fret_man

Good idea! Attached is a short clip where the castanets enter. They don't change very much from this for the rest of the song. The low clicker is on each down beat while the high clicker plays all the other notes. From my research, this is how they're supposed to be played. Granted, there isn't much difference between Hi and Low clickers in IK's samples, but I hear many real ones like that as well. But I'm curious if the failure is my playing or the samples. FYI, the strumming guitar and main guitar lead are Ample Sound's AGL (nylon string) while the higher harmony is Ample Sound's Ethnic Uke. Clip with Castanets.mp3

Yes, I do. I believe that's the one I used. I mistakenly thought it was part of Miroslav. I used the one that has the "menu" to choose ~12 different sounds (some of which I can't hear any difference but OK).

In the AS non-free version, specifying the fret position causes an automatic fret sliding sound (that cannot be turned off), while specifying the string does not. This gives you a great way to choose not only which "G" to play, but whether it is accompanied by fret noise or not. Very flexible. I'm a fan. In addition, this would make a GREAT teaching tool. You can program it to play a piece exactly where and how to play each note. "Watch the fretboard and play it like THIS." They got the left hand down. For the right hand, unfortunately they do not model ponticello - right hand playing close to the bridge. But they handle other right-hand techniques pretty well - mutes, partial strums, up/down strokes (but notice there's no full upstroke strum, unless you place those notes manually), etc. I'm glad they went with their own GUI. They have a pretty good system going there.

I recently got a few Spanish instrumentals rejected by a music supervisor for a variety of reasons, one of which was unrealistic sounding castanets. This can either be due to bad sounds or bad playing, or both. I studied up on how to play castanets here (all 3 parts plus "how to choose") so, assuming I did that correctly, I'd like to solve the "unrealistic sounds" part of it. I used the castanets in IK Miroslav Philharmonik 2, since I thought they sounded better than those available in SampleTank 4. Those are all I currently have. Rightly or wrongly, I kind of view that collection of sounds as "better than nothing". Do any of you have recommendations for castanets that may sound more "professional" and "realistic"? Thank you!

I'm finding the same thing. Mixing on headphones and then, when "done", listening on my studio monitors and mono on the Avantones. Reverb is really exposed on the Avantones.

And just to be complete, you can adjust each tuner to go down 2 half-steps (to low D1 on the low E string, for example) on both AS guitars and basses. Not sure if this is available on the free version, tho.

Yes, thank you, Reid. I auditioned that mandolin but that sound was more like classical "Italian style" bowl-back mandolins rather than bluegrass "German style" archtop mandolins. I'm looking for the latter.

Yes, but I thought Neoverb could reproduce all (or maybe most) of the equivalent EA reverbs.

I just wish the mandolin owner had his mandolin properly setup beforehand. There's way too much fret buzz. You can get rid of it by limiting velocity to less than 50, but this limits your dynamics. Still, it's the best mandolin VST out there, except for tremolo (which is a BIG part of mandolin playing - I end up manually entering the tremolo note-by-note to get it to sound right, very tedious). Sorry, about intercepting this thread but I very much want a better mandolin VSTi.....

AS can read TAB, and you can drag it to the piano roll (well, I *think* you can, so maybe it's also a TAB - MIDI converter?) AS forum seem to be a lot more active OTS models moving the right hand closer/farther from the bridge, although it doesn't do this with samples but with an algorithm. AS does not have this feature.

I thought Neoverb kind of included all of these. No?

And there's an Update to Amplitube 5.0.3 to go with it!

And Ample Sound. I've been able to get realistic/acceptable strums from them.

If I already have the RX8 Groove3 tutorial(s), someone pleasee tell me why I should pay $38 for this.

+1. Their Taylor, nylon, and 12-string are all great, too. They had a great sale last June, so hopefully that'll happen again.

Hi Doug, in my opinion AmpleSounds and OrangeTree have much better guitar sounds. I suggest waiting until one of them to go on sale.

... and he needs to have a 50% off sale.

Yes, I have been naughty or nice!

And in case anyone's curious, the EQ I came up with looks like this:

So, I recorded two channels: 1 thru a mic and 2 thru DI. I played each note from the lowest to the highest (~3.5 octaves)and measured the RMS of each channel for each note. By comparing these I generated an EQ curve to convert the DI sound to be more like the mic and it sounds GREAT! The DI was a little boxy sounding (which the EQ gloriously fixed) and the DI seems to impart some sort of compression effect because it's notes don't die down as quickly. It's probably not the transducer per se but more due to sound transmission thru the maple wood, bracing, etc. Still, it is a highly useable signal and will definitely solve my tracking issues. I'm glad I brought up my frustrations because y'all made some very good suggestions. Even tho' I use Studio One now, the Cakewalk Forum has always been a great place to stay and share. Thanks!

Thank you, Greg. I really, really appreciate your responses to my tirade above. I don't want to be that guy who goes off halfcocked with unwarranted complaints. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations but guitar VIs are so good now-a-days that I figured Mandolins would be there as well. But I'm thinking not quite yet. I made a few edits above based on what I've learned from playing around some more with the new file I recently downloaded. That helped a lot. I admit I need to learn Kontact much better.

Thanks, Matthew Sorrels. Yes, I think #079 is correct. According to their Acoustic Slide manual there are two ways to do this: This is achieved by two methods. Firstly, you can right-click on any automatable knob and use the MIDI learn option to assign the MIDI CC #. The second method is to manually drag a MIDI CC # from the listing of CCs in KONTAKT's automation section on KONTAKT's left sidebar onto one of the knobs on Steel Strings' interface. This is accessed in the "Auto", then "Midi Automation" tab. I wish this was in the Mandolin manual as well.

FYI, I found out it IS possible to specify the fret position by using MIDI CC. Unfortunately, I have yet to find out which CC. I requested a list of the various CC options but haven't seen any yet. It is not in the user guide.

Thanks, Jerry. The Schertler is a sound body / microphone pickup that sounds very realistic live. No piezo quack here! Still, I'll look into the IR idea. I didn't know those existed for mandolin modelling.

Thanks, guys. I forgot my mandolin has a built-in Schertler pickup. I should have remembered because I paid a pretty penny for that and it sounds fantastic live! Will give that a shot. Also, I noticed that the longer I sit there mucking with things the more I hear problems and get more frustrated. Gotta take a step away more often.