Christian Jones

I never pay full listed price for anything at SW. Your rep (if you got a good one.. I don't think there's many bad ones) will give you a discount, but only if you ask, and I'm down to negotiate so I always ask. It also helps to have been a customer for a minute and have bought a few things in the past, but really the only things I pay full price for are things like the one-off cable or some small accessory that I won't bother asking for some discount on. I used to get a kick out of reading comments online about people freaking out over the post sales calls SW reps make. Some people considered those calls to be harassment or on the same annoying level as a robocall and they'd write diatribes online about it lol. Well it's just that no other music company did/does that and for decades people have just been used to buying their stuff and not having the store give a damn about them afterward and some people feel it's a pressure call to buy something else after they just bought something. Make no mistake though, that is a sales job and those post calls are definitely sales-hopeful calls as well as solid customer service follow up. They'll stop calling you like that if you ask them, but personally I don't mind, my new sales rep Josh is pretty cool and I talk to him about other stuff too as he's a film composer and I am a hopeful one and also again because I never pay full price for anything there, I expect deals so I don't mind the occasional cold call. Plus I've worked a job like that and I respect it as long as they're respectful when they call/email which they are.

Lol Craig Anderton *always* finds a way.

I don't know what these types of patches are called, but I'm talking about those where a single note will play a second, third or fourth etc (discounting octave patches). The real dissonant and augmented ones, when played in isolation can be hard to make sound good by themselves, so I'm thinking maybe over some melodic music those real distant and augmented ones may add some suspense or tension, but that they absolutely need something melodic below them to give that contrast and sound "good" it seems. While I haven't tried super hard, I've never been able to successfully use the real dissonant/argumented interval patches, which are the ones I'm interested in trying to use. If anyone has used these types of patches successfully and have any music examples I could hear where you used them, that'd be cool. 😎

Ah thanks brother I see now. But it looks like it only works for the nicnt library tabs and not non nicnt .nki files, because w/ those types those little arrows are grayed out and it just shows a little wav file icon and no other info.

No that's pretty much it man, but time isn't the only factor; it's also just having too many options and getting option paralysis and just the way I go about placating my insecurities by minimalizing things 🤓

Hmm weird I'm totally not seeing that dark gray bar down there with that info nor the little arrows on my Kontakt 5. What version of Kontakt do you have? EvilDragon just told me there's only one way, quoted from NI forum: "The only way would be by going into instrument edit mode, then Mapping Editor, click on a zone, and in the sample name field, hover with mouse cursor above it, so that it shows the full path to the sample. You should be able to deduce the library from that." That works to some degree, but the path is usually too long and runs off the screen/gui.

I keep all my libraries on a separate dedicated drive (always recommended), so if Kontakt had to be reinstalled it will not affect the libraries provided that I don't move the libraries from their current location... and even if I did Kontakt will just give you that "missing samples" pop up where you simply click the browse button and point it to the new location no big deal.

A friend of mine works this way. For him it's a new sound each time but he enjoys the sound design aspect whereas I do not so much, at least not deeply. But he also won't spend more than a day on a song either, that's just how he works (hip hop). I joke w/ him that his work flow is like one of those tv shows where it's a new adventure every episode rather than a continuous story lol. Works great for him and I love seeing the different work flows people have. Personally, part of why I gathered just 500 or so sounds is *because* I like to reuse sounds - like a signature thing similar to a rock guitar sound you frequently use. Some bands, like Keane, who I'm not into.. they constantly use this CP-70 ep sound and it's part of their sound and I like that idea. But there's definitely something exciting about dialing up a new sound each time.. it's not for me but somehow I envy it.

How do you mean?

OrangeTree steel slide, is that pretty cool? As a guitar player I've had way back vowed not to use guitar samples, but a steel slide put through some distortion could be pretty cool... hmmm Lol what did you buy during the sales that you're not using? I almost bought a ton of stuff that would've gone to waste, but ended up choosing better w/ only maybe this accordion I bought that was half price that I may not use after all.

Lol dude, dwindle that down man 😧😨🤪🤯😵☠️ Well I know a lot of you have been collecting sounds for possibly decades, myself been at it over 20 years but I only recently decided to do this because w/ Synth Magic especially I've never had such amazing sounds and I just wanted to keep them in a bottle. Between the Synth Magic and the Samples from Mars and the Komplete 10 libraries incl Kontakt factory library I must've listened to maybe 2000-3000 presets of which I got the over 500+ from. As I'm in part focusing on an 80's Horror/Thriller/Sci Fi soundtrack sound I prefer vintage synth sounds from the 70's and early 80's and am not into the techno-ey/club dance sounds so I skipped right over those. Like the Logan synth I got, man that thing just sounds like an old movie and I'm really preferring some of these analog synth strings over those pristine Hollywood real string libraries. But I limit myself big time and I will not collect synths, I just want a few as too many options is a problem for me.

So when you load a patch in Kontakt from some library you have, other than by the gui graphics is there any other way to tell what library a patch is from? Especially if you change the name of a patch the patch seems to be orphaned and I don't see how to trace what library the patch came from... is there a way?

Yeah, for me it's also peace of mind knowing that my sounds are no longer scattered and that these 27 organ sounds I've gathered are the absolute best of what I have and it's nothing to quickly load/audition one after the other in Kontakt w/ a single click, you can't beat that. And the separation of sounds from categorizing makes the 500+ lot of presets way less daunting to become familiar with.

I've been spending about 3 weeks going through *all* the presets on all my Kontakt vst synths and saving the ones I like to a user folder via Kontakt's "Patch + Samples" save feature. I have a few synths from Synth Magic and Samples From Mars as well as a few other single instrument type libraries and of course Komplete 10 and I try to keep my synths Kontakt based. I'm trying to limit myself; I don't want every amazing sound under the sun available to me as I'll never be able to choose anything then. I'm not an endless tweaker; I'll tweak as long as necessary but I like to tweak my sound and go, so I like to start with great presets. Now that I'm done mining all my Kontakt vsts I've amassed over 500 presets from the various synths, which took about 3 weeks little by little because in some cases I also spent a little more time vetting each sound to make sure I like it. This also gave my subconscious a glimpse as to what I have available so when I get a sound in my head I can (in a perfect world) connect it to a sound I already have and where I have it stored, rather than plowing through a bunch of soft synth presets looking for a sound, which is a vibe killer and the whole point of why I did this - so I wouldn't have to do *that*. Instead, I can just go straight to *my* folder where I have all my sounds indexed by type - and as it turns out I happen to *like every single sound in my folder*, though naturally not every sound will work for every song but I'm starting off on better footing right off the bat with a folder full of sounds all of which I like in general. Now I will again quickly go through the over 500 presets I've saved and sort them by category, which means I'll have to give them another quick listen. These are going to be my sounds from here on out and I'm creative enough to never outgrow them though I can add to them. This was one of the most tedious things I've done in my studio and I've never bothered to do it before, but I believe it will have been more than worth it as it will help me to be more prolific w/o having my vibe killed in searching for a single sound through a bunch of vsts. And once it's done it's done and I'll have a folder w/ over 500 amazing sounds in various categories to draw from. Has anyone else done what I've described and what has your experience been like? Was it worth it? Any tips? Do you bother saving presets at all? How do you do it? For me it's about the most efficient work flow possible and getting my money's worth from the synths I bought, and keeping everything Kontakt based makes all this super easy and efficient for everything from saving to layering. Word.

What does it sound like, any examples?

Thanks guys, you were all right..,, it was an envelope on pitch. For anyone who suddenly decides that they absolutely have to have this sound it's easy to do in Massive. Just use one occilstor and adjust the base sound to taste/reference, and after the main adsr you use a second one on the pitch parameter and adjust the decay to adjust the speed of the pitch dip. Just needs a bit of eq to fatten. I attached a file. mac mall synth.mp3

Thanks man I'll give this a try.

What a friend of mine does -- incidentally the same friend I often "ask" for -- is use an existing song by some other artist that's similar to the one you want to write as a reference/inspiration.

Thanks, but no.. I got the portamento/glide part down as evidenced in the mp3 I included of me playing these leads. But the Mac Mall lead has a little something else going on in the lead where there's a slight dip in the pitch at the beginning of each note re-trigger - unlike the Easy E lead which doesn't do that - and that's what I'm trying to figure out, how Mac Mall did it.

If you listened to any rap by Dre or Snoop et al back in the day you've heard this polymoog type synth lead they used all the time, which I believe was first used by Ohio Players. My two favorite songs that used it are Easy E's "Real Muthf'n Gs" and Mac Mall's "My Opinion." I was able to get pretty much that exact sound going in Massive, at least for the Easy E sound. But the Mac Mall lead sound has this quick and subtle pitch bend effect at the beginning of each note and I doubt it was done manually w/ the pitch wheel. I've also included a quick sample of me playing these two leads using the Massive patch and you can see I pretty much nailed the Easy E tone, but Mac Mall.... how do I get that little auto pitch bend effect? dre synth sample.mp3

I'd recommend RME all around for some of the best drivers in the biz as well as probably the lowest latency interfaces out there, and especially if you're an amp sim guy I'd get an RME, like Fireface ucx. It's around $1600, probably $1000 on ebay. Their flagship is around 3k but anyway. There's also the babyface pro from rme which would be worth looking at and can be had for a few hundred off ebay or I think $750 retail. Yeah their stuff is costlier but worth the longterm investment and you probably won't be swapping it out frequently for something else. Until I can upgrade I'm still using the lowly RME 9632 pci card, and at 64 buffer I get a 5.6 round-trip latency. Not bad for an old pci card, but I heard pci offers better latency by design anyway, which of course is almost irrelevant now as it's all but obsolete, but anyway. I have a virtual dual amp setup where I play through 2 amp sims simultaneously as well as eq/comp plugs on both amp sim tracks AND I parallel process those two amp sim tracks to an aux and sometimes two separate parallel aux tracks (one for each amp sim) on which there may be anything from a fuzz and/or octaver to some delay or whatever, and I do this in real time all at 5.6 round-trip latency @ 64 buffer w/ no glitches (*unless* I've got a major session going w/ lots of this and that but then that's to be expected) and all with this little rme 9632 so yeah I'd tend to recommend RME.

That solved it Karhide, thanks. Yeah for some reason it was set to "Custom" where usually it's not. Changing that little drop down up in the right corner that's easy to miss to "All" brought back all the other horizontal faders too.

I could have sworn there was a horizontal send fader on the audio tracks themselves in the track view, but now none of them have it? It's just gone, anyone know what's going on?

That's what I was thinking, find a similar performance and try it.