Simeon Amburgey

Replay now available.
Some really amazing moments today.

I will be taking a look at a bunch of new titles and as always, I never know quite what to expect.
I hope to see you there:

Love it!
Classic!!!

Here is an article I posted on my site when Firewood Piano was released. It is indeed Jeremiah’s piano, really interesting story, check it out here:

https://praisetracks.com/?s=Firewood

Also you might check out my After Piano Day livestream Wednesday, as I am going to try and playthrough all of the Spitfire Originals and possibly more pianos 😎

Piano Day 2022 has been amazing with so many developers having events and such, I wanted to enjoy being a part of them. That being said, I thought I would have an After Piano Day event where I take a suggestion from one of my viewers who mentioned doing a comparison of ALL of the Spitfire Originals pianos, so that is what I plan to do.
Of course there may be some surprises along the way. I look forward to seeing you there, Wednesday March 30th at 11:30 AM EST

I had a lot of fun covering these instruments today. I hope you enjoy checking out the replay.

Heavyocity FREE Foundations Piano

MusicakSampling PLCK (currently on sale until March 28)

Plugin Guru Modern Cinema - Renegade for Unify

Soundpaint: 1972 Wurlitzer and Oliver Codd 12 String Guitar

I am looking forward to seeing you during Saturday morning's livestream. 
The adventure will take us through some really interesting and sometimes crazy instruments.
The new 88E from Impact Soundworks is a quirky FREE piano library for the Free Kontakt player, oh did I mention it was FREE???? ;^)
Also the Soniccouture Clavichord is on intro special as well.
As always, I will be chatting and answering your questions about the latest things going on in the world of sample libraries and music technology.

I look forward to seeing you there:

I converted all of my existing VSL licensed to iLok and have started downloading the libraries.
It was a very smooth process, and the new Vienna Download Manager is really nice.
You just have to remove your previous e-Licensor libraries and re-download them again through the new manager.

22 minutes ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

@Simeon Amburgey I was on the fence on the Eric Whitacre Choir. Knowing that it will be available for Unify is certainly not helping my wallet…

Yep, I am finishing up some tweaks to some other Spitfire titles and have it in the queue. ;^)

Hello TIm,

For me Unify is like a hub for your existing virtual instruments, so it works well with the titles you currently have.
John has really put a lot of time in creating a lot of addon patch banks for Omnisphere but as you say it can be really overwhelming to explore the 1000s of possibilities with this one virtual instrument. The Unify Discoverstation package is an amazing accomplishment for sure.

So Unify does support VST2, VST3, and Audio Units, but prefers to use VST2 as it has been the more established plugin format. If there is not a VST2 version of an instrument available then of course it will use what is there and Unify itself can be run as a VST3. What adds to the value like you mention is that if a particular platform does not support the VST plugin format, then Unify can act as a wrapper of sorts which is very powerful especially on the Mac platform.

So as far as what third party instruments, it all depends on what speaks to you. John has a certain sound he loves, and it sometimes will push the boundaries for me to try something different like Kilohearts Phase Plant. I think some of the other synths he loves are Vital and Plasmonic. I am into the more orchestral and acoustic sounds and that is why I have been working on Unifying the Spitfire Audio instruments I have. I am working on the Originals Abe Jr. Drums and Eric Whitaker Choir. If you already have these instruments, having the unified patches are super helpful, and these will always be free.

I hope that helps a little.
Joyfully,
Simeon 

2 minutes ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

Oh no, I thought I was safe from buying this library, don’t make me spend 300$!

Well if anything, I might get you to part with $79, the MG Soft Guitar is beautiful.

Joyfully!
Simeon

Hello everyone,

Spitfire is featuring Eric Whitacre Choir as their March feature for 50% off.
Also Pianobook has released their first "Premium" library MG Soft guitar which is a Kontakt Player Classical Nylon guitar and it is amazing!
I will also of course have some unify fun and be able to answer questions and such during the livestream. I hope to see you there.

2 hours ago, cclarry said:

Even the $29 Spitfire Libraries sound exceptional...

Biggest fault is no "multi" capability like Kontakt.

That’s where Unify comes in.
I have unified most of the Originals so it makes it very easy to create layers, stacks, and splits.

Sounding great here!
It might show up in a livestream very soon 🤓
I have already started “unifying” it.
It sounds beautiful with a very lyrical tone to it, also it can pack a punch and fits perfectly with the other Abbey Road ONE elements.

When reviewing the realsamples titles, I have been working on a proof of concept that would allow them to be used in the free Decent Sampler so that potential users would not have to have the full version of Kontakt. I finished an experiment yesterday that Nicolay is checking out, it was amazing to see how this worked. Stay tuned.

Realsamples Austrian Harpsichord | Audio Plugin Deals Special

42 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

What do they do, delete one copy from the server after every sale?

I just. Heckled the Classic Brass and it can be used in the free Kontakt Player,  so you will have a Native Access Serial number. The stock they might be referring to is the number of serial numbers Project Sam has available for a particular product. Just another nuance of the Kontakt library ecosystem.

13 hours ago, Peter Hintze said:

how many velocity layers are there? 

There are four.

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

That's a really good point. After you posted, I checked the developer's website and even downloaded the PDF manual for the library and there was no info on layers or round robins. Maybe Simeon knows? 

Well, I do not know definitively but I do know that there are not a lot of velocity layers, my guess would be around 4 at them most.
When talking with the Teletone Audio guys and watching Jeremy's videos, the goal was to create more of an emotional connection to the piano in a way that was more important than the more technical aspects of the library which highlighted velocity layers.
I tried to open the Kontakt wrench icon but all of the backside programming has been locked down due to the library being encoded.

I will see if I can find out more info, there might have been some discussion in the video comments section.

Another very nice virtual piano.
The thing about this one is the textural layers are great on their own and you can layer them with other instruments. The piano is very nice as well.
Enjoy,

Let's Play Revelation Scoring Grand From Sound Yeti | Livestream Flashback

I’ll just leave this here 🤓

Let's Play | Teletone Audio Golden Age Grand

I have updated not only this video but also the videos I have done for the Sonic Atoms instruments to include a fundraiser I started Monday for the HABITAT livestream.
The funds are going to the American Red Cross who in turn will direct the funds for the support of the relief efforts in Ukraine.

I did a livestream with HABITAT on Monday.
This was my first full Orchestral Tools library to playthrough and it was a lot of fun to experience this.
Check out the edited replay here:

I was able to work with Verve, the new felt upright included with the release of Cubase 12.
Verve, is a very nice felt upright, and like my first thought, do we really need any more felted uprights ;^)
This one is very nice. 

If you do not have Cubase 12, it can be purchased separately and can be used with the free HALionsonic SE player.

https://www.steinberg.net/vst-instruments/verve/

1 minute ago, PavlovsCat said:

It can get crazy. But I think you've also found a good deal of people who like and appreciate you (me among that group). 

I've contemplated picking up the library,  as it's very inexpensive,  but I'm not sure of situations where I  would use them. It's been a while since I  watched your video -- and I did -- but it seemed that each of the pianos was really unique and not really in the realm of what I  felt would fit my style.  But maybe I should listen again. I mean, I  found them interesting, but probably more appropriate for someone doing trailers,  movies, TV or games. What situations could you imagine using it for? 

They would be a very specific application for sure.
I could see them in an underscore of some kind with that foreboding feeling.
This might also be a good soundsource to layer with another piano that might have a little more definition and use the Pripyat pianos as a color or textural layer.

I will have to pull these back up and see what might happen.
Joyfully,
Simeon

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

I just wanted to repost that image of Simeon with his jazz hands -- it immediately made me smile back!

My only problem with Simeon videos are when I play the same libraries he does, the pianist doesn't sound even 10% as good as Simeon. Very disappointing. He should screw up once in a while to help lower the bar for guys like me.  I kid, I kid. I enjoy his videos. 

I guess this were Jazz Hands approaching something that could contain some radioactive material, so I was a little cautious going into this one.

But seriously, when I got into this one, I felt such a sobering emotion not only hearing the sounds coming from the pianos that were sampled but also moved by the pictures that accompanied them, not to mention the risk that the sampling team took every time they went into this highly radioactive site, amazing.

Thanks as always for the kind support, it can get crazy when you  put yourself out there.

Joyfully,
Simeon

All of these should work in the Free HALionsonic SE player.
Here are a few videos I did when first discovering Sonic Atoms.