Session Guitarist - Strummed Acoustic

I just bought and installed Native Instruments Session Guitarist - Strummed Acoustic ($99).  While I still maintain that MusicLab's RealGuitar is by far the most flexible product out there (strums, finger picks, solos, can play any chord you can invent, can strum any pattern can make up, includes steel, nylon, 12-string, picked and finger picked, etc.), this NI product sounds phenomenal.
 
Since having a variety of natural acoustic guitars is important to me, this is a welcome addition.  It has a preset group of strumming patterns so it is not the most flexible product in the world, but you can probably find a pattern that will work for most things.  The sound is extremely authentic because the patterns were actually played by an accomplished session player.  For $99, it's pretty impressive.
 
Using two instances (one with low voicing and one with high voicing and panned to opposite sides), sounds great.  There is also a doubling preset that is pretty cool.
 
Honestly, this sounds better than the demos on the NI site which did not really do much for me.
 
This will work with either the free or full Kontakt player.  I have the full player and have only tested it that way.
 
Essentially, you pick up to 8 different strumming patterns for your song and put keyswitches in your MIDI track to change patterns.  MIDI notes also define the chord you are playing (e.g., C maj, Eb min 7th), and other MIDI keys select sounds like ending chords, mutes, thumps, etc.  If you are not a keyboard dude like me, you can pick predefined chords so you don't have to figure out how to play them on a keyboard.  You should have this program mastered in 15 mins if you are used to similar products and maybe an hour if you're a newbie.  If you have a song with odd bar lengths or half-bars, you will need to check the manual.  That is not super simple, but it's not too bad and it is described in detail in the pdf.  You just have to do some simple arithmetic.  (No worse than calculating bank and patch select values on a synth.)
 
As with all NI products, however, I got mad because after the installation and authorization, Service Center forced me to update Kontakt.  Staying updated is cool, but I am always surprised their sample libraries won't work with a previous version of the player.  NI has weird ideas about compatibility, but if that's their worst fault, I'll let it slide.
 
I hope this is helpful to you.  The Mighty Konrad believes in sharing with the inner circle here.
 
 

I like the sound.  saw some youtube review/demos that were better than the NI demo sounds they have up.
 
$99 is a nice price but I don't think I need this right now AND I know it will be included in Komplete 11 Ultimate.  I might just wait and play with it the.
 
I am really trying to take my foot off the GAS.

What about the strummed acoustic that comes with Sonar. Is it different from the NI version ?

I have actually found NI Session Guitarist - Strummed Acoustic to be mostly unusable in a mix. When I tinkered with it on its own, it sounded good enough, but putting it in a thicker mix of instruments has been mostly unsatisfactory for me. I really wish I had spent this $99 towards Real Guitar 4 (I have RG3) . . . but of course it wasn't out yet when I was buying.
 
I also agree that the Orange Tree strumming engine shows great promise . . . and hopefully it will get developed further, since it's a more intuitive way of manipulating strum patterns, but not quite there yet in my opinion.

Now this thread is truly resurrected it’s worth mentioning Indiginus. http://www.indiginus.com/StrumMaker4.html
 
This is a simpler, less versatile strum engine, but very effective none the less. Its also a lot cheaper than the competition assuming you have a full Kontakt licence.
 
 

northlake63
What about the strummed acoustic that comes with Sonar. Is it different from the NI version ?

It is completely different thing. It is not sample based but physical modeling, and to be honest sounds terrible plastic. Nothing similar to real guitar... Maybe when there is available version 5 or 6 it will be better... Very hard to simulate physically such instrument like guitar...