A Beatles Virtual Instrument

[Frodo]

I know this is an odd place to be at a time like this (midnight on 25 Dec)... but it's the quietest place I know right now. Nice place to be when one wants to just think or not think.

Somehow, all the OSX and DP foolishness we deal with daily are meaningless right now.

In the stillness of the night you can cry out-- and the echo that comes back is a laugh. Such is the case tonight. Strange, isn't it?

Peace to you all, dear friends. Bless you.

[zed]

In the stillness of the night you can cry out-- and the echo that comes back is a laugh. Such is the case tonight. Strange, isn't it?

<chuckle>

Did someone put a dash of something special in your eggnog??

Peace to you all, dear friends. Bless you.

Thank you for your kind words, Mr Frodo. Participating in this thread has been one of the enjoyable constants through out this year. I look forward to continuing to share more Beatle VI and guitar tips in the year to come.

Happy holidays to all of you Beatle and DP enthusiasts out there!

[Frodo]

In the stillness of the night you can cry out-- and the echo that comes back is a laugh. Such is the case tonight. Strange, isn't it?

<chuckle>

Did someone put a dash of something special in your eggnog??

As a matter of fact, they did-- but that's a tad beside the point!!

Between my musical efforts and subsequent rant on 24 Dec, there was an odd desire to jot a new idea for a romantic seasonal choral composition into DP but things just didn't work properly-- I had a total malfunction which led to a blood-curdling CRASH!!

So, a little nog took the edge off and, ironically, I came to my senses.

It's really okay sometimes to leave DP alone when it doesn't want to play nice.

[Frodo]

"I've Got Some New Year's Resolutions"

sung to the tune of "Revolution"

Great boobs!! (animated-- rated G for the kiddies)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLk3IFTDhkg

[Frodo]

PLAY UPDATE____ 1.0.041 is posted.

This 32-bit version evidently breaks the RAM limit.

I already anticipate that it includes some kind of deamon server which will run in Activity Monitor even when you quit DP-- so I'll be checking out its behavior and reporting back.

VSL does something similar..

Thanks to RecordingArts for this heads up!

[Frodo]

One important thing:

.041 is NOT a public release officially and will not be found on the PLAY updates page just yet.

Go to Doug's sticky for the update link.

http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/show ... post104675

[twistedtom]

Happy new year Frodo, may all the hobbits have a good year.

[Frodo]

Happy new year Frodo, may all the hobbits have a good year.

Thanks, Tom-- and the highest regards to all of you Big People in the Northwest Farthing for a prosperous and healthy 2008.

May none of us have to go to Mordor this year!!

[Frodo]

More on PLAY 1.0.041:

It really does break the RAM limits-- and is compatible with both Tiger and Leopard.

Earlier today, I basically loaded every patch in the library in DP-- 42 instances!!

DP's CPU= 60%
DP's buffers = 256

Still testing controller assignments and other parameters in both DP and Logic 8-- will report back soon.

The old DP GUI issues are gone. There's one minor NEW issue, though-- the browser tends to flash white (violently) each time another directory level is chosen. Sometimes the directory level window goes blank white, but re-navigating seems to fix this with a second attempt.

Granted-- this was a stress test-- who needs to run the entire library at once?

But a 256 buffer and a 60% CPU hit leaves a lot of headroom. I usually do VIs with a 512 buffer, so the CPU% will go down. Also, once I load in a more practical template-- maybe 6-7 instances, DP might actually sleep through projects.

This version is by far the best they've done to date.

[monkey man]

Dang.

I'll bet I could take 6 months off and this thread would still be a rollin' upon my retun.

[Frodo]

Dang.

I'll bet I could take 6 months off and this thread would still be a rollin' upon my retun.

6 months easily, MM.

And to think-- our first anniversary is just three weeks away!

Now that PLAY is in 64-bit Beta, we're REALLY just getting started! This is such a significant development. Never in a million years would I ever imagine that I could load up almost all of FabFour at once.

Of course, you realize that this means I'll be back to my old RAM-mongery now that the plugin can really make use of it. 16 is the new 4 (in GB).

[zed]

Happy Beatley New Year, Beatley people!

Just trying out v.1.0.041 now. A few things still need some work, but it's certainly functioning much more efficiently than it was a few months back.

Guess I need to consider buying more RAM now too... except I would probably be wiser to think about getting an Intel Mac. My G5 is running into the red in many of my projects. It is actually affecting my workflow considerably.

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

EastWest says they're having "Their biggest holiday sale ever" and it ends tomorrow...

I wondered if you guys think FabFour delivers as promised? Will Paul and Ringo come over and lay down some bass and drums ? : )

Is there anything else at EastWest that you guys love?

I'm pretty good on basic orchestral sounds with MSI, Philharmonik and Symphonic Choirs (Well, it's good enough for Rock and Roll anyway : )

[Frodo]

I wondered if you guys think FabFour delivers as promised? Will Paul and Ringo come over and lay down some bass and drums ? : )

Delivers as promised. Hmm. For lack of a better answer, I'll have to say yes when considering what was promised.

Now-- does it deliver as expected? Different story. The sounds are certainly nice for what they are. They are indeed very Beatley. I wish there were more articulations for a start. The most elaborate guitars will have some single note samples and there may be a keyswitch or two for note bend up, note bend down, a single major triad or a single minor triad. Some guitars have shorter notes or longer ones, but these tend to be more song related than instrument related. By that, I mean that if a particular Beatle song might have had a guitar doing a certain kind of bend in one spot, then that's the one and only bend they sampled. But if you wanted to use that particular guitar sound on your own song, you are bound to the particular bend they chose for that guitar.

These are not universal guitars, necessarily, and making a convincing guitar part will require some delicate CC# massaging. I don't have a guitar-to-MIDI controller, but I understand that there are some coveted control assignments which still have not been implemented. While listening to the Gypsy demo, the same kind of ear fatigue kicked in with the guitars very quickly. I haven't tried MOR, but I suspect that the diversity of instruments comes at the expense of a variety of articulations. Too many notes just sound too much the same.

There's no fret or pick noise to speak of, and although there is an envelope control in five stages I've yet to experiment with MIDI control over these in "real" time. To my thinking, this is the key to breaking up the monotony from note to note-- but it's an awful lot of work to compensate for a lack of strum samples and other articulations.

There are only three bass patches-- only one of them is a Hofner. Georges Gretsch and John's Gibson acoustic J-160E are sorely underrepresented or non-existent, but there are a few other nice sounding acoustic guitars, both 6- and 12-string.

Guitar sounds abound, but the bass and drums and percussion are much more universal. These don't necessarily have to be used in a Beatle context, and I'll likely get more mileage out of them. But you've got backwards flutes for Strawberry Fields-- nice, but how many times can you use it? The Lady Madonna piano is a little less like Lady Madonna and more like the Obla-di, Obla-da piano, but again we're talking a specialized honky tonk piano that isn't exactly work-a-day. Sitar is nice and very usable. Hand claps, girls screaming, yeah-yeah-yeah-- lots of fun.

Most of the sounds were taken from middle and late recording styles, so if you want an early Beatles combo it may be hard to accomplish.

As far as Mac/DP friendliness, I have to give the 64-bit Beta fairly high marks. Loading up the entire library at once was stunning to see with all 8 GB of installed RAM in use at once.

I bought FabFour to experiment with PLAY more than anything else. My serious work is done with other libraries, but I wanted to keep tabs on when SO and SC would make the transition to it's 64-bit PLAY version originally announced last January.

If you buy FabFour, definitely get it on sale. But I can't call it a must-have because it's such a specialized library. One may tire of it quickly.

Is there anything else at EastWest that you guys love?

I know you have Miro, but EWQLSO is comparatively remarkable sonically speaking. Once it goes to PLAY, it's a safe bet that they'll jack the price to make up for two years of discounts. If you're going for a substantial discount the heftier libraries are well worth it. It was the only way I could have gotten EWQLSO Plat XP, for example.

I've not heard the EWQL Pianos or Galaxy Pianos-- Galaxy was done in 5.1, fwiw-- the demo sounds pretty good (hammer felts sound worn at times, not bad, tho). The demo for Bosendorfer 290 is nice-- but Ivory has kept me from going nuts on piano VIs.

Colossus has had my attention for some time for that video game tech semi-ethnic rock stuff. I guess they used a good deal of this library in Goliath. One of these might offer you quite a variety of sounds in the Yes-Genesis genre, if you like that stuff.

That's about all of EW I can speak to.

I'm pretty good on basic orchestral sounds with MSI, Philharmonik and Symphonic Choirs (Well, it's good enough for Rock and Roll anyway : )

I guess much depends on whether you want to diversify or take what you have up another notch.

How are you set for guitar strings or extra hard drives?

[zed]

Wow. That was quite the review, Mr Frodo. Right on the money. I definitely wish that the guitars had more articulations, and were sampled as instruments in their own right, as opposed to instruments used to create a particular Beatles song. There are some great sounding samples, but I do wish they were more extensive.

The Gypsy, MOR and StormDrum libraries also have some fabulous instruments which are very useful, but collecting them all is rather costly. If you are interested, then taking advantage of the sale prices is probably a good idea.

They do have that Trial Box: http://www.soundsonline.com/PLAY-Trial- ... PLAYT.html but the sale will have concluded by the time you decided to purchase... although you might call them directly and order the trial box, and ask them to honour the sale prices for you until after you have checked out the products.