Mornats

[quote name='Stickman' timestamp='1456137083' post='2985648'] I don't normally weigh in on these discussions but I had to address the notion of this video being 'sped up'. These two players are not bedroom shredders - Gergo is Gary Willis's current drummer and has played with the likes of DiMeola, Mintzer, Bullock etc. whilst Mohini is the bass player for AR Rahman's band (a very prolific composer and producer, holder of numerous music awards), she has also performed with John Mclaughlin's former bandmates Zakir Hussain and Naveen Kumar (the latter of whom I have also had the honour of playing live with) - neither of them have the need to impress through any fakery. Both artists have been playing since the tender age of 3 and have put serious hours in to their craft. [/quote] That was me. When I wrote it I didn't realise there would be a lot of criticism of the video. In hindsight, I wouldn't have posted that as it looks like I'm having a go at their (the bass player and drummer) talent. That wasn't my intention at all! I only picked up on some fast movements because I was studying the drummer's technique closely. Both my dad and older brother are drummers and I've always admired how well and how quickly drummers can play - hence my close examination of the technique. I didn't notice anything about the bass player's playing that made me think it was sped up, but some of the drummers movements looked unnaturally fast. Thanks for the info on who they both are, and in light of that info it looks like they can just play really really fast. If I'd known there would be a lot of criticism of the video I wouldn't have posted it as my comment would have been taken as a criticism in itself. So, a big oops from me. In my post I did say they had incredible talent and was asking if anyone else had observed what may have been really fast movements. But in the wave of criticism afterwards, I can see how my comment got lumped in with all that lot.

Heh I'm watching Criminal Minds on TV and I'm hearing all of the samples from Evolve Mutations 2 and Damage

Ok, so I've watched pretty much every video and demo of Evolve, the Evolve Mutations series and Damage as I could find. Pretty much spent all morning checking all of them and reading about alternatives and having a good think about what I wanted from a library. Evolve was top of my list but I realised that I have a load of options (and some third-party presets) in Massive and Absynth for and pads, rhythmic basses, stings and transitions. Plus The Giant has a lovely cinematic mode for wood block type sounds. So really what I was after was a lot more variety in the cinematic/industrial type drums. I've been playing around with the kits in Evolve Mutations 2 and there's a lot you can do with the single loops in there to create your own beats. Still, I wanted some nice pre-prepared rhythms that I could take and adapt and tweak much like I do with EZDrummer. Also I was a bit miffed at having spent £60 on EM2 already only to find that if I'd waited a few weeks I could have bought the EM1 and 2 pack for the same price. I also bought Vocalise at full price too. Argh! So rather than got that EM1 or Evolve I ended up splashing a bit more on Damage. I'd love a whole range of rises and stings like NI's Rise and Hit has but in a recent track I've been working on I managed to get somewhere near that myself by using some strings, raising the volume up via automation and ending with a drum beat. Tie that in with some nice reversed convulation reverb effects and I reckon I can make some myself. Edit: seems there's a nice amount of really epic sounding hits in Damage and a good range of rises from the cymbals parts of the library. So there you go. I promise I'm done now

She has great skill no doubt but does it seem like the video's been sped up a little? I noticed it on the drummer's arm movements mostly. Some of his movements looked just a little too fast. When he's hitting the cymbal at around 16-19 seconds in it looks a little too unnaturally fast. His head movements at around 3:50 to 3:53 looks a bit off too. I could be wrong of course. I don't go around trying to pick fault with players I see on YouTube as I said at the start, incredible talent regardless of it has been sped up.

Scan do a range of Pro Audio laptops but their cheapest one is around £950 which is a way above your budget: https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/custom/daw-digital-audio-workstation-pcs/workstation-laptops#anc On my desktop PC I run with an overclocked i74790k (4.6ghz), 16MB Corsair Vengeance Pro ram, and two SSDs - one for Windows and one for Komplete and other software libraries. The processor has 4 physical cores with two threads each - essentially 8 cores. Programs that use multi-threading such as Reaper love it and use all 8. If your budget allows for an i7 and an SSD then go for that. Or, as said above, an i5 at a minimum. i3 processors aren't worth it for audio. Are you set on a laptop or will a desktop be an option? This one looks decent: https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/3xs-mz170-music-pc-system. If you add the Win 10 upgrade (£2.75) it saves you doing the upgrade from Win 8 and you can add in another 8GB of ram to bring it to 16GB and it comes in at £749. You will need a monitor, mouse and keyboard on top though. I built mine myself as a gaming/DAW PC so I've not had an extensive look at what's out there in pre-built land.

Very nice custom bass that is! I kinda wished I'd thought about a Maruszczyk before I bought my MIM Fender P bass. The Fender's a superb bass but those Maruszczyks look just out of this world gorgeous and are by all accounts amazing to play.

Thanks It definitely slowed me down having so many options and I'm slightly hesitate to get more (not that I need more but they're offering 50% off Heavyocity's instruments at the moment so I probably will). The upshot is that I *know* I have the sound I want somewhere and it's just a matter of finding it now. The Komplete Kontrol interface helps massively with this.

I might just pop them on a Spotify playlist. Loved a couple of their songs from way back.

Finally, after much tweaking and some subtle additions to break some monotony that was building up I have my track I wanted a movie trailer type track that built up suspense and then dropped back to let the vocals from Vocalise weave in and out. I layered 18 tracks in total, adding in various fun and unusual instruments to add to the overall sound. I wanting to do something cinematic so I looked for some water related movie samples to base it on. [url="https://soundcloud.com/mornats/dive"]https://soundcloud.com/mornats/dive[/url] Here's the mammoth list of instruments used:[list] [*]Movie Dialogue Volume 6 [*]Heavyocity Evolve Mutations 2 [*]Frozen Plain Victorian Music Box [*]Spitfire Labs Scary Strings [*]Spitfire Labs Frozen Strings [*]Native Instruments Kontakt Factory Library Orchestral Timpanis and cymbals [*]Native Instruments Session Strings [*]Heavyocity Vocalise [*]Native Instruments Supercharger compressor [*]Melda Productions MStereo EXpander [*]TDR Kotelnikov compressor [*]Native Instruments Driver [*]Native Instruments Reflektor [*]Cockos ReaEQ [*]Native Instruments Solid EQ [*]IK Multimedia T-racks mastering [*]Izotope Dynamic Delay [/list] Recorded in Cockos Reaper using:[list] [*]Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 [*]Focusrite Forte interface [/list] Edit: Aaaaand I've just ran out of space on Soundcloud. Bah!

Ha typical, the week after I buy Vocalise and Evolve Mutations 2 NI put all of Heavyocity's products on sale with 50% off! At least I got to use a £22.50 voucher on EM2. http://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/heavyocity-special/ I think I may bite the bullet and get the full Evolve for £85

I've got my rendered wav file now. I'm going to give it a subjective listen or two tomorrow before uploading it. I'm not entirely thrilled by my composition but it's got a load of new cinematic instruments in there which I'm still getting to grips with. Also I'm on track for my (new) goal of entering this comp every month of this year. Actually, I'm way ahead in terms of knocking them out as I've done 3 tracks separate from the comp So that's 5 this year already - more than my entire output from last year!

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1455745155' post='2982129'] First thing my Mrs said when I got it out the box was "that's bloody massive! Where the heck are you gonna put it?". [/quote] Oo-er! Glad you're liking it so far. I'm still really happy with mine and I'm trying to avoid trying out an S88 in case I love the feel of the weighted keys better than mine. One tip for Komplete Kontrol I can give you. You can use the KK software to call in other VIs. The little down arrow in the top middle gives you a menu. Go to plugins and select your VST of choice. It only picks up 64 bit ones as it doesn't include a bridge. Now the cool thing I found is that you can load up Kontakt from there. Go to the arrow menu again, select "view" then "edit view" and you now have the full Kontakt interface in the window. So you actually have a choice of using the handy KK interface or stick with the familiar Kontakt one and still have the lightguide, chord and appeggiator features.

Is it there yet? Is it there yet? Is it there yet?

Found another site listing a whole host of free Kontakt (full version usually) virtual instruments: http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.co.uk/

Nice! You'll have to let us all know what you think of it when you get it.

Got it now, cheers! I also grabbed ProtoVerb as you can't have enough reverbs plugins. Incidentally what I was looking at was a few sounds from Soundiron. http://soundiron.com/products/voice-of-gaia-bryn in particular as I'm always looking for some sort of vocal VI and http://soundiron.com/products/apocalypse-elements-kontakt-player-edition which I may have bought if I hadn't have recently bought Evolve Mutations 2. http://soundiron.com/products/ironpack looks quite nice too. Lots of cut down versions of some of their bigger products and a good way to try out their sound libraries I reckon.

I've just recorded after spending most of the weekend procrastinating and browsing online for yet more virtual instruments! (I was good, I didn't buy any.) I need a few subjective listens, a fair bit of mixing and it'll be ready to go up on Soundcloud.

Native Instruments use Fatar keybeds in both the 61 and weighted 88 keyboards but they don't say which ones. Comparing the pics on http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keyboards/komplete-kontrol-s-series/keybed-details/ to the pics on here http://www.fatar.com/Pages/TP_9S.htm the TP/9S seems the closest match based on looks.

I'm loving the natural finishes on these. That's a cracking nice bunch of basses there.

Good riddance. I was sick of his shirt anyway.

Almost forgot about this thread! Cheers for the suggestions. I was teetering towards the Custom Shop 62s but I'll see if I can find a sound test comparing them to the Quarter Pounders.

They're real instruments that have been sampled to the point where you can play your own melodies using a midi keyboard and have them sound fairly similar to the real thing. Some are very well done and will adapt the sound based on the velocity of your playing. I have to stop and carefully read the descriptions of some as it can be hard to tell if they're premade loops or proper sampled virtual instruments. Download the free Kontakt Player from Native Instruments and have a bash. It comes with a small selection of virtual instruments. I'll dig out a thread on here where we've listed a bunch of other free ones.

Is there a plugin to get 100 synchronised swimmers in your mix?

I've got a few thoughts for mine but haven't put anything down yet. I'm thinking some sort of surf guitar so I get to play with my Harley Benton telecaster with maybe some keys in there too. Something more cheerful than my recent piano excursions and a different style to try and play. Whoever wins it this month would please me no end if they chose a cinematic picture for March's comp! I've been buying a few cinematic VIs recently.

Loved that. Now I regret not buying your '96 fretless P bass off you!