PavlovsCat

I agree. I've been with friends who have lost a child and it is my greatest fear in life.

I was 21 when my sister, 26 years old and 6 months pregnant died. My eldest sister lived to be 48. Honestly, the day that gets to me the most? This stupid Hallmark holiday called Siblings Day when I see a bunch of posts from friends. I'm happy for them, but it's tough. I've never posted in this thread, but I've read every post, starting with the first heartbreaking post. A lot of us are familiar with pain and loss and I just thought, especially during this time - one friend I made several years ago from KVR lost 4 friends from COVID-19 during the last year and he's in his 40s -- it can be important to share our grief and let others know they're not alone.

This is way too personal and I'll delete it later, but @Esteban Villanovaand @cclarry your posts resonated. I'm all that's left of my entire family, including three siblings. My mother was a working musician and music teacher and my three siblings and I were all trained musicians from an early age. I started on piano then organ, but my siblings formed a family band and decided I had a natural talent for drums, so I became the family band's drummer. So for years, we performed at recitals and events as a family band. Recently one of my brother's friends found my name in a FB group we're both in and publicly asked me, one by one, how each of my siblings were doing. It was probably the most depressing subthread ever. After telling him that each sibling died except my brother, who was then in the hospital dying of lung cancer, he wrote, "You're joking, right?" I responded, "I'm not sure of which universe this would be considered funny in, but it's definitely not the one I'm living in." Then I tried to lighten things up -- as much as wass possible -- with a really dark joke, "Even Skynyrd has more surviving members. And even I wouldn't buy a ticket to see a band who's only remaining member is the drummer." So yeah, I'm all that's left and way too familiar with tragedy. The same year my son was born, my first child was born, my remaining sister died. My father within two months. My brother, the eldest, died more recently of lung cancer. But for our family he was super old, 61. It's incredibly tough to lose someone close to you like a sibling. That longing to see them again doesn't go away, you just get used to it. I thank God I had my kids because that's what kept me going. Three months is nothing when you just lost someone with you your entire life until recently. Estaban. My heart goes out to you. I want to encourage you to actively seek ways to stay positive. As for my youngest sister, she was a hero to me. I talk about her regularly to my kids and important things she taught me in life to ensure they know all about her and how important she was in shaping who I am. It doesn't bring her back, but letting my kids and others know what a wonderful person she was and how much she influenced my life is a way of honoring her and it means something to me and is kind of my way of showing gratitude. I realize that this is a long way from the purpose of this forum, but hey, this is a difficult time for people all over the world (due to the pandemic), so I think if you made a post to tell us a little about what you loved about your sister, it would be nice. Yeah, this is all phenomenally off topic, but I think some things matter more than staying on topic.

Unfortunately, I still don't have a machine with a DAW my friend is building and my laptop doesn't have the resources to handle installing KONTAKT and huge libraries made for it. And yet I'm still unable to control my GAS when you post tempting deals. Go figure!

Their demos of their pianos sound really good. But they don't have any demos of their string libraries and their solo cello library's price is pretty inexpensive for a deep sampled cello. I googled but couldn't find any reviews. Does anyone here have this library or one of their other string libraries that can share their opinion? Thanks.

I was away from the forum for a number of years and the last thing I remember was cclarry's epic rant on IK. They are definitely frustrating. Just their policy of requiring loyal customers to pay to redownload a library comes to mind as a company that really doesn't prioritize a good customer experience. I like their products and I really like Peter, but I really wish they would transform into a customer centric company because they really are not that today.

Every time I look at how much money I've spent on sample libraries and plugins over the years and think, maybe I've gone way, way overboard with my GAS, it's comforting to know that I can find someone who's even worse than me. So thanks for that Larry. You seem to own every plugin I've ever even briefly considered buying and around one hundred more I never even knew about before your posts.

I was going to post this, thinking, maybe I woke up earlier than Larry this morning and will get this one up first. Nope. I was even planning to have a little fun and tribute my post to you. Oh well. There's only one cclarry.

While I greatly prefer Orange Tree Samples Evolution guitars approach because they permit you to play any ideas in your head instead of being limited to pre-recorded loops, regarding the criticism of virtual Instruments, I see enormous value in them. I spent two decades playing drums semi-professionally (mostly playing clubs, colleges, fests and sometimes touring on the weekends), so I am very aware of how little drummers are being used in recording studios these days. The joy and benefits of virtual Instruments to songwriters and hobbyists is especially invaluable.

I'm friends with Kirk and have consulted to him in the past (a disclaimer I like to state -- and my consulting doesn't entail hawking anyone's products), but I just have to share how much I love the Honky Tonk piano patch from this library. Listen to the demo and see what I mean. My teenage son, believe it or not, has taken a strong liking to ragtime and I suppose this is why it appeals to me so much, as I've been listening to a bit of ragtime lately. FYI, here's also a video of Jordan Rudess playing Kirk's library.

Thanks for adding the "no extra discount." I regularly check for your posts with a code for an extra discount before making a plugin or sample purchase, so yeah, if you say "no extra discount," I'm good to go!

I just stumbled upon this and thought you did a great job. It's really a well crafted and well executed song with excellent vocals, musicianship and production. I mean this in a good way, but the drum sound and playing very much evoked memories of Phil Collin's playing from the Duke album -- which I love, BTW. While the keyboard choices reminded me of Banks solo stuff. But the song itself was original, definitely not a knock off, it's just that I noticed influences that I also love. If you were playing this live, I would absolutely be sticking around. Just an all around great job. Kudos.

I can definitely see that. It's a combination of his hair, which is a bit reminiscent of a 50s style Elvis had during that era along with his pork chop sideburns, an iconic Elvis trait.

April 2019. It was a more innocent time.

I've advised at least a couple dozen sample and plugin developers over the years, so I definitely have some opinions. Yes, one could easily make a similar observation about other extremely competive areas such as drums and pianos. But I think you're lost in the weeds on my point. I'll stop at this post. I was simply expressing that I find there's far too much of sample developers copying territory that's already well covered and failing to explore new territory. Of course, if a developer can cover that well saturated area and bring something innovative to the table that's great. But I'm saying I didn't observe that on a cursory look -- maybe I missed something. Anyhow, it's just a point of view. Innovation is rare and immitation is the norm. I'm just wishing for more developers to innovate, that's all. When Orange Tree Samples, who I've worked with, came on the scene, they innovated. No other guitar sample library was as detailed and innovatively scripted. Truly brilliant, a big leap in a category I care a lot about as a musician too. And there were a lot of guitar libraries out back then, but not with that kind of innovative scripting and not at a level where top movie, trailer and TV producers -- even pop artists -- could use sampled guitar in the final production. So that's an example of a developer that innovated. And of course, a ton of other developers copied Orange Tree Samples' since then. I think we're starting to see some great things with physical modeling the past years. Some real innovation. Anyhow, I'll stop there. Not everyone is going to understand my point or agree. That's okay.

I was hoping for pianos. I only became aware of Cinesamples Abbey Road Pianos for KONTAKT after it was discontinued. I hope Spitfire releases Abbey Road piano libraries in the not too distant future. I assume that the reason it was discontinued is that AR has an agreement with another developer.

Yes, of course, it isn't easy, but Sonic Couture, 8Dio and several other KONTAKT devs have detailed hang drum libraries. I realize that my opinion will differ from others, but I'm just seeing such a great deal of mimicry among KONTAKT devs that I wish they would spend more time thinking out of the box. Again, it's completely subjective and I'm not trying to persuade those firmly set in an opposing view -- that's fine -- but IMO, the KONTAKT world is good when it comes to deep sampled music boxes and hang drums, so how about trying for something different?

Not knocking the dev at all -- their libraries sound beautiful in the demos -- but look at how many hang drums for KONTAKT are already out there. I have at least four. It's almost as pervasive as music box libraries. I wish more developers would be original and push the envelope.

I realize that you were asking Larry, but I just wanted to share that I really love a lot of the KLANG libraries. I've downloaded the freebies and also paid for some (they're really inexpensive, small sound design libraries). Check out the demos and you'll know if it's to your liking or not. But I really like what Cinematique Instruments is doing with this line.

Thanks for that list, @Reid Rosefelt I own libraries from a number of devs you listed as not allowing resale and didn't realize it.

That's how it works for everything, if you have the time, you can save money, but some brands in this industry do such deep discounting it devalues their products at regular prices. As a marketing pro, I would never advise discounting a currently active product line as deeply (at 75% or more) like IK, Waves and Izotope often do. It can greatly alienate loyal customers who paid full price and it trains the market to wait for deep discounts. I mean, most of us hobbyists and semiprofessional musicians aren't going to pay full price for Waves plugins anymore. They've trained us not to.

@bluzdog My son's PC is a Lenovo Legion 5. I got a black friday deal. I checked Lenovo and they currently didn't have any gaming tower PCs under $1,000 but I found Best Buy had a Legion for $999 that looked good to me. Here's the link (and no, it's not an affiliate link, just me trying to be helpful). https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-legion-tower-5-amd-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-3700x-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-256gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-phantom-black/6424472.p?skuId=6424472&ref=212&loc=1&ref=212&loc=1&ds_rl=1264993&ds_rl=1264987&gclid=CjwKCAiAjp6BBhAIEiwAkO9WuvtY_efqWiS--I_YA6ovnFfZJeD7p2gYef4tp0q9OOqwapwArRXXDxoCnuEQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

I just bought my son a Lenovo Legion Windows 10 gaming PC for under $1k USD and it's exceeded expectations. I can wholeheartedly recommend the line.

Same here, but for this cover, I'm looking to have some of the same core elements to capture part of the vibe of the original. So, the two elements I want to get close are the sound of the lead vocal and electric piano. My arrangement of the guitar parts are especially going to be a departure of the original. However, I want to capture some very critical sounds that are so iconic, and frankly, I adore those sounds. Of course, no one can replace Lennon's voice.

I am soon going to be recording a cover version of I Am the Walrus. I'm not looking to get the exact sound of the original, but I'm looking to get close. I'm going to be using sample libraries and have a Hohner Pianet and a Wurlitzer for the electric piano (there is debate over which was used on the original recording) that I plan on putting through a Leslie speaker. I know Harrison used a Strat with a Vox amp...but what I could really use advice on is effects to use. I don't have strong skills with sound engineering to say the least. On the electric piano, I know to use a Leslie -- but should I also put some distortion on it? I have read that Lennon used a cheap mic used to communicate with the sound room and they may have used a Leslie on his vocal. I've read some posts where people recommended saturator. I am going to test out some cheap mics I own that I'd never normally consider for vocals. I would really appreciate the advice of those knowledgeable on mixing and effects.