Tim Smith

Bolder sounds bagpipes was my go to, still is but apparently they don't sell it any more?? I can't find it in his catalog. Best Service offers some things that would fit well into a single instrument mock up or for a celtic arrangement. I have some of Eduardo Tarilonte's celtic librarys and they are pretty impressive.You may need to download free ENGINE player, especially with his older libraries. Here is one Celtic ERA 2 It's 25 gigs . Maybe something to consider.

I have a real one, but it's small. None of the vsti ones seemed to fit for me. The bodhran wasn't hard for me, but then I never added a bunch of the fancy stuff.

I didn't go crazy over black friday like I generally do. I'm not bapu in plugin count but I know I'm close. Anything I wanted I pretty much have and anything else I didn't really need. I was waiting for Fabfilter Pro Q 4. I updated my Melodyne and bought Arturia Pigments ti add to my V collection. I am using a fully functional but going obsolete computer, also thinking about maybe a Mac lappy in the future, so tossing that all aound. I'll prolly still build another PC, but one of my buds is mac and I might like to work with him possibly. I bought a Universal Audio 4/76 and picked up an Alvarez on discount at my local Guitar Center. Not quite Yairi but some of that DNA , while Chinese, my Martin X had a bag in the sound hole that you have to put a 9 volt battery in. What was Martin thinking? So the Alvarez is perfect as it has the smaller body, has decent electronics and the battery can be changed outside the guitar, also has a tuner. I love it. Action is slightly high but it builds my calluses. I haven't had the time to download the EZD3 I just upgraded to. I have a friend who, no joke, uses Digital Performer and upgraded Garage band and has made numerous CDs and has them out there. His mixes are stellar. Also uses GB to make accompaniment tracks and has NEVER bought another plug in. He has taught me a lesson in minimalism. I just never follow it if I come here

Well I sprung for it. Now I have overkill on my overkill lol. The guys at toontrack were very helpful with me when there was an issue with EZD 2. I have a few of those paks. EZD3 is about 15 gigs, so not a light download. I can't download it right now, but hopefully this afternoon. Not sure if EZD 3 uses some of the EZD 2 samples? There have only been a few programs where I went back to the older version because I preferred it better. Since it needs to probably see EZD 2, I probably should not consider dumping it just yet. I know they have record of that in my portal as well. You know how computers and programs are. Everything has to be done in the right order. Thanks for the FYI on the search function. Demoing 300 drum loops is similar to me demoing 300 string patches. No joy. Thankfully these programs have gotten better at metadata and search functions. I bought 3 drum paks over the holidays and I don't remember the program I bought them for . I believe it was AD. I don't think we should have to buy 100 midi paks to get something decent out of these programs and for the most part, unless it's something very odd, the staple loops are pretty good. Part of me thinks that having two drum programs at 15gigs each, maybe I should have thought more about Superior drummer instead, but I do things to the bass drums and acoustics anyways, so those base kits can be 'tweaked'. I wonder how many here are still mapping each track in Cakewalk? I seldom do that any more.

Believe it or not Addictive Drums seems to fit a lot of my mixes best and I haven't used EZ as much. I admit a lot of that could just be what I've gotten accustomed to. I'm not even a drummer but this suff fascinates me.

I am looking at this as a possibility although I must have like 10 other drum kits. I think my upgrade would be 99.00 and then the 20% through Febuary. Has anyone used the AI features in EZD 3? THat seems to be the improvement with maybe a few more samples added.

Interesting. Nice mix.

Nice track jack.

You software guys, have you ever had the thought that maybe all of this free software coming from a certain country or associated countries as free for all kinds of things could harbor bad stuff? Or is it just me? Free is free right? As in no i.e. pop ups or verifications necessary. There was a time when a version of Cakewalk was this. No more.

This is all AI embedded stuff they can use to capitalize on our systems when the big AI takeover happens. I am kidding. Or am I?

Great guitar tones here. It's nice of you to help those guys out!

Thanks guys!

So like, well like, I mean like, how random are we allowed to be?

I used mellotron in the beginning. The rest wasn't as mellow, so I didn't.

I believe there may have been some advantages, however I much prefer the present way things are. So long as I can mold my thoughts into something I envisioned I like it. DAWs are amazing. I'm not smoking anything, I swear.

Now where's my magnet?

Thanks for comments.

I have a couple of recents but decided to put this one up first since it has vocals.

I sang this one in German.

I used pigments on a few electronic songs and it has worked well. Still trying to figure out how to get UNIFY to recognize all of my plugins so I can combine it wil other elements in that program. But yeah, I like acoustic stuff. A lot. Here is a random pic I snapped just yesterday of some of my instruments. I keep them handy so I can just grab one if I need it. Not as fast as changing a synth patch, but more rewarding.

My latest.

This is probably my first delve into Country Rock, which I really am beginning to embrace as a new favorite. Not all of my music has religious themes but this one does. After mixing it and coming back to it, it seems to be a bit sloppy in some places. If you can get past the intro the song livens up. After all these years mixing I still encounter issues with having a master that needs some control on the master buss of the DAW, so like any person who wants to make a good mix I will not drive limiters to the max, but try to keep it plenty loud. The headphone output on my UA Volt 4/76 is at about half volume and when playing my mix back through it my computer volume controlling it needed to be at 66% for me to be happy with the volume. After I dropped it into TRacks for mastering, My LUFs were ok and on to SC upload. Then the track seems to have less volume. I particulalry noted a difference in experience here between headphones and listening on my monitors since I did a lot of panning which sounds better on your ears directly. If I drive the track really hot it looses all dynamics which seems to be the only way to make it comfortable loud on SC.

I think probably the very first country like tune I've ever made. I realize I need to get a new neck for my main guitar so solo parts were a little bit of a struggle. I was messing about with guitar tones and found this nice "toner rock" setting in my old HD500 that worked well with the tele setting in my variax.. I erased the rock parts I had been working on and this evolved. If tele isn't country I don't know what is. I'm all over the flipping place lately. I just sit down and whatever deveopes develops. The graphic looks a lot better in SC. The link here blows the pic up so you can't really tell it's a set of hands holding a man.

@Paul Bush Thanks for listening and comments. @KSband Working on tryiing to get these rock mixes right. One reason I'm here. Thanks for your advice.