Vir2 Instruments’ “Fractured: Prepared Acoustic Guitar” is now shipping!
Fractured: Prepared Acoustic Guitar is an innovative new collection of instruments
featuring creative and esoteric samples and manipulations of various acoustic guitars.
Following the tradition begun by Violence, Vir2’s virtual dismembering of a solo violin,
Fractured features 2.3GB of compressed samples and more than one hundred new
instruments with numerous variations and effects built into each. Each patch
features the organic goodness of the acoustic guitar, but stretches its timbre in new
directions to create previously unheard musical effects. Drum kits were made from such
varied techniques as hitting the guitar with a mallet, scraping strings with
fingernails, cardboard, or copper, and for one patch, rice was poured over the guitar.
Long evolving pads were built from acoustic guitar samples that blur the line between
electronic and acoustic. Fractured also features playable and dynamic rhythmic loops
and patterns, multitimbral arpeggiated creations, huge cinematic impacts, gritty electronic
drums, gnarly and etherial melodic instruments, and more innovative sonic goodness.
Depending on the instrument loaded, appropriate knobs for tweaking the instrument appear
in the interface, such as:
– Quantization
– Envelope controls (attack and release)
– Stereo spread
– Lopass and hipass filters
– Layer blend controls
– Effects (reverb, delay, drive, flanger, vibrato, rotator, wobble, and others)
– Autopan control
– Repeater
Guitar Soundscapes jumped one spot to the top loop sellar in November with its brilliant collection of cinematic and ambient guitar loops. Pop Rocks and Epic Drums II also held ground following closely behind. One newcomer to the top ten was Rock Cinema. Produced by Majorn9ne for Big Fish Audio (Indie Rock Addiction and Indie Rock Collection Vol. 1) Rock Cinema is an intense collection packed with epic guitars, driving drums, emotional piano hooks and more, perfectly suited for any film score, tv show, commercial or any edgy rock production. With nearly 8GB (4.2GB of original WAV file content) of loops and 16 loaded construction kits full of multiple song sections and variations, this collection is worth its weight!
RiG: Urban Workstation made its way back to the top of the instruments charts followed by MOJO: Horn Section and Electri6ity for the month of November.
Pop Rocks was again at the top of the monthly sales chart followed by Big Bad Horns and Epic Drums II. The heavy alternative, hard and modern rock product Hi-Voltage made its way into the top ten as well as the much anticipated Brush Artistry 2. This distinctive collection of contemporary brush loops has nearly 3 gigs of content and contains 68 drum loop construction kits. Brush Artistry 2, Island Guitars, Epic Drums II, Hi-Voltage and Big Bad Horns are all part of the KLI Series which is proving to be a Big Fish Audio favorite!
Electri6ity, RiG, Q and MOJO led the way for instruments in the month of September.
| TOP 10 LOOPS | TOP 10 INSTRUMENTS |
   |
   |
| 1. Pop Rocks | 1. Electri6ity |
| 2. Big Bad Horns | 2. RiG: Urban Workstation |
| 3. Epic Drums II | 3. Q |
| 4. Hi-Voltage | 4. MOJO: Horn Section |
| 5. Pure Rock Hits | 5. Acoustic Legends HD |
| 6. Brush Artistry 2 | 6. World Impact: Global Percussion |
| 7. Island Guitars | 7. Violence |
| 8. Modern Country | 8. Tutti |
| 9. Indie Rock Addiction | 9. Whole Lotta Country |
| 10. Ambient Skyline | 10. Celtic Instruments |
Vir2 recently released the Q 1.1 Patch update, which includes minor enhancements to existing patches such as refined FX settings and pitch corrected samples. The FX settings in almost every patch of the factory library had minor changes made to make them sound more “production ready” upon loading without further adjustments being necessary. Some of the layer samples in the Multilayer Dreamscapes and Multilayer Drones patches were not playing back at the correct pitch; those have now been corrected. The update not only includes minor enhancements to the factory library patches, but also more than 50 new patches by Violence creator, Brendan Hogan.
Click HERE to download the update.
To install this update, locate the existing “Instruments” folder inside your Q folder. Move that folder outside of the Q folder to any location of your choosing. Next, move the new instruments folder into your Q folder. Once you have a patch loaded, you may choose to keep or delete the old instruments folder.
Note: This update requires version 4.2.2 or later of the Free Kontakt Player or full retail version of Kontakt.
Big Fish Audio has had a proud history of creating top of the line products since 1986. This year marks 25 years of amazing libraries which have been used in countless top charting records, film scores, TV commercials as well as in the music of hundreds of thousands bedroom music makers all over the world. This month I wanted to highlight the 10 top selling Big Fish Audio loop libraries of all time. To those of you who are relatively new to the Big Fish catalog of products these products may be completely new to you while you long time customers will probably recognize these titles if you don’t own a few of them already. So let’s open up the vault and take a look at a bit of history with the Big Fish Audio Top 10 Loop Libraries of All Time!!!
…oh and by the way all of these products will be 30% off for the month of July so you too can own one of these BFA classics.
#10 Cut’n it up 3 – Perfectly crafted and chopped samples for a bit of hip hop flavor.
#9 Off the Hook Vol.1 – From the top selling series of all time, this little gem started it all.
#8 Greg Adams Big Band Brass – High quality big brand loops and samples.
#7 Freaky Jazz Funky – A cross genre blend of pure musical magic
#6 Off the Hook Hip Hop: Dirty South – This is the youngin’ on the list, also from the “off the hook” series
#5 Breakbeat – The first of 3 volumes truly did capture this iconic drumloop sound
#4 Brush Artistry – A truly unique drum loop library collection with a lot of musical possibilities. (I do want to take this time to mention that the long awaited volume 2 is almost here!)
#3 LA Drum Sessions Vol.1 – Our top selling drumloop library of all time is truly a great grab bag of usable acoustic drum loops for many genres and sounds.
#2 Off the Hook 2 – This product contains some of the most iconic R&B style melodic hooks in the entire BFA catalog of libraries.
drumroll please…..
#1 Neo Soul: the new sound of hip hop and R&B – This soulful and smooth collection truly captured the attention of our customers and has risen all the way to the top of sales.
Make sure to check back in the year 2036 to find out how our top selling libraries of all has changed after 50 years.
Big Fish Audio’s top loop products for the month of June saw Pure Rock Hits climb to the top position with Americana Country closely behind. New titles in the top 10 included Lost Tapes Vol. 1, a collection of loops and kits recorded to tape using mics, instruments and equipment from 60s/70s. Also making a top 10 debut was Indie Rock Addiction, 14 undeniably catchy construction kits in the styles of Death Cab for Cutie, Snow Patrol, Panic at the Disco and more.
Still dominating the instruments top sellers in May was Sonokinetic’s Tutti. and RiG: Urban Workstation, along with top 10 newcomer Ircam Solo Instruments from UVI’s collection.
