OTS Summer Sale! (Group Buy)

[Menace]

1 hour ago, Greg said:

What does everyone use for strumming patterns? It 

I don't buy any more of OTS guitars because of their poor strumming patterns

[Greg Schlaepfer]

1 minute ago, Menace said:

I don't buy any more of OTS guitars because of their poor strumming patterns

Just not enough factory presets, due to limitations with the strumming editor itself, or just the realism of the strumming itself? I'm always looking for feedback so that we can improve things like that in future updates.

[Greg]

1 hour ago, Greg Schlaepfer said:

Just not enough factory presets, due to limitations with the strumming editor itself, or just the realism of the strumming itself? I'm always looking for feedback so that we can improve things like that in future updates.

Are there any tutorials on the patterns?

[Greg Schlaepfer]

Yes, here's a general overview of the chord modes and strumming: 

And here's a video tutorial on using the strumming pattern editor:

You can access a playlist of all the tutorials for the Evolution guitars here: 

 

[Menace]

2 hours ago, Greg Schlaepfer said:

Just not enough factory presets, due to limitations with the strumming editor itself, or just the realism of the strumming itself? I'm always looking for feedback so that we can improve things like that in future updates.

The realism and sound of the guitar is outstanding.

I prefer to edit the preset rather than create a pattern,

but the pattern editor is confusing and presets without pattern variations require effort to create new patterns.
   Besides, both instruments I own (Nyion and Dracus)  have the same presets.
So for quick work, I use the AAS strum GS2 or a Session guitarist series with a lot of presets first.

If add a few variations to one pattern, it will be the best instrument. please add presets

Edited June 27, 2023 by Menace

[Craig Fowler]

@Greg Schlaepfer I think the sound of the evolution libraries is fantastic. I do find it hard to get to grips with the complexity of the strumming engine, though. It's cool that you can do so much with it (e.g., stroke direction as well as articulation; how many strings are played etc) - but presets that represent 'bog standard' and basic strumming patterns that are ready to roll without much editing would be very welcome over in this corner, too!

[PavlovsCat]

This is great feedback for a developer and I know that Greg listens closely to his customers. 

One of  the realities of doing customizable strumming like Evolution has is that creating your own patterns is inherently going to be more work than using a loop player like NI Session Guitarist line or UJAM's Virtual Guitarist line. If you commit to spending a good hour watching the videos on using the strum engine and then apply that, in my experience,  you'll be blown away at what you can achieve. 

But, it's never going to be as simple as playing loops,  as you're just playing back a recording of someone strumming a pattern, which, of course, restricts a user to exactly what was played. You can't do things like insert a muted strum on the 4th quarter note of a measure like you can do with Evolution. The caveat is, you need to invest the time to learn how the strummer works to do that as opposed to just playing someone else's pre-recorded patterns (loop). 

So, personally,  some of the time I want to start with preset patterns. I want the instant gratification like you get with a loop library-- but without the inherent restrictions of loops (not permitting customization of patterns)  that makes using loops a dead end path for anyone like me who wants the ability to make guitar parts their own. Which leads me to agree that I too would LOVE, LOVE,  LOVE to have more Evolution preset rhythm guitar patterns.

I actually think that having a larger number of preset patterns would basically kill any desire to ever turn to a guitar loop player.  That is, I own KOMPLETE (the standard version),  so I have a few NI Session Guitarist loop players from that and they can be a  lot of fun as a place holder -- just no brainer devices where I hold down a chord and the players plays loops of a guitarist playing various patterns for that chord. But you're stuck with the same patterns and while they're super basic, only so many are going to fit your needs and your songs guitar parts will easily be identified as loops from that player library. It's just very limited,  like any collection of loops. I want to be able to make patterns -- including presets -- my own and not even being able to tweak patterns ultimately ruins these players for me. Evolution is the closest library/plugin there is for attaining realistic sounding guitar from a keyboard.

Consequently, I think the ultimate solution for serious and demanding users of guitar sample libraries would be Evolution expanding its collection of preset rhythm patterns. I think it would make the best virtual guitar solution on the market even better. 

Edited June 28, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

I don't know if it's possible,  but I would think it would be great if there were Evolution add-on rhythm guitar strumming packs. I know that I'd use them and I suspect many others would too. 

 @Greg Schlaepfer is it possible to make additional rhythm guitar patterns for Evolution guitars? I mean, could it be similar to the process for a user to download and install KONTAKT snapshots in KONTAKT or would it be much more involved than that?

Edited June 27, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Patrick Derbidge]

18 hours ago, Menace said:

I don't buy any more of OTS guitars because of their poor strumming patterns

I used to think this but after doing a shootout of all the strumming engines I own (I have a lot) OTS actually came out as one of the top in the realism department. I was pleasantly surprised because based on forum discussions about OTS strumming engine I was under the impression that it wasn't that great. It wasn't until I took the time to really sit down and learn it that I found it to be quite good. I think sometimes certain things on the internet get repeated enough times and without giving it a proper test, we tend to repeat the narrative ourselves (I know I was guilty of that). I would say that it is definitely in my top 3 favorites out of owning AmpleSound, Indiginus, Pettinhouse, 8dio, Ilya Efimov, Waves Factory, Impact Soundworks and Acoustic Samples. I'm not comparing it to strum engines, like NI's Strummed guitar series. That's not a fair comparison but with those programs you're limited to pre-programmed patterns whereas OTS gives you excellent results playing exactly what you want ,which can be good and bad so learn how a guitar player would strum a pattern first or the lack of realism may not be the fault of OTS.

[Craig Fowler]

2 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

I don't know if it's possible,  but I would think it would be great if there were Evolution add-on rhythm guitar strumming packs. I know that I'd use them and I suspect many others would too. 

 @Greg Schlaepfer is it possible to make additional rhythm guitar patterns for Evolution guitars? I mean, could it be similar to the process for a user to download and install KONTAKT snapshots in KONTAKT or would it be much more involved than that?

My dream would be for Toontrack-midi style draggable strumming grooves.

Prob only an afternoon's work, right @Greg Schlaepfer? j/k

[PavlovsCat]

4 minutes ago, Craig Fowler said:

My dream would be for Toontrack-midi style draggable strumming grooves.

Prob only an afternoon's work, right @Greg Schlaepfer? j/k

That's exactly the  kind of functionality I'm thinking of too. 

Edited June 27, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[SmokeyJ628]

On a simpler level, maybe there could be a respository for users to upload strumming patterns?  

[PavlovsCat]

5 hours ago, Patrick Derbidge said:

...OTS gives you excellent results playing exactly what you want ,which can be good and bad so learn how a guitar player would strum a pattern first or the lack of realism may not be the fault of OTS.

I look at it this way as someone trained on piano, organ, and drums and only a handful of guitar lessons and never became proficient on guitar (and later got tendinitis,  so playing guitar isn't an option anymore), so candidly I look at creating my patterns in Evolution's strum engine like being able to tell a guitarist exactly what I want played and then s/he plays it. So yes, like playing any sample library,  if you want to create a realistic performance on say drums, you're going to need to learn how a drummer actually plays. If you never took piano lessons and want to create your own realistic piano parts, you're going to need to figure out how a pianist plays. 

While that may sound intimidating on the surface, it's really not complicated.  But from decades of seeing posts on sample libraries and hearing people's music,  I think it's still something many DAW and sample library users overlook.

So no, you don’t need to be a guitarist to get a realistic performance from Evolution.  However, if you want to create your own parts from scratch, you're going to need to understand the basics of how rhythm guitar patterns work and what makes strumming realistic to achieve realistic guitar parts  It's the same for people who don’t know the basics of piano, organ and other instruments, even drums. You need to learn the basics of any instrument to use a sample library and pull off an authentic performance. Evolution is a fantastic tool,  but to achieve a realistic sounding guitar part, you still need to understand what makes for a realistic guitar part. Of course, with Evolution you can use sound presets and preset rhythm patterns as a starting point, but chances are you're going to need to have additional single note parts,  riffs, leads, etc. 

Edited June 28, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Vernon Barnes]

I always thought the strum engine was pretty intuitive to program.  I like to use a lot of arpeggios and it's good for then too. The NI guitars are good, but limited particularly if you want odd time signatures like 5/4  or 7/8 which OTS is good at. It won't go to 9/8  or 11/8 though.

Amplesound is probably the most versatile, having both a strummer and riffer with drag and drop MIDI into a DAW, but its also less intuitive and more complex.

 

[cclarry]

47 away from 50%!

[Greg Schlaepfer]

We made it past 1,000! The download link for the bonus is on the group buy page in your account next to the 50% discount tier on the list.

[husker]

1246 right now.  4 away from 55%.

[chris.r]

On 6/27/2023 at 4:44 AM, Greg Schlaepfer said:

Just not enough factory presets, due to limitations with the strumming editor itself, or just the realism of the strumming itself? I'm always looking for feedback so that we can improve things like that in future updates.

For strumming editor I'd say it's already quite (r)evolutionary on it's own and there's not much wrong with it, in my experience. It's bit limited in how many patterns are in one preset (6). And we can't move the strokes slightly off the grid to give it more human feel, except with the swing, strumming tempo/time and some 'humanize' settings that I found in the SETUP that sometimes might help a little. But there's still that mechanical feel that's sometimes hard to overcome.

Manual strumming could be the solution but there are missing dead/muffled/muted (don't know exactly how to describe it) strokes, on the left side, and that alone makes it unusable for live MIDI recording, unless I'm still missing it somehow. I see there are other articulations right, on the other spectrum of the keyboard, but again, you can't just skip around the whole keyboard to play chords (blue keys) and the strokes (yellow keys on both sides of the chords range) at the same time, so mouse editing afterwards is necessary.

Soundwise OTS libraries are killer, and in strum mode only some articulations are too soft. I for example have tried replicating a flamenco strumming with the Nylon library, but some slaps/chokes/hits are still too light and there for me it was still lacking some realm. Pls note I'm talking about the last few percent to the 'immaculate effect' missing... For soloing it's amazing though, from another room my wife thought I had bought a real gitar!  

Edited July 5, 2023 by chris.r

[cclarry]

200 participants away from reaching the maximum 60% OFF

[Grem]

Here is a question:

The prices that I see on the "Products" page reflect the current discount? IOW I see the price for the "Complete Bundle" as $2k. Is the with the current 55% discount? Or will the 55% discount be applied to that $2k price?

Did I make myself clear!!? : )