
In this post I am going to give you my picks of the month and focus on two outstanding guitar loop libraries we’ve recently released. First on my list is Off the Hook Guitars. Off the Hook Guitars continues in a long line of worldwide hits in the “Off the Hook” series. There is something special that can happen to a Hip Hop or R&B track when you add the element of a live played guitar. Whether your looking for licks or leads, rhythm parts, or wah wah guitars you’ll find it all in this jam packed library. These expertly played and recorded guitars are definitely Off the Hook!
My second library recommendation for the month is Studio Guitars: The Michael Ripoll Project. Michael Ripoll is an A level guitarist working in the studio and on tour with some of the biggest names in the industry. Working with Michael on this project was a lot of fun. His range of talent and mastery of so many different styles is astounding. This is truly evident in this library as it contains over 1,000 loops ranging from rock to country, jazz, to funk. This is a must have library that will be an asset in many many music productions for years to come. (Currently Michael is working on a couple new projects for Big Fish Audio, so keep your eye out for their release later this year).
Now that you know my picks of the month go ahead and check them out yourselves. Both of them contain a free sample pack for you to download and try out yourself. On top of that I would like to personally offer our Blog readers a coupon code good for $20 dollars off either of these products for the month of June. Enter BRGPC1 at check out to receive your discount on one or both of these products!
‘…Just one word : STUNNING!…’
K-Slash on KVR
‘…Incredible. Great library! Next on shopping list…’
synesthesia on KVR
‘…I thought sample-based virtual guitar would suck, but boy was I wrong!!!…’
benjamind on KVR
‘…I can’t play keyboard quite that well but it’s pretty amazing what this VI can do on the fly. Once I have the spare cash I will be all over electri6ity for sure. Nicely done vir2….’
dmichaelsmusic on KVR
‘…This is great, I honestly never thought something of this caliber could be achieved in the range of Guitar Synth’s / VST’s. It sounds real. I can’t wait until it comes out….’
kirbyfighter12 on KVR
If you’re wondering what all that buzz is about, it’s about Electri6ity, the brand new virtual electric guitar instrument from Vir2 instruments. I’m Benjamin, one of the developers of Electri6ity and today I want to give you some insight into the development of this massive guitar library. I also want to tell you what makes it so special.
Let me start with some facts about Electri6ity: more than 200,000 44khz/24bit DI samples, eight famous guitar tones (Strat, Tele, P90, Les Paul, Rickenbacker, Danelectro Lipstick, ES335, L4) and more than 50.000 lines of Kontakt scripting.
Sometimes I’ve read that people don’t like advertising numbers when it comes to virtual instruments. Most of the time I agree. For example: I don’t care if a library contains 10,000 patches, if I only like one of them. I also don’t care if it has a million samples, if I can’t use it because the learning curve is too steep. But sometimes the amount of samples and the size of a library does matter.
Let’s start with size: Do you like a 30-second sustain note with natural decay better than a 5-second looped one? I do. At least when it comes to guitar or bass libraries.
Let’s talk about the amount of samples: Of course I agree with everyone who says that the amount of samples doesn’t tell you anything about the quality of a library. That’s true. If a library however is carefully recorded and each of the samples is manually edited and you want to cover all important articulations, the sample count will rise. And in this case it makes sense. Thanks to the new Kontakt 4’s new compression feature, however, we were able to keep this gigantic library at a reasonable size of 28GB.
The reason for the large amount of samples is the concept behind Electri6ity: every articulation is sampled with the same detail. For example: when we recorded a hammer on, we also recorded a muted hammer on. When we recorded a pull off, we also recorded a muted pull off. Same for the single fret slides. Same for the noises. We recorded every imaginable facet of the electric guitar. If you can imagine it, Electri6ity can play it!
Another key concept of Electri6ity is its artificial intelligence. This is very important if you want to emulate a guitar on a keyboard, since those instruments are so different in the way you play them. For example, on a keyboard every note has it’s own key, but on a guitar you have six strings and many notes are available on different strings. Depending on which string you choose, you’ll get a different timbre. And for a realistic performance it’s important you have access to those little nuances, especially if you are playing chords.
That’s why Electri6ity automatically transfers keyboard chords to guitar chords and – by watching your playing – is selecting the right string for you.
To make it short: we wanted to create an instrument which doesn’t need MIDI programming or editing. For my part, I’m a bit impatient when it comes to that. I don’t want to spent hours in the sequencer, tweaking controller changes, adding hundreds of keyswitches or loading patches for each articulation I’m going to use. I just want to write a song, I don’t want to engineer one!
That’s why the artificial intelligence behind Electri6ity takes care of that part, so the performer can concentrate on their creativity. This doesn’t mean, by the way, that you can’t exactly tell Electri6ity what to play and how to play it. You can – but you don’t have to!
I hope you enjoyed this insight into the concept behind Electri6ity and I hope you’ll see why we are so excited about its release after three long years of development.
For more information and demos visit http://www.vir2.com/instruments/electri6ity and http://www.youtube.com/user/vir2instruments, where you’ll find a lot of demonstration videos.
Cheers,
Benjamin
Vir2 Development Team