PavlovsCat

Folks, I don't think Reid is actually planning on throwing in the towel, despite the dramatic title of this thread. I mean, the title is a very standard clickbait title format, to be frank. If you watch the video, Reid's saying "Somebody help me fix this problem!" @Reid Rosefelt, while I empathize with you, I think you'll attract more people and not potentially turn off non fans if you avoid the clickbait exaggeration/sensationlist title approach. I realize that it's the attention economy, but I think just being frank would engage people as well, at least here on the deals forum where most of us are big Reid supporters and it will probably be less irritaring for the folks that usually complain about non-deals threads being in the deals forum.

I've contemplated getting MixRoom after a friend more knowledgeable on mixing suggested I pick it up as it might help demystify EQing a mix. Can anyone who uses it weigh in? I own Izotope's mixing and mastering tools, and using their AI software for mastering is a breeze, but I haven't gotten very good results using their AI for mixing and would love to find something that helps me more easily determine how to create better mixes.

People who haven't worked at large corporations often think bureaucracies are exclusively a government problem. In reality, bureaucracy is a problem in just about all large established organizations. But this problem is a little more complicated than just being attributable to bureaucracy. Becoming a successful YouTube influencer is a tricky enough on its own. There are so many millions of people aspiring to become influencers there is no way for Google to create a model to service the smaller influencers, so I completely understand why Google isn't spending time helping small influencers, but clearly, your situation is very frustrating and could be easily resolved if someone just spent a few minutes helping you. Keep trying Reid, try different approaches and talking to experienced YouTube influencers who might know of solutions. I'm sure you'll eventually get this resolved.

It's been a while and prior to Mike Greene's purchase of VI Control, but I have witnessed some really bad behavior at VI Control that caused me to stop going there for several years after a composer attacked a sample developer who is a friend of mine and a pile on of a few bullies against him occurred. I attempted to appeal for the sake of civility and on behalf of my friend and after a few posts, a couple of the angry folks went after me too. There was a lot of nuanced stuff going on that the average VI Control visitor wouldn't know about, like one of the guys leading the charge against the dev was extremely anti-LGBTQ (his PMs to me actually referenced my friend's orientation; that individual knew that I'm straight and apparently thought I might be okay with his intolerant views) , but the developer he was attacking was a previous business partner of his, so there was venom and then the composer had bought several of the developer's libraries over the years and said they were all garbage (which was peculiar, because if a sample developer makes lousy libraries, why do you keep buying them over several years? A couple of people made that point, but the composer would respond that he couldn't fully explain it, that he was just trying to see if the dev finally figured out how to create a decent sample library). The venom transcended the sample libraries and was very personal, with the composer saying the dev should take his life, that it was worthless. It was really extreme. I was trying to make the appeal that hyper critical analysis of a sample library is totally fair and valuable, but personal attacks should be off limits. So, during the pandemic, I went back to VI Control and haven't seen any really terrible behavior. But I stopped going to KVR even though I made some real life friends there over the years -- friends I've met on three continents (over in Scotland, New Zealand and in the US, where I live) because sometimes the trolls get out of hand and it's just disappointing. Overall, I've found that some VI Control members can very snobby and KVR because it's so popular, can be a hub for trolls. While no forum is jerk free, I find there is a very low percentage of malicious, toxic people at this forum. That's why I spend most of my forum time here. The vast majority of this community are well-meaning and encouraging people. That's why I enjoy it so much. Two thumbs up for us! We're alright!

@Billy86 After you've learned how to use presets, this less than 2 minute video will teach you everything you need to know to create your own patterns. This works with any Evolution guitar. Once you learn the strumming feature for one Evolution guitar, you've learned how every Evolution guitar library works. This is a longer version video of that process.

@Billy86I think the below video is the best tutorial there is. But I'm going to give it my best try to make this as easy as I can. 1. Open the Evolution Steel Strings library in KONTAKT. with whatever sample preset you like. 2. SELECT the top menu in Evolution that reads "CHORDS". CLICK ON "AUTOMATIC CHORDS." That allows you to play a chord as you normally would and then Evolution translates it into the way a guitarist would play the chord. 3. Go back to the top menu and SELECT "STRUM." Select a pattern that interests you. say, "Busy Bee." Now hold down a chord with your right hand. For this example, let's say you hold down a C major chord (C-E-G) in the root position with your right hand. While holding down the C chord, use your left hand to play a C in the O octave (the lowest octave) of your keyboard to trigger the pattern. You change the chords with your right hand, just like you would regularly playing the keyboard. So, keeping it simple, if you played the chords C-F-G the strumming engine would strum those chords playing the rhythm you selected. Voila! You're now using the strumming engine. If you find a strumming preset that works for you, great. But I often use the strumming presets as starting points and modify them to fit the strumming pattern that works for the song -- just like I would if I was playing guitar (except in this case, instead of my brain telling my hand what to play, I have to click on the buttons in the strumming engine (in the screenshot below, they're the white buttons that read "sustain" -- those let you choose what kind of strum or rest you want). For me, the presets are like starting points. You may find one works for you exactly as is, or you can modify a preset to your own liking and add or take away strums, which is something you can't do with a loop player like UJAM or Session Guitarist. They are merely playing loops recorded by a session guitarist. The way Evolution libraries wok is that you are playing individual notes played by a guitarist. The difference is, with Evolution's approach you can define upstrokes, downstrokes, muted/palm muted notes/chords, half muted/palm muted notes/chords, harmonics, slaps -- basically anything a real guitarist could do. That simply is not possible with any loop based player. That is my on the fly three minute tutorial. If you can follow those steps, you will be strumming right away. That's really all it takes. From there, beyond the type of strum, of course, your other choices are going to be the timing of the strums, just like you'd do with a drum machine. I hope that helps! Once you figure out how to use the strumming engine, it's amazing how it opens up new doors, that a plugin can have this level of capabilities. I don't really know how anyone could be satisfied use loops after that. They just don't allow the customization it requires to pull off a full song. You are restricted to those patterns and whether you're doing covers or originals, it's just not sufficient if you're very demanding. - Peter

I really like what this relatively new dev on the scene (Skybox Audio) is putting out.

I have it, but two thumbs up for your generosity.

I grew up in a musical family and played publicly since I was 4 but had an injury 22 years ago that stopped me from playing, so now my playing ability is very poor, but it doesn't stop me. I really wish more of us would share our music with each other. Once in a while I post a song in the forum. I wish more of the regulars here would do the same.

Great share! One of my favorite bluesmen! Muddy used to live just a few miles away from where I bought my first home in the Chicago suburbs (although he died long before I bought my home, I just image what it would be like to run into Muddy Waters; when my son was in Little League, one of the dads was friends with one of Muddy's kids and used to play basketball with Muddy's son at his house when they were kids -- of course, I wanted to know everything!).

It doesn't matter if not everyone enjoys your music. I was once a very good drummer (and a mediocre pianist and organist and a terrible guitarist), but had an injury that stopped me from playing professionally and now, I still have the same high standards and play everything terribly and can only play drums for less than a minute before I'm in pain, but I still play and whereas I was playing mid-size concert venues back in the day, now if a few friends like something, I'm pretty happy about it! You have lots of us who appreciate and enjoy you and everything you do, Reid. Keep having fun. It doesn't matter if some people don't appreciate you or your music, lots of us do appreciate you. Last year, when I attempted to play music again 21 years after an injury stopped me from playing professionally, my son asked me what my objective was. I'm a middle-aged man who is no longer a proficient musician, I wouldn't even call myself a musician anymore, I'm a guy who used to be a musician, a long time ago. My objective is just to have an outlet for expression. It's art. It doesn't need to have a commercial purpose. I think everyone should look at creating art -- draw, paint, make music, sing, dance, make music, make crafts -- it doesn't matter if anyone else wants to listen to or buy what you have. But even if one of other person appreciates your art, I think that's wonderful. Lot's of us appreciate your creativity, Reid. Keep it up!

@Reid RosefeltI knew your "Cowboy Song." It's a whole different topic -- but hey, most of us regulars are prone to tangents and I'm obviously no exception -- but watching the first clip you shared, it was cool to see how you could play the rhythm guitar loops in Session Guitarist and also have the other plugin doing the bass. With exception to Session Guitarist, I am focused on coming up with my own parts using single note multisamples, I must admit that watching your video, I now see how cool that it would be to use one of those tools when I'm writing a song. Thanks for that. Now with regard to Session Guitarist, are you just adjusting the volume and vibrato on certain strums or is there more to it? Thanks for sharing your videos, I've watched a bunch of them -- and always give them likes (I follow you on YouTube). On a related note, while Hans Zimmer is the co- owner of UJAM, I know one of the guitar sample library lines he and his staff have long used. I don't have permission to share the information, but you can easily read between the lines. The UJAM plugins are clearly aimed at a very different user than most KONTAKT multisample libraries, and it's a much larger market (younger/different genres/different empasis regarding playing) and I'm in the group that loves playing via MIDI. But I definitely see possibilities to use tools like ezBass, even though I've yet to try them. Your video definitely made me interested in exploring those tools.

@Reid Rosefelt Peter Georges' was behind Steinberg's VirtualGuitarist, which is the origin of the UJAM line and came out many years prior to NI introducing Session Guitarist. I'd guess Steinberg released VG in the early 2000s (2002?), whereas I believe Session Guitarist came out at least a decade later. So Peter's previous company, daveiv mentioned their name, was one of the early guitar VST makers. But Peter and Hans Zimmer are partners in the company, as you probably already know, so they are obviously both heavy hitters in the world of sampling and composing. I happen to know what guitar sample libraries Hans' has long used, but I don't have permission to share that info. As I mentioned earlier, of the loop-based guitar sample libraries/plug-ins, the Session Guitarist line is easily my favorite too. But I'm very curious about your mention of varying the strumming using Session Guitarist because I've been using it for many years when I'm composing -- and often I'll use it when coming up with quick ideas and later replace it, which is similar to the way I often use midi and loop libraries for drum patterns instead of a standard click track. As far as I know , Session Guitarist only allows a user to vary volume, vibrato, doubling, tuning, mic position and effects (as the guitars were recorded dry for the loops, you can add whatever effects and amp sims you like). Is there some other method of varying strums that I'm unaware of? If so, can you point me in the direction of how you do it? Also, why not share your examples -- many of us already follow you on YouTube and are Reid supporters!

To be clear, I was talking about Prominy from around a decade ago. Back then -- I have no idea what they're up to these days -- their guitar libraries had a ton of articulations but there wasn't intuitive scripting. I was contrasting that with Orange Tree Samples libraries, which have a lot of articulations but they're scripted to make them very intuitive. So when you say, play a guitar lead or chords, the script provides you with the articulation that fits what you're playing. And thanks for the compliment, of course, you know I enjoy conversing with you too. Although, I realize I've over indulged in this trip back into the history of virtual guitar plugins and libraries, so my apologies to everyone who is bored. With all of the money I've spent on guitar libraries and plugins over the years, I could easily have bought a couple of Les Pauls. Sample libraries and plugins don't age as well as physical instruments.

I owned RealGuitar, Steinberg's VirtualGuitarist 1.0 (I actually have it in the original box in the room where I'm typing this! RealGuitar had a, IMO, less than great sound to the electric guitar samples, whereas VirtualGuitarist -- the developer's name was Peter Georges, and he's a co-founder of UJAM.along with Hans Zimmer. VirtualGuitarist sounded much better (I believe by the late 00s, Music Lab re-recorded the samples used for those plugins). I also used CAL scripts for Cakewalk as well as sample libraries in formats from the 90s and 00s for GIgasampler and SoundFont. I started out using hardware samplers). I had relationships with a bunch of developers back then who made guitar libraries and VSTs and gave them free marketing advice and would give them input for what I was looking for in plugins and libraries, hoping I could help them out and in return, they would act on some of my suggestions and I used to make them agree to give free plugins and libraries to KVR users in developing nations that I identified who otherwise financially struggled to afford their offerings. That encompasses several different developers. My day job back then was a Fortune 200 strategy director, then leading digital marketing, and leading a publication on marketing strategy, a major book deal and doing a lot of writing and public speaking, so I could point to magazines like Wired and Forbes were I was interviewed and dev's loved the opportunity to get free advice -- and because it was just an extension of my love of music, I didn't charge most of them and even turned down NFRs. For example, I owned every guitar library and VST on the market and communicated with the developers of almost all of them. I had an injury that stopped me from playing music professionally back in 1999, so it was a way of feeling connected to music, to be very candid. So I was always a bit obsessed with guitar sample libraries, VSTs and sample libraries. An example, if you know Pettinhouse, I owned all of his libraries except for maybe one. I gave him advice on a number of occasions and as he was a one man operation, I refused to take NFRs from him and paid for everything. When he released a new library -- I think jazz guitar -- he sent me an email saying it was a gift on behalf of my then newborn daughter (this was the 00s). Andrea/Pettinhouse, BTW, is a quality developer, a nice person and makes good sample libraries. I won't drop other names, as back around 2010 other sample library developers -- even though I had mostly given them free advice and turned down NFRs would get upset with me when they saw that when people in forums discussed guitars I would refer to Orange Tree Samples libraries as innovative and the most realistic and playable guitar libraries or plugins on the market. So, yes, RealGuitar was a big leap for virtual guiar it was big for hobbyist musicians; pros weren't using it for final productions and it did not contain the intricate details that Orange Tree Samples' guitar libraries included from the beginning that made it so innovative and the brilliant combination of sampling (the sampling of the early versions of RealGuitar was less than stellar, IMO), scripting and modeling combined the law OTS did, hence why I suggested the name Evolution back in maybe 2008 when Greg started working on a library with a strumming engine. When Orange Tree Samples came around with Strawberry guitar and Cherry bass it was a huge breakthrough, The only developer that was doing that level of articulations was out of Japan. Prominy. I, of course, bought their library but found it frustratingly unintuitive and never used it in even a single final production. It was a huge dump of articulations without intuitive scripting. Orange Tree Samples took all of those articulations and the nuances that made for an original sounding simulation of a guitar and brilliantly scripted it. At the time, Greg, the founder, was also doing KONTAKT scripting for Cinesamples and other developers for their KONTAKT libraries and every developer I knew thought of him as an innovator. Now, I can't say that names of OTS customers, because of confidentiality, but I can hint. So let's just say that they include the biggest of names -- including the very biggest composers. I know that OTS' libraries were being used on Nick shows and various TV shows dating back to the 00s and I was aware of major pop songs that used it. So, OTS libraries began being used in movies, TV, commercials, games and pop hits going back to the late 00s that was when virtual guitars first made it into final commercial productions . NO ONE was using RealGuitar in final pro productions. It was a very cool tool that amateurs like me loved, but it didn't sound authentic enough for a final production. VirtualGuitarist was loops and was more suitable for final productions, but was pretty limited, as loop guitar libraries are by nature and once OTS came along, I abandoned RealGuitar and could never go back. No one would use that in a final production. I'll reference a couple of other developers who told me that they were basing their guitar libraries on Greg's innovations. One of the developers has been very successful with his sample brand and line of guitar and bass sample libraries, which are said to "shred." Another did a series of guitar and bass libraries for one of the larger sample developer companies and we had at least a dozen conversations and he shared, completely upfront that he had reverse engineered OTS' guitar and bass libraries to determine everything being done in the scripting and the various samples and modeling techniques used (because modeling is part of how OTS gets that realism). But all in all, I probably had conversations and gave some degree of business advice to several different guitar library and plugin developers because I had owned their guitar libraries and sought to have input in their products and always had the attitude that these were really small businesses -- even the largest of sample developers are small businesses. Now back to keyswitches, it absolutely isn't difficult -- I can do it, so anybody could! (I have tendonitis that limits me, as I otherwise am in pain in less than a minute). So, as someone very experienced with virtual guitars, the two developers that really stand out today, IMO, are Orange Tree Samples -- and I've been transparent about my relationship, but I'm friends with a bunch of other developers, including OTS' competitors -- and Ample Sounds. Shreddage is more limited, but I've heard good things about it. As far as loop based guitar libraries/plugins, as I mentioned earlier, I think NI's Session Strings line is vastly superior to UJAM's offerings. I'm pretty sure this demo goes back to around 2008 before the Evolution line was developed, from the original Strawberry library. I remember a semi-pro guitarist friend of mine, who studied guitar in college, hearing this and being in disbelief that it could be sampled guitar played from a MIDI keyboard. https://orangetreesamples.com/audio/SlitheryTattoo.mp3 https://orangetreesamples.com/audio/Orangeholic.mp3

I can relate to wanting play in real time. Most of the songs I've shared on SoundCloud are me playing Evolution libraries in real-time. But that's largely because I've written most of what I record on the piano or keyboard and guitars are constantly shifting from chords to riffs and I have this habit of wanting to play everything in real-time as I grew up focused on live performance. When I came to Greg maybe 12 years ago, before Evolution, I was telling him all my desires for a guitar library and I basically was able to have a great deal of input into the Evolution line, so it very much reflects my thinking on how a guitar plugin should work. So, it can work exactly the way you are used to playing and I play that way too, but that's not always going to give you a very realistic sound for a number of reasons, which is that unless you are playing guitar chords exactly the way you play them on the guitar, it's not going to sound authentic. Now maybe that doesn't matter to you, if so, that's all that matters. But if you're looking for authenticity then you'll understand why the feature that transforms the keyboard chords you play into the way a guitarist would play them. For instance, if you're holding down a E major triad in the first inversion, that's not the way a guitarist would play it. Evolution translates what you play to the way a guitarist plays them -- that was on my list of features for the engine, I don't know, 12 or so years ago or whatever it's been since Evolution first came out. Because the way most guitar libraries worked before Evolution (which a bunch of other devs copied, some I've talked to directly, some I've even given consulting advice to, as I have been a super user of guitar libraries and plugins) is that developers would recommend that keyboardists learn how to play chords with the same notes guitarists use. I told Greg, I thought that was too much to ask, that he should write a script that translates keyboard chords to guitar chords and that's how that feature came about. And it's a pretty big deal and it changed the way many other developers did their libraries, copying what Evolution did. But that alone isn't enough to get an ultra realistic guitar performance, of course, because you're going to need to do upstrokes and downstrokes, so there is one of the big dilemmas if you're playing live when you're not using loops, that's pretty much not going to happen realistically in real-time without using a keyswitch or a strumming engine. Also, you're not going to be able to switch between various types of strums -- AKA articulations -- like a real guitarist would do. With a loop library, all of that is pre-recorded and you have no way to modify that pattern, because it's a pre-recorded loop. With an engine that uses individual sampled notes you can adjust that any way you want it. (If any of that is unclear, check out the video I shared called "strumming from scratch." Those videos are HUGE in getting a fast understanding of how the strumming engine works. And once you get it, it's really a giant breakthrough that enables you to do things you never thought you could do with guitar rhythms. And then, after you create your patterns, then you can play whatever chord progressions you like -- the patterns are just the rhythm of the strums and the types of strums (e.g., sustain, palm mute, half palm mute, harmonic, chug, string slap, etc.)-- , they don't define the chords played. It's really like going in the studio and telling a guitarist how you want a guitar rhythm played. You don't need to learn how to play a guitar, you just need to tell it what you want and you will get exactly what you want. Now that kind of customization, of course, requires you to understand choices, and therein lies the learning curve. And I find that the fastest and most enjoyable way to learn is to watch those two videos and go and start creating patterns and that, at least for me, was mind blowing. I had given Greg/OTS a ton of input on the strumming engine, but what he came up with was way beyond what I could have imagined. I was thinking in a lot simpler terms, whereas Greg is not only a super talented musician, he gained a reputation as a genius KONTAKT scripter among developers greatly through the work he did scripting CineSamples libraries (before he went full time with OTS). If you want to understand why Evolution is so groundbreaking, it isn't just because it has a ton of articulations. Other developers were doing that. It's because Greg's scripting so brilliantly makes it intuitive to play and automatically knows when to select the articulations. If you noticed that I've purchased a lot of 8Dio libraries and I've commented that their solo string libraries don't have intuitive scripting , contrasting them with string libraries that do have great scripting, like the ones from Fluffy Audio. The result is, I don't really use those 8Dio solo string libraries and wish I could resell them. And I know and like Troels, but I'm going to be candid about my take on his libraries. Scripting is of enormous importance for string and guitar libraries whether you play them completely live and ignore strumming engines or you use strumming engines. If you listen to the guitar lead on the recent demo I did for OTS, it's super simple and played in real-time, but there's no way to get a performance that realistic without brilliant scripting -- and the scripting is selecting the articulations you hear. (FTR, I wrote the guitar lead, but was having a bunch of midi issues and I think Greg re-did the entire guitar lead trying to play my parts note for note, and then he added in these really cool harmonies and some nice arpeggios, but all of it is easily playable in real-time, it just reflects Greg's arranging skills, not midi tricks). Now the bass part in the demo DOES reflect the use of keyswitches. I used palm mutes during the intro and there are slides that require the use of keyswitches. Your simply not going to get a truly realistic performance from any sample library without learning to use keyswitches. But you might not care. It mainly comes down to how realistic you want your performance to be. And, you and I have had a bunch of PMs, and I, of course, am not under the false impression that I'm a decent musician anymore. I was a decent musician decades ago, but I'm just a little more than a year and half of trying to play again, 20+ years after tendinitis stopped me from playing, so while I try to go for realism in my playing, I certainly don't have any technique anymore and the fact that I can only play for a few minutes at a time before I have to stop due to pain ensures I'm never going to reach any level of proficiency again, but I can get away with playing simple stuff. https://www.orangetreesamples.com/audio/PeterDeLegge-DearPaul.mp3

Do you not use them because you don't find them intuitive or you have learned how to use them and don't like the results?

I totally agree that there are times when it's great to have the dead easy ready to go loops when you're just coming up with ideas. But once you learn how to create your own patterns, once you can do it easily, you'll find yourself a lot less reliant on using pre-recorded loops -- it's so incredibly cool to be able to adjust every part of a strumming pattern. If Evolution had a lot more preset patterns, it would be able to do the same thing. I have given OTS feedback that it'd be great to have more preset strumming patterns. I've been coming here so long that most of the people in this thread are people I've seen here and interacted with over the years -- and we all use virtual guitars and most of them own Evolution libraries, so yeah, it's definitely off topic -- although all of us go off topic constantly, so I figured it was the norm -- but I'm saying if you spend the time to learn the Evolution strumming system to create your own rhythm guitar patterns, you can pretty easily create these patterns and anything else you want. The big hurdle is spending the time to learn the strumming engine. Depending on your learning style and technical ability, you can learn how the engine works at a basic level in 10 minutes or spend an hour, watch the two videos below and go in for a deep dive (okay, you'll easily spend hours after you start learning how to use the engine because it's pretty fun to be able to create your own patterns and adjust all of the elements of a pattern). Once you nail it, it's unlikely that you're going to turn to loops that often. And you can create your own custom library of presets. That said, if a bunch of us all agree that Evolution would be better with more presets, I can bring that back to them. As it is, it definitely favors the person who wants to create their own strumming patterns as opposed to someone who is used to finding a loop and going. I am a believer that it would be great if it had MORE presets so that it can handle the user who prefers presets. Again, between UJAM and NI Session Strings, the pure loop virtual guitar plugins, I think Session Strings is vastly superior, but once you use the pretty limited number of presets in a UJAM plugin, that's it. To me, it's more of a toy than an instrument. But of course, I've been using virtual guitars since the 80s and I have strong opinions (like most of us!). If you or anyone feels strongly that you would like more presets in Evolution, send me a PM and I promise to pass it on and discuss it with Greg and, maybe even develop a poll to see everyone's thoughts. Anyhow, for those who own Evolution guitars that have never learned how to make their own chord strumming patterns, spend an hour watching these two videos below when you have a half hour to spare and it will be like you just bought a new amazing plugin -- and you already own the thing. You might still buy loop based guitar plugins after that, but I'm betting that it will change the way your process is for using virtual guitar and you'll rely on loops a lot less.

I don't know a ton about the plugin, but isn't it just a slight variation on their VPRE-73? But if your rallying against the dev claiming they're making a "marketing cash grab," I'm a marketing and business strategist (okay, I guess former, I run a business these days), every single promotion a business does could be termed a "cash grab', that is the objective of a sales promotion. But if the limited edition of that plugin bothers you, they have other plugins on sale that aren't special editions. Maybe you'd prefer the TD-201 Vintage Tape Echo on sale for $29 USD, normally $99 USD? I'm actually contemplating picking that one up and will probably download a trial of it this weekend. I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who owns the TD-201 and compare it to alternatives. The demos sound really good to my ears. https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/products/td-201

I like this small dev a lot. I've been a customer for quite a while.

I'm guessing it's not just me that when I see an effect plugin deep discounted and selling for $29 USD, I immediately react by making sure the developer doesn't have a "Update Plan. " This is the upside of Waves' deep discounting plugins, so let's be grateful for that. Plugin and sample developers are one of the few industries in this economy not taking advantage of current trends to inflate pricing.

IMO, for a loop based rhythm guitar plugin, Native Instrument's Session Guitarist has far more depth, customization and a superior user experience than UJAM. I've picked up three of the UJam Virtual Guitarist plugins as freebies over the years (I still have the original Steinberg Virtual Guitarist -- same sample developer, for those who didn’t know), including Sparkle, and find them incredibly more limited then NI's Session Guitarist series of loop libraries. I totally get the instant gratification of using loop libraries for rhythm guitar and sometimes turn to Session Guitarist when I'm initially working on a song if I know it has a suitable pattern. But it's otherwise so limiting. For those who own Orange Tree Samples Evolution libraries, spend 10 minutes learning to use the strumming engine and you'll be able to create virtually any kind of strumming pattern -- and strum --exactly what you want, with unlimited patterns instead of being confined to a very limited series of loops. I believe you could do the same with Ample Sound,, but to be candid, personally, I never figured it out with their strumming engine.

I've only picked up the freebies from Sonixenima so far, but I really like this developer's approach and the quality of the libraries seems excellent. I'm contemplating buying their solo cello library. If anyone here reading this owns it, I would love to get your thoughts.

That developer is a mess. I purchased a library and had show stopping issues, the dev responded once to my support ticket and said he'd follow up in a week, but that was several months ago. From reading forums, this plugin is a mess for people on Windows and Mac. They're clearly not ready for prime time, even from reading this thread. I know our own Reid R. has posted about his own show stopping problems with Mndala, and the last post of his I saw on the plugin, Reid gave up on it. One of their YouTube influencer"reviewers" had show stopping problems during a livestream review I witnessed. He got the developer on the stream and he couldn't work things out. It was the worst fail I've ever seen for software pitch -- er, review -- in real time. Maybe the developer will get their act together at some point, but I'm pausing on buying anything from them until these issues get resolved. I'm not even going to bother trying to track down the developer for support he promised months ago. It's not worth it, IMO.

Their demos -- every instrument on the tracks -- for the "Brushes and Mallets" library sound absolutely gorgeous. I was subscribed to their email, but, candidly, I had forgotten about this dev. Thanks for reminding me with this freebie, Larry. https://www.straightaheadsamples.com/sa-brushes-mallets