Evolution Bluegrass Banjo

We are pleased to present Evolution Bluegrass Banjo, an extensively sampled fingerpicked banjo library. The banjo we sampled for the library provides a sweet, clear bell tone, with plenty of body to its sound as well. The library's tone is quite versatile, able to provide an elegant, pure sustain, but also an immediate, powerful attack for adding drive to your song when the need arises. This banjo is no stranger to a plucky, gritty sound either, which can be achieved through its louder dynamics, playing closer to the bridge, or harnessing the available built-in effect options.

Evolution Bluegrass Banjo is based on our Evolution engine, which provides you with a wealth of appointments: an innovative strumming pattern editor, automatic chord detection, and a robust built-in effects engine. If you've used any of our guitar or bass libraries that use the Evolution engine, its interface and workflow will be very familiar to you. The library includes many factory presets for ready-to-use classic and modern banjo tones that fit right into the mix.

We developed the library in collaboration with Rosewood Recording Company, one of Utah's most venerable recording studios. Guy Randle, the owner and recording engineer at Rosewood Recording Company, incorporated analog audio equipment to skillfully sculpt and emphasize the rich tonal qualities of the banjo.

For the sampling session, Guy Randle recorded the versatile multi-instrumentalist Ryan Tilby. Known for his broad palette of sounds and styles, Ryan Tilby has performed at Telluride, Merlefest, FanFest, RockyGrass, and countless of other festivals throughout the United States, as well as having toured Europe multiple times. His music has been featured on Duck Dynasty, the Discovery Channel, and on Outdoor Photo Adventures. Ryan Tilby also offers remote recording services for clients around the world needing guitar, banjo, bass, mandolin, and ukulele tracks.

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Key Features:

- Built-in strum pattern editor with presets for authentic banjo rolls.

- Adjustable pick position using our proprietary physical modeling technology.

- Powerful mapping system that lets you set how you want to trigger articulations, using conditions such as velocity ranges, MIDI CCs, latching and non-latching keyswitches, and more.

Sampling specifications:

- 5.1 GB (compressed to 2.2 GB using the lossless NCW audio format) of 24-bit samples.

- Articulations such as sustains, mutes, and natural harmonics, plus special effects like string slaps, the sound of the thumbpick brushing and tapping the head of the banjo, and more.

- MIDI articulations for instant upward/downward grace notes, buzz trills, whole-step slides, whole-step hammer-ons, and slides (velocity-based and tempo-synced).

- Legato samples for slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs.

- Sampled at 3 dynamics with 4x round-robin, including alternating fingerpicks (depending on the string).

Evolution Bluegrass Banjo licenses Native Instruments' Kontakt Player sampler software. Consequently, owning the full version of Kontakt is not necessary, and Evolution Bluegrass Banjo operates without limitations within the free Kontakt Player application/plugin. This also allows the sample library to be listed in the libraries tab in Kontakt for convenient access.

Evolution Bluegrass Banjo is NKS-ready. The integration with the Native Kontrol Standard presents many benefits, both when using the library in the Komplete Kontrol software as well as in conjunction with Komplete Kontrol hardware, such as the Komplete Kontrol S-Series keyboards and Maschine.

We recommend using Evolution Bluegrass Banjo with a Komplete Kontrol S-Series keyboard for the full experience. While not a requirement, you will be able to take advantage of the Native Kontrol Standard for an intuitive connection between software instruments and hardware.