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Embertone Harmonica $39 Intro

Brian Lawler

By Brian Lawler
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Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

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Posted (edited)

New Release! Intro Sale ($39 vs $49)

• A bluesy/gritty/expressive harmonica
• Made for the full version of Kontakt 6.7.1+
• Normal + Bluesy Legato samples
• Lots of special articulations for extra subtlety
• "Chugger Mode" for rhythm and chord phrases

Embertone · Honkytonk Harmonica

We set out to create a virtual harmonica with a honkytonk soul… stylistically faithful to the country and blues music originating from old-time southern bars of the past. In other words: a twangy virtual harmonica that stands on its own, whether you’re backing up the band, or soloing over it.

Trigger real, sampled vibrato performances for the extra realism, or intimately control our modeled vibrato engine instead. Go between "Normal" and "Bluesy" legato styles, and dig into an array of user controls and specialized articulation to craft a totally legit harmonica performance. We can't wait to see what you can create with this expressive virtual harmonica!

 

 

Edited by Brian Lawler
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Craig Fowler

Craig Fowler

Posted
Posted
On 12/18/2022 at 12:45 PM, Fleer said:

Glad to see a new library from this great dev. Their grand piano and Joshua Bell violin are two of the very best in class. 

There was a thread on VI:control earlier in the year wondering if Embertone were still an 'active' developer - I'm in the minority who hates the Walker D (admittedly I only have the lite version) but the Bell and Blakus are lovely! As you say, really good to see them doing new things.

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PavlovsCat

PavlovsCat

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Posted

That sounds really good. I do have some harmonicas at home and learned to play as a kid, but I don't have great recording skills and it would be pretty nice to be able to control the harmonica as a MIDI instrument. I'm not sure I'll pick this up right now, but I definitely am going to put this on my radar and will pick it up if/when I have the need for harmonica in a song. Embertone is a top notch developer and I love their libraries that I own and had an excellent experiences with them when I needed tech support for their grand piano -- which is superb, BTW. 

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fret_man

fret_man

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After my first run thru I noticed that bends only occur at the entry into notes. For bends in the middle of notes you have to use the pitch bend wheel. That sounds good enough but I wish the bend keyswitch worked anywhere - NOT just before the note starts. The gliss and "runouts" sound great. The vibrato control works well, although I was surprised how much different the loop sounds compared to Kontakt's LFO (both options are available as well as manual control, which seems WAY too tedious to me). I haven't yet figured out what "blues legato" does nor why they recommend it being used sparingly. The different levels of dirtiness are useful. This is a fun VI.

Edit: I've had more time to play with this and I found it's very import to overlap your MIDI notes to get the proper transitions. Stop overlapping the notes to take a breath. And then overlap the notes again for the entire next breath. When doing so, the "blues legato" really stands out. They're right - it's a very strong flavor that should only be used a few times per phrase. The "ghost note" keyswitch is interesting. It's mainly used to define where to start a legato slide without explicitly sounding the starting note. Liking this a LOT.

Edited by fret_man
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Jesse Screed

Jesse Screed

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, fret_man said:

I really love this! You can find my first implementation of it here. It comes in at 0:57sec. I have no affiliation with Embertone. I'm just very pleased with this VI.

Excellent fret_man!  Not just the harmonica, the whole piece.  Were those other instruments vsti?

You are very good at what you do.

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fret_man

fret_man

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Posted
On 12/29/2022 at 9:19 AM, Jesse Screed said:

Excellent fret_man!  Not just the harmonica, the whole piece.  Were those other instruments vsti?

You are very good at what you do.

Thank you, so much! I don't have a good tracking space so sometimes I record myself, convert to MIDI (Melodyne), and then use sample replacement. Other times I just "hand craft" the MIDI from scratch, which is what I did here. Very time-consuming but you can get really good sounds. That is what I did here. I used the following VIs:

 

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DeeringAmps

DeeringAmps

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Posted (edited)
On 12/29/2022 at 6:55 AM, fret_man said:

my first implementation of it

Nicely done! You should put this up in the songs Forum.
What's the user forum like on Taxi? Was a member years ago, but never hung out on their forum...

t

and you convinced me, jumped over to Embertone and "laid my money down".
I had upgraded to Kontact 7 thinking I should pick this up. You pushed me over the edge...

Edited by DeeringAmps
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kitekrazy1

kitekrazy1

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https://www.sweetwater.com/c1075--Harmonicas?highlight=Bluesband7&mrkgadid=&mrkgcl=28&mrkgen=&mrkgbflag=&mrkgcat=&acctid=21700000001645388&dskeywordid=92700073385564753&lid=92700073385564753&ds_s_kwgid=58700008069260217&ds_s_inventory_feed_id=97700000007215323&dsproductgroupid=1798710459014&product_id=Bluesband7&prodctry=US&prodlang=en&channel=online&storeid=&device=c&network=u&matchtype=&adpos=largenumber&locationid=9030132&creative=625135836145&targetid=pla-1798710459014&campaignid=18467073279&awsearchcpc=&gclid=CjwKCAiA2L-dBhACEiwAu8Q9YH8ai5vFA5_UECPUG4voWcG68yVUDXKZV1M3FMNQXv8hkbbDDrfsThoChxkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

$10 more and get the real thing.   I wold imagine it must be difficult to emulate the real thing.

Edited by kitekrazy
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Reid Rosefelt

Reid Rosefelt

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Posted

Just wanted to tell everybody that a few people on VI:Control, including me, have had trouble installing this.  In fact I bought it on 12/22 and still haven't been able to install it!    I've loved Embertone for years, but I am not happy with their customer service on this.  All through it, there has been the assumption that I:

1)  Don't now how to download files

2) Don't know how to unzip files

3) Don't know how to rename files

I was treated like a dummy or outright ignored until it became clear that other people had the same problem.  Many helpful people on VI:Control also assumed I was an ignoramus.   Insult to injury.

It seems like the problem was Firefox.  This was discovered by somebody on VI:Control, not Embertone.  Later today I will try downloading it in another browser.

Here's the thread, if you're interested:

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/intro-price-ending-soon-new-release-the-whiskey-series-honkytonk-harmonica.133866/page-8#post-5265886

It's too bad, because as somebody who has played blues harp for 50 years, I was looking to try this and, if I liked it, recommend it to people who were considering it at the intro price.  My life has been crazy lately, but that is literally why I bought it on 12/22. 

 

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DeeringAmps

DeeringAmps

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

including me, have had trouble installing this.

Yep, the .zip.001 etc files WILL NOT OPEN. Tried FireFox and Edge (actually thought Edge was the culprit, MS after all)
And YES, like you, I did try to rename all to no avail.
I also have a support ticket in, but that was Friday, and it was a holiday weekend.

49 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

not happy with their customer service on this

We will have to see, holiday is over; ever hopeful.

Thanks for the link...

t

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