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Amicus717

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Everything posted by Amicus717

  1. Lumina is pretty nice and I use it a fair amount, but it strikes me as a library that folks will either use a lot or not at all, depending on what they spend most of their time doing. I use it mainly for the solo legato instruments, which are lovely and also heavy on cinematic schmaltz, much like the rest of the library. If that's not your thing, it's a pricey pick-up even on sale. I'm glad I have it, but it was a luxury purchase rather than an essential addition to my template -- I have lots of other libraries that could cover the same ground if needed.
  2. It's a good deal. These string libs sound very nice and have lots of useful articulations and configurable elements. That said, I am not keen on the GUI, and I see them as a library that needs tweaking and careful keyswitching and the like -- these aren't the kind of patches you load up and start jamming with. They're the kind of patches you load up when you've finished your sketch and have the arrangement nailed down and can spend a lot of time tweaking in the piano roll. That's how I use them, anyway. As always, YMMV
  3. I didn't even bother trying, this time around. I don't find the Ostinato libraries useful at all, and something about this annual, frantic click-and-refresh-a-thon for the limited freebie every year just makes me feel like a trained monkey on a leash. So I sat it out.
  4. I do. I personally like it the best of all my Sonokinetic phrase libs. However, that’s really subjective; Sotto is exactly like all the others, and I just happen to find the phrases and textures in Sotto to be particularly useful. But that’s just me. If you’re on the fence about the usefulness of their phrase libs or dislike them, Sotto won’t change your mind.
  5. Yeah, it's fun. Sounds pretty good, and it's only 400+ mb -- so it's not eating HD space. It's a lot of short recordings, so while there isn't a ton of content, it's got enough to be useful. I can see me using some of these little patches.
  6. Their orchestral sample-based libraries are pretty good, too. Orchestral Strings has a lovely sound and lots of articulations and setup flexibility. Ensemble Woodwinds offers the same. The both blend seamlessly with the phrase libs. I find them a bit resource intensive, though, and they wouldn’t be my first choice for quick work or sketching. Neither are they good enough to eclipse my other options; basically, they’re a nice additional color in the palette, with some unique features. And a really irritating GUI.
  7. If this is only regarding the phrase libs, then based on the ones I’ve used the most, so far: Sotto Capriccio would be runner-up; Grosso a (very) distant third. That is really subjective, though. I mean, depending on what kind of music I end up writing this year, maybe I never use any of those libs at all, and Largo becomes my goto. I see all these libraries as the same beast in different clothes. None are better or worse than any other, and it totally depends on what you’re writing .
  8. Their GUIs are awful, frankly. Stylish and clever and occasionally intuitive. Overall I think their stuff is a very mixed bag, and I would never pay full-freight for them.
  9. I use Sonokinetic’s libraries as accents to my main template. Basically, if I need a particularly agile string line or some bowing pattern, brass flare or woodwind noodling that simply isn’t possible with conventional samples, I will dig through my Sonokinetic libs for a sample loop that does the trick. It can be effective at pushing the illusion of a live orchestra, but it took me a while to figure out how to do that. So, I see Sonokinetic’s stuff as useful supplements to my main tools. I’d never try to build a track using nothing but their loops and overall they don’t get a ton of use — but when I find a way to drop them into a project I really appreciate what they can do.
  10. It turns out my sound spends more time at the edge of bombastic. Tundra would probably be wasted on me.
  11. I have to admit, Tundra has intriuged me. It sounds like an interesting library, but I worry it would be good for one kind of sound that you might need twice a decade, and otherwise would sit unused taking up HD space...
  12. I can understand the polarizing nature of the Spitfire products. I don't own a ton of their stuff -- Albion ONE, Solstice, Loegria, Appassionata Strings and BBC Core -- and even with that small selection, it's a really mixed bag that goes from great to useless. I got a lot of use out of Albion ONE, although it's fallen out of my template as I've gotten more expressive libraries. But for a while it was one of my desert island libs. I do think it's a great starter tool for folks wanting to create trailer music or similar. You can do a lot with it in that genre, but it really isn't useful outside of it. Loegria has some nice patches, but the overall product is really uneven, and has weird stuff like the horribly tuned recorder patches that I have yet to successfully use in any project. I actually thought they had retired Loegria, as I bought it cheap when they were putting it out to pasture, but it seems to be back. Solstice seemed like a good idea, but I was dissappointed with it. It's got a few good patches if you're doing the music for Wicker Man II, but beyond that... However, BBC Core has become my main goto for orchestral fundamentals and currently forms the heart of my template. I think it's outstanding and for the price offers a lot of great stuff. The Appassionata Strings meld with BBC pretty nicely if you play around with the mic settings, and I use it as a supplement to the BBC strings if I need to punch up the schmaltz. They are great for that.
  13. Those sound amazing. I don't need another string library, but now I need another string library.
  14. I agree about Sonokinetic's interfaces, for the most part. I like their libraries, and I've developed ways to make good use of them (for a while I found them fun to play around with but it took a while to figure how to fit them into my template and workflow). But their interfaces drive me nuts. I sometimes think they emphasize style over intuitiveness and ease of use, and it irritates me. Making orchestral music is hard enough without having to decipher the interface along the way.
  15. I have all of Tarilonte’s Era libs. They are in a class by themselves and worth it, regardless of the player. Persia is great, Forest Kingdom 3 is even better (one of my favs). I use them both regularly. In particular, FK3 is my current goto for ethnic flute sounds. As for Engine - the interface is ancient and clumsy, but its otherwise perfectly useable. I’ve never had any issues with it.
  16. My fav game of all time. I have retail box versions of this, Opposing Force, Blue Shift and HL2. But I don't have a t-shirt. I'm envious :)
  17. Check! Can't help myself. I am so well-libraried, I could never purchase another library ever and want for nothing. But where is the fun in that? Holding on to your money is so overrated...
  18. Amicus717

    Yes!

    90215 hit when I was in high school, and my buddies and I thought it was the greatest thing. It introduced us to Yes' music, and we went on to become major fans. Love this album, have listened to it end to end maybe a million times, and hope to do so a million more before I shuffle off...
  19. I noticed they finally fixed the spiccato repetition keyswitches in the 2.0 versions of Cinestrings. They did not work before, and Cinesamples confirmed this and gave me the impression it might take a while to get patched, but I downloaded the most recent update and it's all better...
  20. I'm as big a John William's fan as there is, and I could list 20 of his scores here without hesitation. However, it's nice to highlight other worthies who don't quite get the same spotlight. One of those is Bruce Broughton, whose score for the Steven Spielberg produced movie Young Sherlock Holmes is a neglected masterpiece from the mid-80s. It's a big dose of full-throttle orchestral thunder in the classic tradition, from charming and melodic to bombastic and apocalyptic, courtesy of the Sinfonia of London and a 16 voice SATB choir. The main themes and motifs are top-class, and very memorable. This is the main theme, and it's great: I've been collecting study scores the last few years, and I've been lobbying the various score publishers (Omni Music, Neumation, Chris Sidall, etc) to publish this one. They all agree it's brilliant, and a couple of them have expressed an interest in getting it out there. Here's hoping. It's got a ton of great music in it.
  21. Yeah, I'm in the same frame of mind. I think this is going to be really interesting. Very curious to know what the new Sonar will offer and what Next will be like. I don't hold BandLab responsible for the Lifetime Sub fiasco, and while I felt like a bit of a sucker after I bought one and Gibson pulled the plug, getting an actively supported Cakewalk for free all these years has been a nice way to get over it. If BandLab has enough confidence in these new products (and the market) that they think they can charge for them, well it makes me really curious to know what will be on offer.
  22. Me, also. No luck... The NI site in general is brutally slow right now, so maybe it's just backlog...
  23. I have Metropolis Ark 1 & 2, and Inspire 1 & 2 (all for Kontakt), and they're quite good. They work from a different mindset than BBCSO (or EW, VSL etc), and I've had success using them for projects that I wanted to finish fast. To my mind, that is their key strength, and I use them in the same way I use my Albion libraries: to do great-sounding work very quickly, and with a heavy cinematic vibe. So, I think how much you like them will have a lot to do with headspace - either you'll find their patch design useful and intuitive, or you won't really enjoy using them at all. And the cinematic sound is really baked in; it's go big, or find another library. They are really pricey, and I think the average hobbyist could find alternatives that do similar things but won't cost nearly as much. I spend a huge portion of my downtime working on music, so I don't mind shelling out for this stuff, personally. I like having lots of options, and I just plain enjoy using libraries like these, so to me it's worth the money (although I only ever buy stuff on sale - I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for anything relating to music or software).
  24. My dad was part of a folk quartet way back in the day (early 60s), and they opened for Mr Lightfoot on four separate occasions when he played at The Riverboat in Toronto, a legendary coffeehouse (closed way back in 1978) that hosted many folk acts over the years. He said Lightfoot was the nicest man -- zero edge, friendly, very supportive of his fellow artists, and a first-class live performer. My dad's adventures as a touring musician during the mid-century folk revival are part of our family folklore, and my dad mentioned it to me this morning on a Zoom call. He was quite upset to learn the Gordon had passed away. He recalled the time they had finished their opening set and Gordon was on stage doing his, when a string broke on his guitar. Gordon decided to call my dad's quartet back to the stage while he got it fixed. As my dad recalls it: "he looked into the audience to where we were sitting enjoying the show, and said 'hey, let's get the boys back up here to do a few more numbers", at which point he smiled and gave my dad and his bandmates a friendly "c'mon get up here" wave. My dad says he and his buddies looked at each other with a "ugh, do we even have a few more songs we can do?" and then got back up, pulled some unrehearsed charts from their repertoire and just went for it. He said it was a great experience, and Mr. Lightfoot was very complimentary after the show. His passing is a real loss. I think my dad and I will be listening to Gordon Lightfoot recordings a lot over the coming days...
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