PavlovsCat

Thanks. I was a bit horrified when I realized that I posted this in the deals subforum instead of the song forum. But thanks to you and @Old Joad for the encouragement. I never even had the nerve to share any music that I recorded with me singing on it until a few years ago (I was just a drummer back in the day and did background vocals at most). Hopefully, one of the mods will see this soon and move it. I'm grateful that I'm not getting ripped on yet for this!

Yipes! I meant to post this in the song part of the forum.

This was just me doing a quickly put together jam version of John Lennon's Cold Turkey. Loud and full of energy.

Melda's MConvolutionEZ is a great little convolution reverb plugin -- although it doesn't have all the controls I would like (but that's why you buy the paid version, after all) -- it comes with some gorgeous impulse responses that I especially love using on strings. I highly recommend it, especially for a free plugin. https://www.meldaproduction.com/MConvolutionEZ

I have a bunch of this developer's libraries and plugins, and find they're pretty good. But I'm not a fan of Kanayi's promotional practices. Karanyi routinely does sales promotions like this one where they inflate the regular prices of eligible products and offer a coupon for those products only that makes the final price the same or more than the constantly running sales prices they offer. I don't want to reward them for engaging in these practices, so I always skip these sales and they repeat this tactic over and over (inflating prices and creating coupons).

Starship Krupa has a thread listing free plugins in another section of the forum. I have one thread with recommended free sample libraries for free players and another thread with recommended free sample libraries for the full version of KONTAKT. It would be great if someone created a similar style thread for these plugins -- or perhaps they'd be a good addition to @Starship Krupa's thread? I'm maxed out timewise maintaining my existing two threads. But if anyone had the time and energy to go through these and similar free plugins and compile recommendations, I think it would be really valuable. I know I would find it valuable.

I recorded this over a year ago, but was never happy with my mix (SPOILER: I have almost no idea what I'm doing and have a major hearing loss that makes me a very poor choice for a mixer, but I'm all I can afford). So I decided to try remixing it and now I actually like it. Although, my voice and a lot of other things are clipping, it still sounds far better than previous mixes -- possibly even (relatively) pretty good. Also I could use advice on smart strategies for reducing levels on everything at once when you have clipping issues, but otherwise like the mix (as that's my situation with this mix).

Funny, I was looking at this, thinking it might be a cool (I haven't used arpeggiators much, but enjoy using them when I do) and when I saw that you liked it -- knowing your depth of experience with synths, I now have to try the demo. So thanks for sharing, @Nick Blanc.

@Starship Krupa I just remembered this after I suppose your force for good comment triggered the memory. Many years ago, I created and led a program at a historic Chicago church on the city's North side that brought together members of Chicago's homeless with church members every week for meals and friendship. Several blocks away at Chicago's Second City (one of my favorite places to go in my single days), Albini and his wife were responsible for a Christmas fundraiser for Chicago's poor; they also purchashed and delivered Christmas presents to needy families inspired by Steve's wife learning how the post office was getting letters from very desperate people at Christmas time that the USPO invited people to answer and help others (unfortunately, the USPO stopped that practice and Steve had been trying to persuade the postmaster general to change the policy back). I suppose knowing about Steve's practices with bands via Cory Rusk (Touch and Go) and that we shared the same passion for helping those in need, I became very fond of him. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-havent-had-a-conventional-christmas-in-20-years_b_8614568

When cclarry has an issue with a retailer site not working, like this one, it definitely warrants the VIP, priority treatment. These shops and devs seriously have benefited greatly from Larry's efforts. A lot of us regulars probably spend enough to warrant VIP treatment too. Although, Bapu should qualify for next level support. I don't care if the shop owner was out of New Zealand, if your shop didn't work for a few hours when Bapu tried to use it, that could result in a tremendous losses. You hop on the next plane to California and you apologize to the man.

It is funny that I called him a producer -- and he actually was an engineer and producer, but he didn't like being called a producer because he felt the term was confusing and philosophically, he saw a lot of producers are big record company tools. But I don't think it's completely accurate to merely classify even his work with In Utero as merely a record engineer. Just read the letter I included above and you'll see that Albini was already acting in a way that went beyond engineer (he recommended the studio the band ended up at, he was instrumental in directing the raw sound the band wanted -- until the record company later had some tracks remixed to be more commercial. Steve was, no doubt a#@l retentive. One could easily make the case that he was more than an engineer, but philosophically had issues with the producer title and how many producers went too far in changing the sound of a band for the sake of commerce. I might consider that idealistic and principled, but you might find it heavy handed. But we all have our ways of seeing things and I dug how Steve was true to his vision. I didn't know of him saying anything homophobic. I certainly wouldn't support that if he did. But people can have blindspots. I just know that I respected what I knew of him, which was largely through Cory Rusk's eyes and I really respect Cory and found him to be a really good man of integrity. No doubt Steve was super opinionated and I'm not out to be an apologist for the guy who I didn't know personally. But we're all full of imperfections. I just know that I liked what I knew of him and what I knew of him were mainly the stories of his integrity with regards to money and his commitment and passion for music and artists that was more important to him than money or fame.

That sounds pretty cool to my ears.

I've recommended his free versions of some of these pianos from Pianobook on my list of free KONTAKT sample libraries. I think this dev has been very generous with the free versions and I think they're some of the best free piano libraries on the site. He invested a lot of time and energy to make those libraries which he gives away at no cost. I hope he does well with his commercial versions.

BTW, Steve refused to accept getting paid royalties on In Utero (or other albums). The reason was that the major labels take that money from what the band would have made, not what the record company would make (Touch and Go didn't work that way and Steve loved that). The record company estimated it would be $400,000 US. Steve said taking that much was unethical and he wouldn't do it and counter proposed that he'd take whatever the band decided. He would have ended up making $2 million. Nirvana decided to pay Steve $100,000 US.

I could not disagree more strongly that there was elitism in Steve's anti elitism. I'll give you an example why and I'll share a private story from long ago why. Cory, the head of Touch and Go was great to me. I had done posters for Jesus Lizard (I have a related story, but it's more about Corey) and Steve produced them. Cory told me how Steve Albini and Butch Vig were his go to producers for Touch and Go Records. But when Vig produced Nirvana, his rates skyrocketed and Touch and Go could no longer afford him. Steve would work for whatever Cory would pay him, less than what Cory paid local, unknown producers. Steve cared about the music, not the money. I don't know of any other producer like him. Now for a related story about Cory. I was a devout Christian and told Cory that I couldn't do the Jesus Lizard posters (Steve produced and loved the band). Cory was incredibly understanding and told me he respected my decision and it wouldn't hurt our business relationship. Then he asked if he could share the story of the band's name and even showed me a Jesus Lizard Cory had in his office (he had snakes and a cat -- like his friend Steve, he loved cats). I ended up doing the poster. Guys like Cory and Steve were the real deal. They aren't their personality cults. Maybe what you didn't like is the kind of people that are in personality cults, not Steve himself. Steve was a funny, sweet guy. I can't think of anyone else who achieved his degree of notoriety and didn't change. Didn't charge more. But as a rock artist, he was also a different kind of guy. He didn't drink alcohol or do drugs because his father was an alcoholic and it profoundly impacted him. Now, for the record, while I knew Cory pretty well and spent dozens of hours with him, I only knew of Steve through Cory's eyes. But that impressed the heck out of me. Now, I have nothing against Butch Vig, but his story is much more of the norm. Works with a super famous band, it completely changes him as he exploits it for everything he can get out of it. On one hand, you can't blame him. It takes incredible integrity to still go back to small, broke bands and record them for peanuts after you just recorded one of the hottest bands in the world. That to me is the antithesis of elitism.

I'm a Chicagoan and my connection to Steve comes from having handled the printing of posters for Touch and Go Records and a bunch of other Chicago indie labels, I primarily was introduced to from Cory Rusk (he was a legend in the indie rock scene in the 80s and 90s -- Kurt Cobain dreamed of being signed to Touch and Go, but unfortunately for both parties, Cory only signed him to a single -- I handled the poster on it), to put myself through college (that and playing drums traveling the midwest with a somewhat popular Chicago area rock band that was a critics favorite) -- that included some posters for Steve's band Big Black. Nirvana shared a personal letter from the band that Steve wrote to them before recording their In Utero album and it's awesome, IMO. I think Steve, like Cory, was one of the good guys in the rock world. If anyone wants a story of what a good guy Cory was (he's still around, but I haven't seen him in decades), just ask. And then there's this. RIP BUB and Steve.

Bapu, owning the libs.

Yep. We share a common love of plugin and sample hoarding.

I didn't get the voucher either, but that's okay. I swear, you guys had me buying a bunch of their plugins I still haven't even begun to figure out how to use! Dead serious. I'm not doubting it's great stuff (in the right hands, which probably aren't my hands). Like everybody else, I was a sucker for their really compelling deals.

I sense that you and I share a similar love of the cello, as I read every cello related thread and you seem to own most of them (the Bapu of cello libraries? And shockingly, Bapu doesn't own this -- at least not as of this post; wait a few minutes....). I have read a lot of positive posts about this one.

But if we would have come right out and said, "Don't buy this!" Bapu would have felt like, "Hey, no one tells me what to do!" It was posted. It exists. Hence, it was in the cards that Bapu would soon be installing it.

This is definitely a short coming of my list -- it reflects my tastes and preferences, even with regard to styles. While I do I like a limited amount of metal bands (more prog metal), I don't create metal music. Another admitted shortcoming of my list is that I rarely go beyond using Orange Tree Samples Evolution guitar and bass libraries. In all candor, I had such input in the initial creation of how the libraries work -- as I was a fan of the developer's work going back before he started Orange Tree Samples (he was doing libraries for other developers and some very innovative scripting for Cinesamples and other KONTAKT developers that became the talk of KONTAKT developers) and I find them so incredibly well done in terms of sampling quality, tone, scripting, and functionality, that I rarely use other guitar and bass libraries. Guitar articulations are very complex to script in order to get authentic performances, unlike a piano or drum library and Evolution incorporate physical modeling principles that make a big difference. There are some free guitar libraries to spend time with specifically for the purposes of this list. I've tried all of the better free guitar and bass libraries on the market in the past, and though it's not for KONTAKT, the best free guitar and bass libraries I've tried are easily Ample Sounds by far. But I only tried them for myself, not for this list and making recommendations, so I need to try the libraries out again. I would include Ample Sounds libraries on this list based on their quality (they're on my other list, which includes all formats of free sample libraries), but they're not KONTAKT libraries. Maybe this weekend I'll try out the free 8Dio libraries. One was formerly a paid library they've recently made free, so I'm actually pretty pumped about that one. Christian Henson made a free KONTAKT electric guitar library drenched in reverb that's pretty good that I was just playing with the other day to decide if I should add it to the list. But again, I've become such a perfectionist for guitar and bass libraries that it's difficult to recommend something I find insufficient for my use. For free, I think Ample Sounds is the best thing out there for guitar and bass. I'd put a KONTAKT developer next, but I can't in good conscience, recommend the guy's stuff due to his poor ethics (and I still have one of his libraries on my list because I enjoy it so much, but I'm probably eventually going to take it off; I think ethics should be a factor in who we choose to do business with and who I can recommend, even for freebies).

I just added four (free, of course) synth libraries for KONTAKT to the original post that all warranted a strong recommendation.

I think to be consistent with your past buying patterns, you don't already own this, therefore you must by it. I kid, I kid.

I have a pretty rare last name. But they had all of the facts correct with my career bio, just the dead part was wrong. So yeah, my guess was that they found someone with a similar last name. They didn't show anything that would indicate I died in the sources they shared. But what a leap to make, that a person has died when there's not a legit obituary from a trusted source or a death notice in a government source. I mean, we already have to prove that we're not robots on a daily basis and now there's the added burden of having to persuade an AI that you're not dead...Now they've gone too far!