NI Session Guitarist -- good use of about-to-expire voucher?

[mhschmieder]

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/pr ... newsletter

Sounds good from the demos, which is unusual as most NI demos have me running for the hills.

Many of us have vouchers from Komplete 11 that are about to expire. This might be a good use of the voucher (though I rarely use the voucher as it's still more money than waiting for a Komplete Upgrade).

The big catch is that there likely will be a Pro follow on, as with the other Session family of Kontakt libraries, and they rarely offer much incentive on THAT upgrade.

[Babz]

Looks pretty cool. It seems to be mainly limited to strumming articulations, but seems really awesome for that.

The NI site describes Session Guitarist as a Komplete instrument. To me, this implies it is part of the current Komplete Ultimate package. Would like to confirm that. Could be another reason to consider that upgrade.

Babz

[David Polich]

It's not part of Komplete Ultimate, as it was just released, and Komplete Ultimate is now several
months old.

I like the idea, but I'm afraid this product will be just like the Scarbee Funk Guitarist - 500 patterns and not one of them will fit your song exactly. Yes the patterns can probably be edited but you're still forced to browse through all of them until you find "one" that's close and then
there's no way to make that pattern work throughout the entire song, or change it up randomly
like guitar players do.

I still think Amplesound's acoustic guitars are a better product, they do strumming, and you can do the strumming yourself, in real time, to fit your song.

At any rate, no sampled guitar VI works for a final track. They're awesome for arranging, but
at the end of the day you need a real guitar player for the real deal. Sampled guitar VI's are
what I use to convey what I want the guitarist to do, and they work for making a good
mockup for the singer to sing over. Great tools, for sure. But they can't replace a good guitarist with a good instrument.

[mhschmieder]

I'll probably wait to get this as part of an Ultimate Update late this year or late next year.

From those who have explored it more deeply, it's looking like what dave said, which is a collection of preconfigured patterns that you really can't easily edit (especially in terms of real-time triggering etc.).

The Amplesounds stuff comes the closest to sounding like a real guitar, when in the background. But so far, no guitar product can replace a real guitarist. Maybe one day. I hope not though.

Given how such products are used during mock-up phase, I am doubting this product would be of much use since it is very limited in terms of playability and customization. It might work better for people doing highly repetitive loop-based music, where there's never any variation.

NI likes to tempt us each year with the rebate voucher from Ultimate, but the one time I bit, I was deeply sorry (the predecessor to Vintage Organs, which was a bloody awful sample-based Kore Engine product that was touted as being miles ahead of the physically modeled B4 II that they had just canceled).

[monkey man]

Dave and Mark's comments on the authenticity and usage of this sort of product give me hope; I love to hear this sort of stuff as it justifies my ongoing, frustrating efforts to teach myself to play a 6 string. This really is a unique and foreign-feeling doobiwacky.

Interestingly, following an almost 30-year saga (I'll post it one day in Frodo's "Guitarists" thread) that saw my chasing something that stayed in tune (super-sensitive to pitch, and I accept responsibility for that), ploughing through at least a dozen instruments (would have been more but I waited 7 years(!) for a custom and 2-3 years each for two others), the axe that finally got me playing (albeit acoustically only) and familiarising myself with the fretboard, synchronising my right and left hand and so on, was, wait for it... a Behringer El Toro that I scored for 80 bucks in November.

This thing has what looks like 10-year-old strings on it (super-rusty!), but having set it up, the action is low enough for my weak hands to handle. If I ever jump on my L6 guitars (only a few seconds so far) which are on ice with new strings in anticipation of my actually getting some recording done some time this year, I find I'm instantly a better player as I've been conditioned to work around the awful frets and those Godawful strings.

Who'd have thunk it? Certainly not I. At any rate, hearing of virtual instruments' woes spurs me on to persist (bad English) with this approach. Thank you, Dave and Mark.

Dave, it's great to see you're still chiming in here from time to time; as I do with Mark's and some others here, I hang onto every word you share. Respect, bro'.

[mhschmieder]

I'm actually thinking of taking a three week workshop on flamenco guitar starting next week. Nothing to lose, right? Anyway, I doubt I'll ever be able to use MIDI to get even placeholder flamenco parts.

[Gravity Jim]

Do you have Cuba? It's big fun and inspirational, especially to one like me who was not immersed in those rhythms. I don't have Ultimate, so I didn't know if Cuba had been added....

[mhschmieder]

Cuba is part of Ultimate and is one of the main reasons I did the upgrade, but I haven't had a chance to use it in an actual project yet.

[monkey man]

I'm actually thinking of taking a three week workshop on flamenco guitar starting next week. Nothing to lose, right? Anyway, I doubt I'll ever be able to use MIDI to get even placeholder flamenco parts.

Music to my ears.

[Babz]

It's not part of Komplete Ultimate, as it was just released, and Komplete Ultimate is now several
months old.

Makes sense. But it is confusing in several places on the NI website where they make it look like part of Komplete. I had hoped that since it was released so soon after the previous Komplete update that they might have made it retroactively part of it. Not that I can ever recall them doing that. I guess it will be part of the next Komplete.

I like the idea, but I'm afraid this product will be just like the Scarbee Funk Guitarist - 500 patterns and not one of them will fit your song exactly.

Ah yes, one of the many dark recesses of Komplete Ultimate into which I still haven't even set foot once (same for George Duke Soul Treasures). I find that in general pattern type products work best when you use them as the starting point (groove inspiration) and build your tune around them, rather than trying to fit them into something already in progress.

And those Scarbee Bass instruments. Fantastic, but you listen to the demos and it's like, you've got the greatest bass player on the planet at your beck and call. But how do I make it sound like that! I feel like I need a two-day seminar to really learn and practice the interfaces of some of these products.

Yes the patterns can probably be edited but you're still forced to browse through all of them until you find "one" that's close and then
there's no way to make that pattern work throughout the entire song, or change it up randomly
like guitar players do.

So true, David. It's like, I've got gigabytes of instruments sitting on my drive, but it's all about *finding* the right one. I can hear my arrangement in my head in a flash, but by the time I've weeded through 700 not-quite choices .... I usually have to just settle for whatever I hit upon within the first 5 minutes, even though I know I might have something better out there somewhere.

At any rate, no sampled guitar VI works for a final track. They're awesome for arranging, but
at the end of the day you need a real guitar player for the real deal.

It depends. I'm a "real" guitarist, much better guitarist than keyboard player, but I still use these products for some situations. First of all, it's the right instrument, mic-ed up the right way, which saves time. Plus, everything has to be so perfect and precise nowadays, it can be really hard to play the same pattern over and over perfectly in time with today's quantized perfect music, with no squeaks and blemishes. Finally, I also use them for certain voices or progressions that I might not hit upon as a guitarist, without things like alternate tunings, etc. I don't use them for replacing the sound of a real guitarist as much as an additional type of guitar sound, something more modern. If I want to sound like classic rock guitar, that's easy enough. Nowadays "virtual" may be more vibe and happening than real.

Then there are all of the NI Animator-based products, which can be brilliant, if you use them right, but that's another topic.

Babz

[mhschmieder]

Yeah, I used to balk at such products, but found great use for Rise & Hit and a couple of related NI products in my Doctor Who project. It was what I heard in my head anyway, so it saved me time.

In terms of applying animator type functionality to things like guitar, I look at it as a better initial mockup to work towards in real playing in most cases.

I compose almost exclusively in my head these days, as ideas just effortlessly pop up all the time (I think this is just due to experience, as it was not so easy when I was younger). So I have short-hand techniques to write things down on manuscript paper fast enough to retain at least 75-90% of what's in my head, and often it's faster to do MIDI etc. rather than mic things up, just to capture more of the essence of my arrangement, timbre, feel, etc., before going back track-by-track for finals.

I might occasionally consider retaining something in final production, if it's isolated, in the background, or captures a particular articulation or style that just isn't available to me or anyone I can nail down quickly to overdub a part.

Still debating this one... I'm watching the GS and KVR threads to see if anyone posts useful real-world feedback, as several have purchased it already and are using it.

[monkey man]

I compose almost exclusively in my head these days, as ideas just effortlessly pop up all the time (I think this is just due to experience, as it was not so easy when I was younger). So I have short-hand techniques to write things down on manuscript paper fast enough to retain at least 75-90% of what's in my head, and often it's faster to do MIDI etc. rather than mic things up, just to capture more of the essence of my arrangement, timbre, feel, etc., before going back track-by-track for finals.

Exactly what I do, Mark.

Only difference is I can't read music so I'll jot something like this down:

D D D__ C_ B A G A__

where a solitary "note" is staccato, a "_" is, well, the next-shortest thing, and a "__" is longer still. Crude, but it works.

I imagine a 4-string bass's open strings as reference points as they're pretty much all I know. Whether I'm in fact imagining a D or not doesn't matter, of course; it's all relative.

[mhschmieder]

Whatever works. Remember, for centuries, each composer had their own shorthand technique. It was only when larger ensembles became the norm, as well as music publishing, that it became necessary to settle upon "standard manuscript", and even then, there were several competing schools for quite some time. Today, not so much, but occasionally someone breaks out because they feel our standardized system doesn't cover their own ideas.

It will be interesting to see if these new ways of working with computer-based rendering tools (which often bypass critical compositional steps) start to generate a new vernacular.