Electri6ity

[koolkeys]

I think sometimes we need to keep things in perspective. Is there any guitar library out there that will be able to fully replace and emulate EXACTLY how a real guitar sounds? No.

However, our audience won't know. I guarantee that the vast majority of listeners won't have a clue. The thing is, we are enthusiasts and audiophiles and musicians will easily point out the differences. Why? Because we not only listen more closely, but we also KNOW ahead of time that it's not real. We are more critical than the typical music listener. Simply put; most people just won't hear the difference. The fact is, libraries like this and the new one from Orange Tree Samples sound better than anything out there at the moment, and have come further than any other library has.

Of course we can't expect them to fool veteran guitar purists, but these libraries aren't FOR them. Why would they need them if they can play themselves? These libraries are for the rest of the world who can't play, or can't play very well. For people who need a good/great guitar part without having to spend 5 years to really truly learn the guitar. I've heard people say "just go buy a real guitar and learn it". But that's not always possible. If we did that with every instrument we don't know how to play, we would never write any music because we would be busy learning guitar, violin, drums, etc.

It's too easy to forget these things and that we're not usually playing our music for a crowd full of KVR members. I think these new libraries sound just fine when you keep these things in perspective.

I have not played Electri6ity, but I have noticed in the Youtube videos that everything LOOKS hard quantized. That probably doesn't help the cause too much.

Brent

[GeorgeZ]

Hey Brent

Yes, valid points, however, the thing that tends to happen with the average listener could very possibly be a state of "not like the song", cause something "sounds off". And I'm not talking about the KVR crowd. I'm talking Mr AC/CD fan etc. He may not know a real guitar from his elbow, but he'll notice that the song's not so "nice". Remember, I'm talking rock fan. I think it's down to micro-tonal variances (as mentioned earlier) and harmonics between strings that make it sound fake (and of course like you say, the quantisation doesn't help).

It sounds... erm midi. Valid points and "the average punter won't know the difference" doesn't change that.

Muso's don't settle, otherwise we'd all be playing Squires on Marshall 10's and mic-ing them up for stage shows cause "the average punter won't know the difference"

-GeorgeZ

PS: btw Brent, not a sqeak from IKM... guess the pedal are still on back order

[eDrummist]

These libraries are for the rest of the world who can't play, or can't play very well. For people who need a good/great guitar part without having to spend 5 years to really truly learn the guitar. I've heard people say "just go buy a real guitar and learn it". But that's not always possible. If we did that with every instrument we don't know how to play, we would never write any music because we would be busy learning guitar, violin, drums, etc.

Ha! Brent, we've had our differences, but I have to say that I think you just stated the case why some of us want realistic sounding guitar samples more eloquently than anyone has yet (and I've tried lots of times over the years). It seems impossible to start a thread on KVR about sampled guitar without at least one person posting something to the effect of "Just learn how to play the guitar." Kudos, really, Brent.

- eDrummist

[koolkeys]

Hey Brent

Yes, valid points, however, the thing that tends to happen with the average listener could very possibly be a state of "not like the song", cause something "sounds off". And I'm not talking about the KVR crowd. I'm talking Mr AC/CD fan etc. He may not know a real guitar from his elbow, but he'll notice that the song's not so "nice". Remember, I'm talking rock fan. I think it's down to micro-tonal variances (as mentioned earlier) and harmonics between strings that make it sound fake (and of course like you say, the quantisation doesn't help).

It sounds... erm midi. Valid points and "the average punter won't know the difference" doesn't change that.

Muso's don't settle, otherwise we'd all be playing Squires on Marshall 10's and mic-ing them up for stage shows cause "the average punter won't know the difference"

-GeorgeZ

I do get what you are saying, but I still believe from personal experience that if you put one of the more recent libraries(Electri6ity or Evolution) into a song, and people don't know it, they wouldn't know the difference. They would believe it's a real guitar because in their minds, there aren't any other options. If the programming is bad, too quantized, etc., they may notice something is off. But they won't know it's not a guitar. And most of the time, they just won't notice. It's hard for US to see and understand this because we know the technology that is out there AND the limitations of it.

Obviously, you still have to have good programming. Simply mousing in quantized parts isn't going to do it. It will still take some time. But if you do take the time, and mix that with the technology of the newer libraries, the amount of people who will actually think to themselves "wow, this guitar isn't actually a guitar" will be slim to none, IMO.

PS: btw Brent, not a sqeak from IKM... guess the pedal are still on back order

I am actually waiting on an email back from them already. I'll be in touch the exact moment I know something, I promise! I have not forgotten at all!

Brent

[koolkeys]

These libraries are for the rest of the world who can't play, or can't play very well. For people who need a good/great guitar part without having to spend 5 years to really truly learn the guitar. I've heard people say "just go buy a real guitar and learn it". But that's not always possible. If we did that with every instrument we don't know how to play, we would never write any music because we would be busy learning guitar, violin, drums, etc.

Ha! Brent, we've had our differences, but I have to say that I think you just stated the case why some of us want realistic sounding guitar samples more eloquently than anyone has yet (and I've tried lots of times over the years). It seems impossible to start a thread on KVR about sampled guitar without at least one person posting something to the effect of "Just learn how to play the guitar." Kudos, really, Brent.

- eDrummist

From our conversations about this guitar stuff, we think quite alike in many areas it seems.

Cheers.

Brent

[benjamind]

but the time will come when someone will stop throwing more samples at the problem and think about emulating the guitar more accurately. I hope.

It's already happened. Mokafix Audio.

But the last time I heard about his virtual bass in development was about 8 months ago, and I haven't really heard anything since.

At this point, even though it's likely to end up being released eventually, I will have to call it vaporware at this point in time. Unfortunate because I was really looking forward to it being released this year. I am doubtful it's going to happen this year. It probably won't. Maybe next year? Maybe not. Remember, last year I thought it was going to be released, that year has come and gone and now it's another year which will probably come and go too, again probably with nothing happening on the virtual bass/guitar stuff.

So we're all waiting for something that just doesn't seem to be coming on song.

When? Nobody knows that, I'd take a wild guess and say that not even Efflam knows that.

Ben

[GeorgeZ]

Hey Brent

Yes, valid points, however, the thing that tends to happen with the average listener could very possibly be a state of "not like the song", cause something "sounds off". And I'm not talking about the KVR crowd. I'm talking Mr AC/CD fan etc. He may not know a real guitar from his elbow, but he'll notice that the song's not so "nice". Remember, I'm talking rock fan. I think it's down to micro-tonal variances (as mentioned earlier) and harmonics between strings that make it sound fake (and of course like you say, the quantisation doesn't help).

It sounds... erm midi. Valid points and "the average punter won't know the difference" doesn't change that.

Muso's don't settle, otherwise we'd all be playing Squires on Marshall 10's and mic-ing them up for stage shows cause "the average punter won't know the difference"

-GeorgeZ

I do get what you are saying, but I still believe from personal experience that if you put one of the more recent libraries(Electri6ity or Evolution) into a song, and people don't know it, they wouldn't know the difference. They would believe it's a real guitar because in their minds, there aren't any other options. If the programming is bad, too quantized, etc., they may notice something is off. But they won't know it's not a guitar. And most of the time, they just won't notice. It's hard for US to see and understand this because we know the technology that is out there AND the limitations of it.

Obviously, you still have to have good programming. Simply mousing in quantized parts isn't going to do it. It will still take some time. But if you do take the time, and mix that with the technology of the newer libraries, the amount of people who will actually think to themselves "wow, this guitar isn't actually a guitar" will be slim to none, IMO.

PS: btw Brent, not a sqeak from IKM... guess the pedal are still on back order

I am actually waiting on an email back from them already. I'll be in touch the exact moment I know something, I promise! I have not forgotten at all!

Brent

I can agree with this. It's a fair statement. I'm have to say I'm specifically talking about overdriven and distorted guitars. I've heard some BLOODY awesome Spanish/Classical guitar (nylon) emus. Acoustic, not so much, seems like they have issues emulation the wood's resonance etc.

-GeorgeZ

PS: all good mate I know you're keeping them on their toes, no worries what so ever

[koolkeys]

I will say that I think part of why some of the Electri6ity demos don't sound good may be because they are using the built in Kontakt effects, which aren't nearly as good as some of the more recent sims.

Bad emulations can definitely sound bad, but a bad or mediocre sim can also hurt the sound. And I still go back to the quantized thing. I wonder what some of those would sound like played in real time?

Hard to say.

Brent

[SuperNashwan]

but the time will come when someone will stop throwing more samples at the problem and think about emulating the guitar more accurately. I hope.

It's already happened. Mokafix Audio.

Maybe this isn't the thread for it, but I doubt we'll see a popular commercial modelling instrument for anything in the next five years. It's felt like it might be just round the corner for at least the last five years and it hasn't happened yet.
What I was getting at was more what is currently technically possible with samples, if a developer bothered to put their mind to it. Strings being struck while in motion sounding different is something sampling can achieve if the desire is there (see the Quantum Leap pianos). The microtonal shifts a guitarist produces can be emulated using Kontakt scripting, humanised vibrato can and has been emulated with Kontakt scripting (why isn't this a standard feature now?!), pattern machine gunning where a rapidly repeated sequence of notes triggers audibly identical patterns of samples can be eliminated if developers aren't too lazy to just rely on Kontakt's own inadequate round robin abilities. Hell, I have a guitar and a DI here, if I had the time to record and edit tens of thousands of samples, I'd do it myself.

That said, I don't want to do down Electri6ity too much, if for example the continuously variable amount of muting works, that's a major advancement.

[dmichaelsmusic]

I don't know if you all have seen it but this video is pretty impressive with the realism this guy is getting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3mUi7LPdU
You can really hear the subtle human touch to the samples being triggered. I can especially hear these variances on the attacks of the notes where the picking sound really has a lot of variations depending on how he is playing the line and his velocity. I agree with what everybody is saying though about those demos I think they are just too quantized for their own good.

[koolkeys]

I don't know if you all have seen it but this video is pretty impressive with the realism this guy is getting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3mUi7LPdU
You can really hear the subtle human touch to the samples being triggered. I can especially hear these variances on the attacks of the notes where the picking sound really has a lot of variations depending on how he is playing the line and his velocity. I agree with what everybody is saying though about those demos I think they are just too quantized for their own good.

I agree, this sounds much better. The quantized demos don't seem to do the library complete justice.

Brent

[dynamitec]

Hi guys,

interesting discussion!

Two things I want to mention:
1) The demos were all done with the 1.0 version of Electri6ity (except for the two newest ones - Power Metal & Modern Mix, those were done using the beta 1.1). The 1.1 version is coming soon and we spent a lot of time tweaking and improving things! It will rise the library to an even higher level.

2) I would be interested in what you think about the demo 'Beyond Belief' (you'll find it on http://www.vir2.com/instruments/electri6ity, third demo in the player). It should sound a lot more loose and less quantized than the old demos. Let me know!

Cheers,
Benjamin

[tq]

Hi Benjamin,

I bought Electricity recently, and it's fabulous. Just a question regarding the 1.1 update: Will this be available via your website or the NI service center?

Furthermore, would it be possible to provide the users with some MIDI files of performances? I find it much easier to learn how things are done by having a look at such examples than trying everything myself on the basis of the manual (well, trying without the manual is also fun...). I would especially appreciate strumming examples (and here: the 'heavier' stuff...).

Best,
TQ

[peterjgross]

Hi guys,

interesting discussion!

Two things I want to mention:
1) The demos were all done with the 1.0 version of Electri6ity (except for the two newest ones - Power Metal & Modern Mix, those were done using the beta 1.1). The 1.1 version is coming soon and we spent a lot of time tweaking and improving things! It will rise the library to an even higher level.

2) I would be interested in what you think about the demo 'Beyond Belief' (you'll find it on http://www.vir2.com/instruments/electri6ity, third demo in the player). It should sound a lot more loose and less quantized than the old demos. Let me know!

Cheers,
Benjamin

To me 'Beyond Belief' is the best demo because it sounds more musical than the others. When i first listened to the demos i thought that all of them were using heavily distorted sounds. I actually like to hear the quality of the undistorted sounds. I think that there you would hear the difference between a lively natural sound and a synth like sound.
Anyways, i decided to buy the library and am not disappointed. The quality is better than anything else in that area i have heard. And I did not really expect to beat a real guitar player with it.

[dynamitec]

Hi everybody,

here is a first (and very detailed) user review of Electri6ity:
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=41955