Sonic Reality

SJ_Digriz · Post by **SJ_Digriz** » Thu Nov 24, 2011 2:51 am

Have to admit I'm looking forward to the roto's.

james_m · Post by **james_m** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:00 pm

Just wondered if there were any more updates on this? Looking forward to hearing these packs in action.

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:47 am

Actually there's even MORE than 4 kits coming for BFD2. I think we'll start a discounted pre-order on Monday for some of these first ones. Should be available for download very soon. Just ironing out installer details and things like that. The kits themselves are done.

mike1k · Post by **mike1k** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 7:01 pm

Monday.....Tuesday.....

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:25 pm

Hey Squids, nice to see this happening. How many layers and articulations are we talking here (specifically on the Ken Scott kit)? Did you use any of the round robin features from BFD 2.2 and on?

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:59 am

There are a lot of little details with BFD kits to deal with... more than I personally understand to be honest. Installer stuff and codes and things. I've been watching my main BFD guy go back and forth on it for weeks! So it's really REALLY really really close now.

Although at this point we should have 7 new products coming from the EpiK DrumS series and I'll tell you if that does well then there very well could be a lot more coming. But, first thing's first.

FBET, the layers vary from kit piece to kit piece but there's more than we usually do and less than some companies do... but enough to take advantage of the round robin feature which works by adjacent velocities and is adjustable by the end user.

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:08 am

Cool Squids, I'll keep an eye out for them. I've been REALLY interested in the Ken Scott stuff, but I'm married to BFD2. When it comes to drums, it just works for me like Kontakt never does.

Slightly OT, but was there talk at some point of some piano libraries recorded by Ken Scott or did I just make that up? I'd really love some Beatles-esque piano sounds, but most libraries seem to either avoid character pianos all together, or just go for an altogether different sound.

electro · Post by **electro** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 7:57 am

Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:Cool Squids, I'll keep an eye out for them. I've been REALLY interested in the Ken Scott stuff, but I'm married to BFD2. When it comes to drums, it just works for me like Kontakt never does.

Slightly OT, but was there talk at some point of some piano libraries recorded by Ken Scott or did I just make that up? I'd really love some Beatles-esque piano sounds, but most libraries seem to either avoid character pianos all together, or just go for an altogether different sound.

The BFD interface is just perfect. It would be so nice to have those NI Abbey Road and Wavesfactory kits inside BFD instead of having to use Kontakt.

I didn't know the beatles used a special piano.

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:58 am

electro wrote:
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:Cool Squids, I'll keep an eye out for them. I've been REALLY interested in the Ken Scott stuff, but I'm married to BFD2. When it comes to drums, it just works for me like Kontakt never does.

Slightly OT, but was there talk at some point of some piano libraries recorded by Ken Scott or did I just make that up? I'd really love some Beatles-esque piano sounds, but most libraries seem to either avoid character pianos all together, or just go for an altogether different sound.
The BFD interface is just perfect. It would be so nice to have those NI Abbey Road and Wavesfactory kits inside BFD instead of having to use Kontakt.

I didn't know the beatles used a special piano.

Actually on a Beatlesque kit, particularly the tea towel Ringo style Ludwig Downbeat, there IS one coming for BFD as part of the EpiK DrumS/Ken Scott Collection. It'd be more faithful to the real thing that the Abbey Road one because Ken actually recorded The Beatles back in the day (White Album and Magical Mystery Tour). The engineers who did the Abbey Road one, while still great on their own, weren't the ones who recorded The Beatles originally and didn't use all the same mics and miking placement - at least according to Ken who was there. But... still cool anyway. Except those won't be in BFD and these will so for that alone it may be of interest to you.

As for Beatlesque pianos well... a couple things there too. There IS actually an Abbey Road Keyboards Refill for Reason. I have it and it's really cool because it does have samples of the instruments used on all sorts of records done at Abbey Road over the years including some that were used by The Beatles. Although some pianos used on some of these classic albums done at Abbey Road and Trident have been restrung and apparently don't sound quite the same... again this is what I've heard from Ken and several others (I actually helped Ken with his book and we went around and interviewed a bunch of people who work at Abbey Road that have been there since the 60s and they're still there!).

Anyway, the other aspect of what makes a Beatlesque piano is how it is miked. Ken uses a very particular and unusual selection for miking a piano which usually involves old tube mics like the KM56 and U67. They sometimes used a really obscure AKG mic called a D19 as well. These all have a particular sound as does the desks they recorded through which would be the old EMI desks (Telefunken V72 mic pres or the REDD 47) and when they recorded at Trident (Hey Jude was recorded there among other tracks) they used a Trident A Range.

The piano we DID do with Ken IS released. It's called the Classic Rock Piano. It was recorded by Ken during the EpiK DrumS sessions and actually the piano itself was used on loads of albums. The studio used to be called American Studios. But now it's called Emblem and it is owned by Matt Serletic, Matchbox 20's producer. It's a Steinway. Very nice. It's available in various formats on www.esoundz.com

But we also sampled an Imperial Grand with Alan Parsons that's coming. I also phoned Ken to get some tips on recording that and a Beckstein upright which were both done at a studio owned by Mark Knopfler that has more old Abbey Road gear than Abbey Road!!!!! They have the EMI console that was used on Dark Side of the Moon, the same model 12345 board (and this specific one was used on Band on The Run), as well as an old REDD tube EMI desk that is the same model used on Sgt Peppers (and that's the desk pictured in the book Recording The Beatles). So.... if you want Beatlesy and Floydy pianos boy do we have some good ones coming.

allen_esoundz · Post by **allen_esoundz** » Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:13 pm

We're very excited to announce that the first title of a new range of drum kit products for FXPansion s BFD2, EpiK DrumS BFD: Bill Cobham is up for pre-order (available for download at the end of this month!).

You can find it here http://www.esoundz.com/details.php?ProductID=4857

gmontano · Post by **gmontano** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 3:55 am

very cool. I have this in kontakt format and will definitely pick up to play on vdrums with BFD.

zedd · Post by **zedd** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 5:05 pm

Squids wrote:The piano we DID do with Ken IS released. It's called the Classic Rock Piano. It was recorded by Ken during the EpiK DrumS sessions and actually the piano itself was used on loads of albums. The studio used to be called American Studios. But now it's called Emblem and it is owned by Matt Serletic, Matchbox 20's producer. It's a Steinway. Very nice. It's available in various formats on www.esoundz.com

Hello Squids!

Doing a search for "Classic Rock Piano" on the eSoundz site only brings up the Reason Refill version, which is the only one I have ever seen. I've been waiting for this piano and the other Beatley pianos you spoke of to be available for Kontakt or SampleTank. Is it possible that the Classic Rock Piano has been created in various formats but still hasn't been put up on the site?

Squids wrote:But we also sampled an Imperial Grand with Alan Parsons that's coming. I also phoned Ken to get some tips on recording that and a Beckstein upright which were both done at a studio owned by Mark Knopfler that has more old Abbey Road gear than Abbey Road!!!!! They have the EMI console that was used on Dark Side of the Moon, the same model 12345 board (and this specific one was used on Band on The Run), as well as an old REDD tube EMI desk that is the same model used on Sgt Peppers (and that's the desk pictured in the book Recording The Beatles). So.... if you want Beatlesy and Floydy pianos boy do we have some good ones coming.

I think it has now been more than 2 years since you got me salivating about these pianos, back when everyone was discussing the imminent arrival of Alicia's Keys. I still want these Beatley pianos a lot. Every time I get an eSoundz newsletter announcing a sale, I keep hoping that some of these more Beatley/classic rock products will have come available, but alas it has been a long while since there was a new product in a genre and format that interested me.

You must be working hard on something.

Were these Beckstein and Imperial Grand pianos actually recorded through the old EMI consoles? That would be ultra cool. I wanna use these things right now!!

Fingers crossed,

Zeddman

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:50 am

Yes they were recorded through the EMI desks. We have a lot of products that are in the 80% done area but that last 20% requires a bit of focus time to complete is all. Then it's a question of what format(s). Originally we were thinking of making a massive piano plug-in powered by Kontakt but that might take too much time and resources considering everything else we have going on. Plus things like that already exist. So, instead, while we do have that degree of material (and it's masssssive) I think in the meantime we'll do 500-1gig sized pianos with that stuff in the usual formats. Maybe someday we'll do the 20 gigabyte piano or whatever it is. I think it's more important to release a playable instrument at all... and actually I want to use them to so believe me there's incentive to finish it.

Anyway, we've got a lot of new multisample instruments to release this year. We've built up quite a few things.

zedd · Post by **zedd** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:02 am

Squids wrote:Maybe someday we'll do the 20 gigabyte piano or whatever it is.

FWIW, I got that 60GB Bechstein Piano from EastWest that was recorded by Ken Scott. And the bottom line for me was that it was just too big. It requires a lot of resources, has longer loaded times, and is not as smooth as I would like things on my system. Even my Ivory Upright Pianos are too resource hungry for my liking. I still tend to prefer using my Sonic Reality/SampleTank pianos which are under 100Mb total.

So you have proved that a tiny sized instrument can sound great. It would be great to have some instruments that are a little bit more detailed than that, but have that same lovely character that you have managed to capture in the past. As for a 20GB piano, I would be interested in trying it one day, but I don't think a piano really needs to be that big. I think you are right to focus on pianos that are 1GB-2GB or less.

I can't wait to get my hands on these new pianos. I predict that they will be my new go-to pianos and will have all my other stuff collecting dust on the shelf.

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 6:40 am

Yeah. I think anywhere from 200mb to 2gigabytes is enough for a piano to sound detailed and what's more important is the sound of the piano itself and the recording of it. There are a lot of great sampled pianos out there. But what you get that's unique to each library and developer is the different character of the specific pianos that were sampled. For me, I like to have a variety of them on hand since that's one of the main benefits of this virtual world of sampling. So I too don't want to take up massive amounts of memory on my hard drive for EVERY instrument. Adds up quick! I'm always running out of space on hard drives as it is.

I think what some people forget is that the most important thing to get from a sampled sound is how good it can sound within a musical context. Another equally important thing is that it inspires you when you play it. To me as long as those two points are hit then it doesn't matter what the specs are as long as it was enough to make those two things shine. The listener doesn't know or care how many gigabytes your samples were. They just hear the end result and respond to it if it sounds good! But that doesn't mean anything can work. Some instruments can work well with more or less samples, longer or shorter durations with loops etc. Sometimes less dynamic sample switching makes it more controllable and sometimes more dynamic switching gives it much appreciated animation without much sacrifice of control. There's no blanket solution to all sounds. No magic spec to go for unless you just want to look good on paper which some companies prefer to do. It's always good to start with more because even if you make it fit into a certain size you have more choices.... but it also takes a lot longer and that's what we have to do with the piano samples. There's tons of them to go through. But they sound great and they will surely yield some incredibly cool results. I'm going to get back to them very soon in fact.

Anyway this thread is about BFD! haha. We worked very hard to get 7 new BFD kit products ready for release in the next month or two. That's exciting. We've bottle necked a lot of products that will be coming out in the first half of this year. A good time for anyone who loves Sonic Reality sounds.

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Four New Drum Kit Products for BFD2 Coming Soon!