Wavesfactory Strum Guitar

[Larry Shelby]

What is Strum Guitar?

Strum Guitar is a collection of four guitars where all strums were sampled both up and down stroke. The technique we used to sample these was the same that guitarists play: not all strings are struck, depending on the velocity of the hand. That's what makes this instrument so unique.

Strum Guitar will save you time when making a quick demo of your song, and it can also be used for a final production.

Get it now for only €49 until May, 19th.
Reg. price: €79.00

https://www.wavesfactory.com/kontakt-libraries/strum-guitar/

[Fleer]

Sweet. Wavesfactory rocks. 

[chris.r]

At last. Are there any good known alternatives already?

[Fleer]

There’s AAS Strum, but that one’s modeled, not sampled. And NI has some nice (sampled) strumming guitars. Then there’s OrangeTreeSamples of course, but also smaller and cheaper ones like Pettinhouse and Replika Sound. All of them good. 

[Bapu]

What he said ^^^

With the exception of Replika Sound I have them all and now I have this one (Wavesfactory) too.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Bapu

[chris.r]

I was looking for one where you could build your own patterns and still keep it sounding realistic, not artificial. I think this is the first one that I could accept the quality. OTS are brilliant for melodic stuff but I'm exhausted from fighting it's pattern sequencer for anything more ambitious there. I was getting desperate to give him an idea for creating a strum oriented library... like this one above .

Still missing the spanish and ability for slow strums like in the song ending.

Edited May 5, 2021 by chris.r

[chris.r]

Oh yes Pettinhouse and also Ilia Efimov, but I don't do Kontakt. Might need to at some point. I'm only Player . 

Edited May 5, 2021 by chris.r

[fret_man]

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

There’s AAS Strum, but that one’s modeled, not sampled. And NI has some nice (sampled) strumming guitars. Then there’s OrangeTreeSamples of course, but also smaller and cheaper ones like Pettinhouse and Replika Sound. All of them good. 

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

[Reid Rosefelt]

There is one thing about this that IMHO is insanely, insanely, insanely awful.  You can only play the chords with your left hand.  It is the only guitar instrument that works like  that. ujam doesn't work like that.  NI doesn't work like that.    It may be the only virtual instrument of any kind that works like this.  Most piano players play chords with their  right hand and bass lines with their left.   Unless they are extremely well trained, they don't have equal facility with both hands.

So this means that for most of their users every single guitar VI will be easier to play than this  This will be dead last.

I watched the video praying that the settings would allow you to reassign the keyswitches.  Unfortunately not. 

That said, I will probably buy it but I don't know why Wavesfactory has this blindness to the way pianos are played.

I'm going to write them.  If they would simply allow the key switches to be moved it looks like the best strummer on the market. 

[Topcheese]

Sugar Bytes has "Guitarist," and I forget the name of the 3rd party one I've seen sold on Native Instruments site, I want to say funky guitar, but I believe that's the genre of it.

Edited May 5, 2021 by Topcheese
typo

[chris.r]

Scarbee Funk Guitarist

[chris.r]

57 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

Most piano players play chords with their  right hand and bass lines with their left.

Popular keyboard arrangers like Yamaha PSR series are always accompaniment with left hand and melody right hand.

[Reid Rosefelt]

First, @Simeon Amburgey   agrees with me????   He can play anything.  That makes me feel better.

1 hour ago, Topcheese said:

Sugar Bytes has "Guitarist," and I forget the name of the 3rd party one I've seen sold on Native Instruments site, I want to say funky guitar, but I believe that's the genre of it.

The Funk Guitar allows you to assign chords to keys that you play with one finger.of your left hand,   That's easy .  And a very common way to do things.   But  I can't play a D13 with my left hand.  Or a D7 (b95). Can you?  For some chords I actually use two hands to make them easier to play  That works  fine if the key switches for the pattern players stick in place. 

SugarBytes Guitarist works exactly the same way.   Assign chords to one key.   Many guitar VIs have one-note features of various kinds, including Indiginus and Native Instruments. 

47 minutes ago, chris.r said:

Popular keyboard arrangers like Yamaha PSR series are always accompaniment with left hand and melody right hand.

Yes, exactly.   When I play piano, I always play melodies and chords with my right hand, and the best I can do with my left hand.  Sometimes this is a complex pattern and sometimes it's just bass notes.   If I was Simeon, I would do a lot more!   But the great thing about something like the ujam basses is that I can hit just one note on my left and it auto-generates an interesting bass part. 

But I am willing to believe there are other virtual instruments out there with horrible UIs like this.  Maybe even Wavesfactory sells some of them.  But I am disappointed becauase I love Wavesfactory, and if they had designed this in a more typical way, it would be downloaded now and I'd be playing it.

I had to find the video for the Funk Guitarist, because it's not currently installed on my computer.  If I don't use a Komplete instrument I always take it off so I can get the hard drive space back.   So I'm guessing it wasn't my favorite thing--or maybe I'm just not funky!  ?

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Reid Rosefelt

[chris.r]

Also missing some more refined/sophisticated muted patterns. I think Musiclab was good at it, but also higher priced.

2 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

But  I can't play a D13 with my left hand.  Or a D7 (b95). Can you?  For some chords I actually use two hands to make them easier to play...

Typically a keyboard player will play these chords in a form of voicings that work in context of a given song (to avoid excessive stretching or overcrowding with notes)... can be done with a single hand too.

Edited May 5, 2021 by chris.r

[Doug Rintoul]

A bit of a pain, but you could use something like the free NoteMapper by CodeFN42 to move the keyswitches. Of course, there would be a disconnect between what you play on the keyboard and what you see on the screen.

[PavlovsCat]

I completely agree with Reid that it's preferable to have chords laid out for the right hand. While those of us who went through years of lessons are used to performing chords with our left hand and splitting up chords between both hands, keyboardists largely play chords with their right hands in band settings and a lot of self taught keyboardists are mainly used to playing bass notes in their left hand. To chris.r's point, when you're playing say a 9th, 11 or a complex chord in a band setting, it's common to not play all of the notes of complex chords and I would expect that the autochord functionality (scripting) should be able to figure those chords out. 

I've been playing guitar sample libraries going back to the 80s (the Roland U20 was one of my first synths with guitar samples), trying to create a realistic guitar sound on the keys (mainly for demos for original songs back then, as I always played in bands with guitars). One of the features I want in a guitar sample library / VST is autochord functionality -- the ability to play a chord phrased as a keyboardist would phrase it -- say a triad like D using the notes D-F#-A and have the library/VST have a script that phrases it the way a guitarist would play it.  Back when Orange Tree Samples was starting out, I strongly urged Greg (the founder) that his library had that functionality. So I like that Jesus/ (the owner of Wavesfactory) has done autochord, but I agree with Reid, the setup of the chords on the left isn't ideal. The sound and feel of the strums in Strum Guitar sounds extremely similar to Native Instruments' Session libraries to my ears. That's not terrible, I find NI's Session libraries that came with KOMPLETE are fun, they just sound really canned, lacking emotion, to my ears --but that's a challenge common to these libraries when you stick with pre-programmed, or in the case of some of them like Session, pre-recorded loops and there's not much you can do about the feel in the recorded samples. From the video, I like this a lot better than UJam's VSTs (I own, I think 4 of them, but really don't use them), but it's not going to provide the kind of ability to make something my own the way Orange Tree Samples Evolution libraries do (DISCLOSURE: I've consulted to and am friends with Greg  and had a good deal of input into the Evolution libraries; I'm also friends with Andrea from Pettinhouse but beyond loving these guys, I don't feel I've lost my objectivity and I disclose these relationships to be transparent).  At this point, I think the most realistic/detailed guitar sample libraries / VSTs on the market are Orange Tree Samples Evolution line and Ample Sound's VSTs; I think it comes down to usability, scripting, tweakability and tone between those two for serious work. But for $50USD,  I think this will appeal to a lot of users, especially when you want to quickly add some quick strums to a song and guitars aren't the focus of the song. 

Hmmm, years ago when I posted my opinion on guitar sample libraries a couple of developers I've established friendships with got ticked at me! But it's one of my favorite sample library categories, so it's hard not to comment on something I've invested so many years and time into. It's pretty much as big to me as drum libraries, and I used to be a working drummer years ago (I'm just a hobbyist musician today) -- I can talk drums and drum libraries for hours! 

Edited May 5, 2021 by PavlovsCat

[Doug Rintoul]

I was seriously considering this, but now I think I'll save my money towards an Ample Sound guitar.

[PavlovsCat]

2 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

I was seriously considering this, but now I think I'll save my money towards an Ample Sound guitar.

As I disclosed, I've consulted to Orange Tree Samples, so you know my bias, but just as a fellow sample user, I strongly urge checking them out. For electric guitar libraries, I am especially in love with their Rock Standard, a Les Paul, Evolution Songwriter Acoustic Guitar and Evolution Flatpick 6 -- these guitars have just beautiful tone and the presets are superb (their mandolin library is also amazing, IMO). If you just watch their ten minute video on how to use the strumming engine, you'll see that you can chose to rely on presets or create any strumming idea you like for yourself. For customization, leads, the scripting and tone are second to none.

Analyzing the guitar libraries, and I own a bunch, I do enjoy how you can use NI's strumming libraries and play a chord and choose a pattern -- it's super easy and I was doing that before I even watched a video, because it starts playing a pattern when you play a chord; but there's no customization because it uses loops. Whereas it's different in Evolution. But once you spend, I'd say, 20-30 minutes learning the Evolution system, you can come up with incredibly realistic leads, any strum you can imagine with a lot of different guitars such as a Les Paul, a Strat, a Telecaster, a Rickenbacker 12 string electric, various acoustics, mandolins, etc. The libraries are finding their way on final productions in ads, games, TV, movies, trailers...because they're that good. Now, I think Ample Sound also sounds incredibly realistic -- I think Orange Tree Samples and Ample Sounds are the most realistic guitar libraries on the market. So it largely comes down to determining your criteria and the scripting/usability/workflow that works best for you. I just think OTS is worth a serious look for anyone looking at guitar libraries, IMO. I use them in every song I do that features guitar. 

 A review of some of the Evolution acoustic guitars: 

The review is decent, although I don't think the guy's playing really shows off the library very well. Just my opinion. 
 

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by PavlovsCat

[antler]

2 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

SugarBytes Guitarist works exactly the same way.   Assign chords to one key.   Many guitar VIs have one-note features of various kinds, including Indiginus and Native Instruments. 

This was mentioned recently in another thread, but RipChord might be able to help you get towards one chord per key:

https://trackbout.com/ripchord

[paulo]

3 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

There is one thing about this that IMHO is insanely, insanely, insanely awful.  You can only play the chords with your left hand.

To me it's more logical that way. Being right handed, if I were playing a guitar I would form the chord with my left hand and strum with the right, so it's the same as a guitar which makes more sense to me.