Speaking of price, what is the street price of Evolution expected to be? I couldn't see it on their website. All of this bickering might be for nothing if these programs are not even priced similarly. I mean nobody would compare GPO to Vienna based on the fact that they are aimed at very different markets, no?

BenjaminS


Tech-Demo 1: Strumming - why special articulations are necessary:

Since the discussion came up in another thread I wanted to post it here in the Electri6ity thread as well.

Electri6ity has a powerful strum engine.

But what does this mean? First of all, every articulation which can be strummed was sampled in two ways: picked and strummed, since there is a big timbre difference if you pick a single note or you strumm a chord.

If you strum a chord you'll also get typical strum noises (e.g. the plectrum hitting the next string, before it is played), which we captured carefully and correctly simulate while playing.

Most of the time if you strum chords quickly on a guitar, you slightly change the position you hit the different strings (starting on the neck and moving a little bit in the direction of the bridge while the strum happens for example). You can setup and modulate this strum angle in Electri6ity and you can automatically humanize it.

The next big key to realism is sympathetic resonace. This means that open strings are resonating to the frequency of the played strings, which produces a richer, fuller tone.

Since the question came up how Electri6ity sounds clean, I'm going to post some technical examples (they contain no music . This is the DI sound straight out of Electri6ity. So here is a demonstration of the timbre difference between vertical strumming (plectrum held more vertical/soft) and horizontal strumming. Demonstrated with four different velocity strengths - remember you can morph from soft to loud notes in Electri6ity.

Horiziontal Strum (softer, more mellow timbre):
http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity HorizontalStrumming.mp3
http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity HorizontalStrummingVerySlow.mp3

Vertical Strum (brighter timbre):
http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity Vertical-Typical-Strumming.mp3
http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity Vertical-Typical-StrummingVerySlow.mp3

I'm really sorry that my 'musical' demos don't show such things. As I already mentioned, I'm a developer not a great musician (like Greg, how can play great and interesting demos!). But new demos from 'real' musicians will come pretty soon and will show the full spectrum of what Electri6ity is capable to do!

Tech-Demo 2: Sympathetic Resonance - adding resonation to samples:

In my first tech-demo above I described the difference between the strum and the picking articulations. I mentioned sympathetic resonance in that post. So this time I want to show you the dynamic response of the Electri6ity's sympathetic resonance engine.

This is a very quickly sequenced rock riff with some faster single notes at the end (I didn't spent time on the programming btw. - no automation and only two keyswitches were used in the example and it didn't spent time de-quantizing it). It uses the automatic double tracking feature of Electri6ity however.

That's how the riff looks in piano roll view:


And that's how it sounds:

http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity SympatheticResonanceTechDemo.mp3

The next example is a rendering of the sympathetic resonance (SR) only:

http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity SympatheticResonanceTechDemoResoOnly.mp3

As you can hear, the SR dynamically response to the playing. And only open strings are resonating. Muted notes also generate some resonation but almost not audible without an amp since your palm is muting the open strings most of the time as well.
Some libraries also have some kind of "resonation", but they mostly fake it with samples, which isn't quite satisyfing in my opinion.
Other libraries (mostly pianos for example) use a IR impulse to simulate the resonance. That's better, but that way you are still not able to simulate the correct behavior for a guitar, because only the open strings are resonating audible (of course the current played strings are also affeced by themselves and they are self resonating as well but that's a different topic and complex physical modelling is necessary for that).

Anyway, since Electri6ity SR is dynamically responsing to the playing, it makes bendings and vibratos much more realistic, since you can for example bend a string into or out of a resonance sweetspot for example.
And the Electri6ity SR also generates disharmonic resonance which is an important part of realism as well and often left out by engines which fake the resonance with samples. You can hear that in the demo above, too.

Tech-Demo 3: Why size sometimes matters

Here is the next part of the tech-demos. In some threads I've read that people don't like advertising numbers when it comes to sample libraries. 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 1.000.000 samples, if I can't use it because the learning curve is way to steep.

Buuut...sometimes the amount of samples and the size of a libray do matter.

Let's start with size:
Do you like a 30s sustain note with natural decay better than a 5s looped one? I do. At least when it comes to guitar or bass libraries. End of story

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. Electri6ity has a total amount of more than 200.000 samples but due to the new Kontakt 4 compression feature we were able to keep it <30GB (4 DL-DVDs - which should be a reasonable size).

The reason for the large amount of data 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 of we also recorded a muted pull off. Same for the single fret slides. Same for the noises.

Three words and another reason why more samples means better results in a lot of different cases: machine gun effect. Electri6ity allows VERY fast playing without the dreaded machine gun effect.

Here is a very simple example:

Here you can hear what it sounds like, if you eliminate all possible variations (except for down- and upstroke):

http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity TremoloPickingMachinegun.mp3

And here is an example what it sounds like with those variations turned on again (Note: there is no manual variation like timing variation or different velocities. All notes are played hard quantized and with the same velocity to demonstrate the humanizing build into Electri6ity):

http://www.benjaminstelzer.de/demo_new/Electri6ity TremoloPickingHumanizing.mp3

Both examples are double tracked with Electri6ity's auto double tracking. So you can hear that it's always possible to have two 'virtual' guitarists playing together at any speed.

Stay tuned for more

PS:

I like those Electri6ity demos best:

http://www.youtube.com/user/vir2instruments#p/u/13/2WTr85bmlkI
Close your eyes and listen to the things happening on the fretboard. Listen to the small but important noises on both guitars: the ryhthm and the solo guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/user/vir2instruments#p/u/8/N3NCO1HyYOs
Listen to the different articulations (pinch harmonics, slides, the legato playing) and how everything blends together. Even if a solo is played very, very fast.

Thanks for the detailed post... it's fascinating to see what goes into a sound library.

I played a colleagues circa '75 Fender Princeton yesterday (he asked me to do a N.O.S. tube swap/bias check) with a Hamer USA artist with the Seymour Duncan 59 PAF.

It had a front end grit that I just can't get with my Princeton Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, Vibro Champs, or Champs. A cleanish sort of gritty distortion on the front end of the transient... and every now and then I'd get the 12AX7 to splat out a square wave which would make the Oxford ceramic speaker sort of chirp with a false harmonic. Wicked cool.

I think I need a Princeton now.

Benjamin, is there any chance you have a Princeton hanging around the work shop?

best regards,
mike

The dev from Orange Tree Samples just posted this little clip of him fooling around live (real time) with Evolution on Facebook: 

http://www.orangetreesamp...udio/EvolutionLive.mp3


I've been begging him to do a little of the lead for "La Grange" (ZZ Top) after hearing the squeals. Real guitarists please chime in if you can tell me the correct name for those guitar effects I'm referring to. I love that sound but don't know what it's called and just call it squeals. 

Dreambliss


Very cool demo!  The term you are referring to is pinch harmonics:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_harmonic
 

Yep, that's what I was referring to. Thanks, Luke, for giving me the proper term so I can actually refer to that technique using a term where other people actually know what I am talking about without my having to reference "La Grange" and make a strange noise. :)

I realize it's just plain goofy, but I can't tell you how many times I've made one of my good friends who is a guitarist (that I mentioned earlier in this thread) play that "La Grange" lead. For some reason, I still love hearing those pinch harmonics in the lead guitar part as much as the first time I heard it more than two decades ago! Silly, but true. 

That's  one of the things about Evolution (and it's predecessor, Strawberry Extended, which I have) that makes it incredible, IMO, and gets me really excited is that it has a ton of articulations -- like pinch harmonics. But probably just as importantly, you can actually play OTS stuff live and it sounds realistic, it's almost mystical how it figures out your keyboard playing to guitar and bass guitar (check out the OTS forum at KVR and you'll see a bunch of customers posting about this, if you think it sounds a bit crazy). I mean, I have a number of guitar libraries I really don't use because they require a ton of keyswitches to sound realistic, which for me, stifles the whole creative process and the joy I get out of playing this stuff, as I much prefer playing live to fooling with keyswitches and hand editing midi (yeah, I'm old school, the son of a music teacher, I really love to play instruments, not score things in or put in midi notes by hand).  

As I shared with you, I don't have a DAW set up right now, as my basement, where I keep my stuff is being redone, and I will be getting a new DAW PC in a month or so, so all I have is my office PC to mess with this stuff -- and though it's a Quadcore, it's a really sluggish machine, so at best, I just fiddle with my sample libraries on it and only have Acid installed, not Sonar 8. So, I'm getting anxious to get back into working with all of this stuff again. I'm also going to be moving my 5 yr old son's Ludwig Jr set down there for some jam sessions and record him and put it on tracks (yeah, that will take a lot of editing -- and I have Melodyne for fixing vocals)! I'm certain I'll eventually be uploading some YouTube videos. :)

GigaGreenGad

edrummist 

GigaGreenGad


I've been using Impact Soundworks' Shreddage and have been very happy with it so far.

Yeah, I thought the demos for that Shreddage demos sounded cool, but although Shreddage is an electric guitar library, it is a very different animal than Evolution or a lot of the other electric guitar libraries on the market.  The dev for Shreddage (according to his posts on KVR) created it specifically for metal and as per him, it doesn't have dynamics and isn't intended to be a versatile instrument beyond the metal genre nor does it feature anything beyond basic chords (he stated that if you're looking for strumming, Shreddage is not the right product for you). That said, for $49, if you do metal, I agree, that Shreddage is worth checking into. but it isn't intended to be a versatile guitar and doesn't feature much in the way of chord strums, but that's not what people doing the style of metal it was intended for care about anyhow. 

So, again, Shreddage is a completely different animal than Evolution, which is a very sophisticated and versatile guitar library with an extensive amount of articulations and intended for a full range or dynamics, as you can hear from the various demos. It is intended for all styles and includes a chord strumming engine that can create any type of chord or inversion. I'm super excited about the chord strumming rhythm guitar engine and the ability to do all sorts of chords and inversions. The dev sampled the guitar separately for use with the chord strum engine. As I mentioned earlier, I look at it as kind of a RealStrat on steroids and evolved several generations with superior samples and articulations good enough to be used in pro recordings. The lead engine is based on Orange Tree Samples' Strawberry Extended, which I think is an incredible library -- some of the demos I posted here were from Strawberry Extended and even the original Strawberry library.    

You're quite the salesman .

HAH! Well, as I've mentioned, I am a marketing and marketing communications professional and fairly well recognized in my field, I write and do a fair amount of public speaking, so, no doubt, all of that has affected the way I write posts and my writing everywhere else (or ruined me, based on your opinion!!!). If my descriptions come off as benefit or feature oriented, in my career, I tend to think of things in that manner and express myself in that manner. It doesn't change the integrity of what I'm writing or the honesty of what I am writing. 

Consequently, I tend to analyze markets, products and competitive offerings by nature. I probably know the guitar and bass sample and VST market as well as I've known consumer electronic markets I've worked in professionally -- maybe even better. As a user of guitar and bass sample libraries, I've researched the heck out of stuff before buying and I have also owned or currently own libraries from Orange Tree Samples, Lyrical Distortion, Pettinhouse, Sonic Implants, Sonic Reality and others and guitar and bass VSTs including RealStrat, RealGuitar, Raging Guitars, VirtualGuitarist, BASiS and others.  As I shared earlier in this thread, I approached Orange Tree Samples with what was basically a SWOT analysis of the guitar sample and VST market showing there was still a market opportunity for an ultra-realistic, high end guitar sample library that featured extensive articulations and versatile strumming/rhythm guitar capabilities that didn't require a keyboardist to understand the guitar to get great results (which, oddly enough, is the case with most libraries and products) and was easy to use. No doubt, what I was describing was a bit of an idealized version of RealStrat. Anyhow, it is pretty hard to contain my enthusiasm now that this product is coming to market (and, don't get me wrong, I am not a part owner of the product or anything -- just a huge fan of the dev who has given him marketing advice). That said, don't get me wrong, I still think that Lyrical Distortion, for instance, makes some incredibly good electric guitar libraries that I love, and Scarbee, for example, makes some incredibly good bass libraries. And I'm still eagerly awaiting some releases from Lyrical Distortion. And, if you were to look at my Facebook profile, you'd see that most of these devs and I have come to know each other and be friends. I love the stuff the work they do. My enthusiasm for all of this is really just an extension of my love of music and making music -- which I suppose anyone who posts here can relate to. 

As a non-guitarist, I'm wondering:  Do any of these competing guitar programs do anything like Synful Orchestra does?  Namely, take an existing MIDI performance and simply... Make It Sound Real, automatically, by matching up your existing MIDI phrases and timing with its big database full of not only notes, but also phrases and transitions and articulations, which the program then splices together according to how you played the notes in your MIDI clip to produce a real-sounding performance.  Check out the explanations on the following page, especially the bits under "Realism,...Smart Articulation", "RPM Phrase Database" and "MIDI Look Ahead".  Would any of these approaches be applicable to electric guitar, and are any of the new guitar products incorporating them?
 
http://www.synful.com/SynfulOrchestra.htm
 
PGMusic's "RealTracks" (used within Band-In-A-Box and RealBand) are similar, in the sense that you get these big audio folders full of very, very long audio recordings of, say, an electric guitar being played in a certain stylistic way, just strumming or picking chords, transitioning between all sorts of chords in various ways, etc.  Then, once you enter your chords for your song, and choose a style that incorporates that model of guitar (and that style of playing), it pieces together a track that sounds, IMO, pretty darn real and pretty doggone seamless.
 
The problem is, you don't really have control at the note level - you can just choose the chords and the general strumming or picking style.  But man, if I could get the effortless realism of RealTracks, but also be able to control the individual notes played as well (as with Synful Orchestra), that would be the Holy Grail of guitar software, as far as I'm concerned.
 
It's like, you'd no longer have to spend hours trying to paste disconnected scrapes and other isolated articulations alongside isolated notes, with the perpetually dashed hope that "maybe it'll sound convincing this time".
 
I equally loathe the idea of trying to become adept at doing realtime keyswitching and realtime perfect mod/pitch wheel movements with my left hand every few seconds while I'm trying to concentrate on playing my solos and melodies with my right hand.  Nope, I'm too spoiled by having used both of the aforementioned programs (...well, with Synful I just had a trial version several years ago, but still...).  There's got to be a way to incorporate this kind of "automatic" or "smart articulation" feature into an electric guitar module (or whatever it's called - I assume 'module' is probably closer to it than 'thingy'...?)
 
Anyway, is this perhaps what you guys mean when you talk about these guitar programs' new "ingenious scripting"?  I'm not sure what that means, sorry. 

Monkey23


Speaking of price, what is the street price of Evolution expected to be? I couldn't see it on their website. All of this bickering might be for nothing if these programs are not even priced similarly. I mean nobody would compare GPO to Vienna based on the fact that they are aimed at very different markets, no?

Maybe I'm dreaming but I thought I saw a 99 dollars price quoted .....over on KVR?

I'm working hard to have this out at the end of the month. I'm releasing it at the same time as announcing/releasing some other stuff, which is why it's taking a little longer than anticipated.

For the price, I'm thinking $99.95 USD.

Combined with the lead guitar library, you'll have one killer guitar sample library.----
Greg Schlaepfer
Orange Tree Samples

.

.

Benjamin, 

I certainly don't think that Electri6ity is a cheap product and I never stated or inferred that. So, I'll state it clearly, Electri6ity is a high end, sophisticated Kontakt based library (for those of you reading, I point that out because Kontakt is the clearly the most advanced sampler on the market, and the guitar and bass libraries we have been discussing utilize Kontakt's very sophisticated scripting, velocity layers, round robins, etc.). However, I just don't find the demos for Electri6ity sound as realistic as Evolution due to the specific reasons I described earlier in this thread.  

As I've stated earlier in the thread, yes, demos always present sample libraries in their best light, so if one is researching libraries and listening to demos, one easy way to exclude a product is finding shortcomings of that product in the demos. In other words, if the flaws are there in the demos, they are certainly there in the sample library. 

Anyhow, go ahead and promote Electri6ity -- although it would be great if you didn't post spec sheets and long advertisements (after all, I think being one of the largest sample developer firms in the world, Big Fish Audio can afford to purchase advertising) and instead make more readable, shorter posts to state your case. But realize that by your doing so, it fully gives everyone, including me, the right to make critical comparisons of your product based on your demos and our experience with your other products such as BASiS.  Not a mean spirited comparison, but a frank, honest assessment.      

- eDrummist 

.

.

I deleted all my posts from this thread. Let's keep it an Evolution Guitar only thread.

Cheers,
Benjamin

I equally loathe the idea of trying to become adept at doing realtime keyswitching and realtime perfect mod/pitch wheel movements with my left hand every few seconds while I'm trying to concentrate on playing my solos and melodies with my right hand.  Nope, I'm too spoiled by having used both of the aforementioned programs (...well, with Synful I just had a trial version several years ago, but still...).  There's got to be a way to incorporate this kind of "automatic" or "smart articulation" feature into an electric guitar module (or whatever it's called - I assume 'module' is probably closer to it than 'thingy'...?)
 
Anyway, is this perhaps what you guys mean when you talk about these guitar programs' new "ingenious scripting"?  I'm not sure what that means, sorry. 

Hi Huffy,

eDrummist told me about this thread. I'd be happy to answer your question!

Like you, I prefer not using keyswitches. It makes it difficult for intuitive playing from a MIDI keyboard. Sample libraries work against you and inspiration by making you conform to the way the library is mapped--its specific keyswitches and controllers. That's why I developed Orange Tree Samples' Mind Control (TM) technology. Available as a separate plugin for KONTAKT (so you can use it for ANY sample libraries), it also is included within Evolution Electric Guitar's lead component. You can choose from preset mappings or design your own from the ground up. Even the controllers for things like vibrato are editable. For example, if you want a certain velocity range to trigger the palm mutes, you can do that. If you like keyswitches, you could make them respond to a custom keyswitch, too. Dozens of elements of the guitar can be modified using Mind Control, not just the articulation--things like the pitch bend range or vibrato depth/speed, and even more intricate controls such as the picking style can be affected.

That's the beauty of the sample library's interface. It can be as simple or complicated as you want. But the bottom line is that it conforms to how YOU want it to perform.

As for the rhythm guitar component of the library, it uses a unique method of creating ultra-realistic strumming. Sequencing single notes has it's advantages and disadvantages: it's flexible, but it takes a long time to sequence. In contrast, using loops or pre-recorded strums sound realistic, but are very inflexible (you usually have to adapt your composition around it). Evolution Electric Guitar creates a third option. Using an extensive script, and specially recorded samples, it assembles strums and strumming patterns in real-time. Every detail is captured, from the strum direction and speed to the way that not every string is strummed within the pattern. Evolution Electric Guitar models the position of each finger on the fretboard in order to create realistic chord transitions, and the chord definitions are all editable on a fretboard view. At the same time, the library is instantly playable--it includes many patches with ready-made strumming patterns and genre/style specific chord definitions.

Anyway, hope that helps! I'm really excited about releasing Evolution Electric Guitar--it unveils a lot of new technology that will not only make your guitar tracks more realistic, but make it much easier and faster to sequence.

Kind regards,

Greg