Life is full of many important questions. Here’s one of mine. You’re read a great review of a piece of software, you buy it, install and run thru the presets and then you get busy, you go back to your old tired ways. You load up that same overused Metamorphosis loop or the boring conga samples you always use. WTFN? – it’s not like the deaf producer you’re workin’ for can tell a difference between Tito Puente and your stiff, grimy fingers poking at your keyboard-right? Why am I not currently using something I bought?
So I stumble across a piece of software the other day – launch it and begin messing around, thinking it sounds really good an why the fuck I haven’t been using it - and decide to really dig into it. It’s kinda like finding the phone number of that booty call you used to frequent, then kinda forgot cuz you were in love, and just looking at the number makes you all dizzy and makes your stomach churn like a 13 year old girl at a Jonas Bros show.
The booty I called up is Drumcore and it’s inner child Kitcore. Drumcore is a standalone working thru Rewire and Kitcore is an “in your host app plugin.”
I originally bought the Submersible Music product (hence lovingly referred to as Sub - www.submersiblemusic.com) because of the reviews, the sound quality online, the variety of sounds – and my frustration with Stylus’s lack of real drummer grooves and kit selection. Don’t pressure clamp my balls and rant about Backbeat – I burned out on those grooves 3 years ago. The Sub products fell into the area I like – killer sound with a quick and easy interface.
Well, Drum/Kitcore and I got to know each other again with some really great makeup sex involving wire brushes.
The Preamble (aka Scooter rants on making music not clicking the mouse or staring blankly at computer screen):
1. Manuals: I never read manuals. Believe me, after I have gone thru the usual excruciating process of installing my new purchase, authorizing it, getting it working inside my host seq – well, Martha – I just want to fucking play the thing - not read another intolerable manual.
2. Interfaces: All software interfaces should be at a 3rd grade reading level or lower. Developers need to put all the usual knobs/sliders, the actual knobs/sliders people use - really big and obvious on the first page. Put all the fancy shit programmers jerk off to on another page.
3. All developers should be required to have short tutorials on their website on how to setup their product on various DAWs. Some do, including Submersible, most do not.
Back to the story . . .
Sub did a good job here meeting most of my requirements of great software for working fast and making money. Talk about easy? Kitcore is like a drunk, soon-to-be divorcee perched on a barstool looking to get even with her cheating Ex. Even the bass player has a chance!
48 Pads of drum samples divided into 2 pages – Drums & Percussion. You select kits in a pull down menu. Sub violates one of my cardinal rules here on the interface – where’s my humongous forward/backward preset kit button to change kits???? To beat a dead horse – I’m pretty sure everybody who buys a soft synth at some point is going to want to change patches – and since it seems more likely that Sarah Palin will win the Nobel Prize in Physics before manufacturers come up with a standardized method for keystrokes, I want a big damn UP and DOWN button. OK, rant over, I’ve cried in the shower and I feel better.
Thank God Kit’s list pops up to the last one you selected and you don’t have to scroll down to the bowels of hell to find what you want - like when selecting a font in Word.
Hold Control (never read a manual just try either Control or Option while clicking anything – never fails to work) and click on a drum sound to substitute another kick from another kit – that’s sweet and easy. Basically you have to stick to the layout though – kicks only go in the kick slot. Snares only in the snares slots. Fine 99% of the time unless, of course, I wanted to record my multi movement symphony of cowbells – a brilliant work, btw, that features 71 players with different cowbells all playing as loudly as they can.
Hold on – let’s talk sound quality for a moment. What I’ve been doing is like telling you I just got laid and never once mentioning how beautiful and charming the girl was. Because when it comes to picking up girls – uh - working with software, easy is one thing – but quality - that inescapable desire to hit it over and over – is where the nectar is. And Sub has it. The kits are built from famous drummers the world over. These guys have slapped more skin than a bipolar foster parent with an empty beer fridge. These kits really, really sound great. Lots of samples per key. Easy to play, easy to make sound good – even if you lost half your digits in the wood chipper. Of the drummer packs that I have, by far the strength of Kit is in creating a realistic drummer vibe. But HipHop, drum machine, processed collections aren’t absent – just not as profuse. Kitcore’s real strength is real drumming.
I found a few patches (Ben Smith Oil, Alan White Brownesque) that I felt the kick drum was too low in volume compared to the snare. No big deal. I highlighted the kick pad, then in the “Pad Settings” raised the volume slider and I got the mix I wanted. I then changed kick drums but when I went back to one of those patches – Kit had kind of saved my settings. But it didn’t save it. Hold on, what if I change to another drum kit preset? Does Kitcore automatically change the one I just left? Yeah, it does. Now I fucked up my Alan White kit. Ahh, but if you reinstantiate Kitcore, Alan White is back! I talked to Sub about this and they had two ways of going and it makes sense. Say you are working on a HipHop track. You’ve picked the kit you love, now you want to hear all of their famous drummers play their licks with this kit. That’s the way KitCore works now and that’s the way most of us would work in real life. However when you first load it up and you’re just bouncing thru sounds, it was a little disconcerting to hear Matt Sorum’s big badass rock kit playing New Orleans style rhythms. If Sub did it the other way, where the original kit was loaded when you selected a groove, then you’d have to keep reloading your HipHop kit to hear it the way you want. I suggest Sub keep it the way it is and add a button that says something like “Load Original Kit Used On This Groove”. See? I just solved another one of the world’s problems - now onto corrupt Italian politics.
Each drum pad has Pan and Pitch as well – easy – right in front – the pitch is a nice feature and simple – I do wish “Option Click” reset the fader to the original pitch cuz it slows me down trying to get the slider exactly back on zero. The pitch has the word “original” that pops up when you get back to center – Vol and Pan do not – which led me to notice that panning is subtle in the presets. All of the samples are super high quality stereo 48k/24b files and Sub is leaving it up to you to get more extreme, dare I say risqué, in your panning if desired. I like a wide stereo image – just like my women - so I found that I was pushing the Pan sliders pretty far left and right – and because this is all about me - I wish Sub had set things up in a wider stereo placement as part of the preset – just to make my life easier – and then let me pull the cabassa more center if I wanted. All this pushing and pulling and pulling and pushing. I’ve got this weak, arthritic wrist thing going. My Mom warned me about going blind – but she never said I might not be able to thrust and tug on my sliders. Small gripe? Absolutely.
KC (cuz we’re BFFs now) has a thing called Live Drummer, which is a slider that brings some realistic feel into your lifeless midi grooves by subtly changing velocities on samples – this thing really works! No more messing with velocity on individual drum hits – I love this feature. The newer libraries with lots more layers on each drum work best. Now if only Sub made it for that Euphonium player that was in here last week! Talk about no feel, no emotion! I’m going back to bass trombone from here on out. I might have had some fun with the labeling of the slider though– you get only Off at one end, Default in the middle and Max on the right (with 100 variations in between) but how could they not have labeled these “Stiff Republican Robot Drummer With Nonexistent Feel” on one end and “Doped Up Groove Meister Most Likely Carrying Weed You Can Bogart From Him” on the other??
Groove Section (midi grooves) – this is too easy! Like hooking up with your sister (shout out to my Nashville friends – what’s up????!!!!!) Select either Drummer or Style. You can further filter by selecting Feel. That reminds me of the only good line in “Leatherheads” – Clooney says “You’re only as young as the women you feel.” You can also cut to the chase by going with Fills or Loops. Thank you Submersible for allowing me to search fills – all the fuckin fills (yeah, you hit ALL on the left, unclick LOOPS on the right and make sure you have selected FILLS and sure as mommy did the milkman, every fill in your Kitcore library is there.) Do I want more Fills? Always, but being able to list the fills and choose? Priceless. Why is it that every time I hear a drummer play all they do is fill, fill, fill. Then they make a drum loop library and there ain’t a fill to be found!
Attention Drum Loops Makers!!!! The fills are the hard things to create for us rhythmically challenged Neanderthals. Please add shitloads of fills to your libraries – better yet, release libraries of fills only.
Also! The ability to search for all fills should be required of all drum software makers under penalty of death! No even better – torture them first – then kill them.
Time to import your groove to your seq? Just drag either the name of the loop or the cool little midi graphic to your Seq – blam! AC/DC is on the phone.
KC has a cool window under the midi groove that displays original tempo, meter, duration and feel - this is where Sub could tell me which kit was originally used to create the groove - especially when it comes to Latin styles and quirky grooves where the right samples on the right pads is key to the sound. Yeah, I know a Latin groove with 808 samples is dope and “I’m a genius cuz I swapped out some drum sounds on a midi loop” – but if I want authentic Latin, I gotta keep bouncing around thru drums sets till I think I get the right one. And did I? Is Luis Conte gonna beat down my door when the timbale part is erroneously being played on the conga rim?
When you have both Kitcore and Drumcore installed, you have a choice of pointing to either data library. I have mine pointing to Drumcore. But if you do that, not all of the audio grooves in Drumcore exist as midi files and Kitcore only plays midi grooves. So if you open the folder from MPC Lockbox, there aren’t any midi grooves because none exist – which is stylistically weird since all the grooves are Hiphop/dance things. Also, my MPC Lockbox single drum hits won’t show up if I steer the Kitcore Data location to Kitcore and not Drumcore. This seems awkward and I feel like I would be missing some killer sounds by pointing my Kitcore to the wrong data. Granted, I imagine not many users own both Drumcore and Kitcore so they’d never notice it but still, it should be addressed. (Sub says they are going to put up a FAQ that explains how to incorporate the KitCore kits into the DrumCore database so you only have to have one Uber library going.) – Note to self: Can we get an editor in here to make sense of that paragraph? It was long-winded and confusing and started to sound like a typical review in a music magazine.
Which one should you get? If you absolutely love the audio only grooves that some of Sub’s drummers recorded, and you like to roll your own, i.e., load custom drum samples into DrumCore and make your own presets – you have to go with Drumcore. On the other hand, Kitcore is easier to use than Drumcore. The drums are plainly laid out, the controls you need are handy, it’s just right there at your fingertips, all on one page. Drumcore is a bit deeper but you get more. When you select a groove, you get all of the audio and all of the midi and all of the fills laid out before you. It seems quicker to get a full groove laid out for a song. But you also gotta open another window to change individual drum kit sounds. And with Drumcore you’re working in a stand alone program so you gotta keep switching back and forth and remembering to either turn on the Transport/Sync button to control your host and vice versa – or not. BTW, I found it disconcerting that when you load a kit in DrumCore, no sound is made the first time you hit the key. I had to gliss up and down to load all the samples so that I could play a groove. The default is that the sounds are not loaded until a midi event is sent to that pad. It saves on memory because you’re not loading a bunch of sounds you aren’t using. There is a setting in the DrumCore preferences to check that says “Preload drum kit on startup or select.” Personally, I don’t care about memory. I’ve lost most of mine thru careless, immature behavior so why should I give a damn about the memory on my MacPro? Sub is considering changing the default to loading all the drum sounds on select and I agree 100%. Coincidentally the same amount I think Obama should be President.
Since I have both Sub programs (visualize blatant boasting and displaying of large male genitalia) – I use Kit for my drums and midi grooves cuz it’s easy and I prefer plugins over standalone software. I use Drumcore for all of the audio grooves I can’t get in Kitcore plus I’m toying with creating a couple of custom kits.
Kitcore is my go to realistic drum sample program now. I’m even beginning to transition to using it on some dance tracks but I have to run it in multi out mode in order to get the separation for each drum (which usually has some kind of effect/processing going on).
For me, there’s always a fine balance between killer sounds and ease of use. I won’t touch anything that doesn’t sound great. And that includes female singers. But if an app is too difficult, I won’t use it. When you’re on a deadline or too drunk to screw, you don’t want demanding and complex. You want instant, straightforward satisfaction and no last names. Or cell numbers. Yes, you can buy drum software that comes with varying mic placements and effects and 1,000 options and 14,000 ways to waste your day. Or you can hire a real drummer. Submersible covers that middle ground where most of us work most of the time and does it really, really well.
Be sure and download their latest manual online since it has more info than the one on my install disk and check out the nicely done video tutorials at www.submersiblemusic.com.
Also, I’ve been told that Submersible will be releasing a new drummer pack from Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction fame on November 25th. That will be sweet and rockin’.
The “If I Controlled The World” Section:
I wish dance/techno/rave/house/breakbeats were better represented but that might be in the works. I also believe -because of the effortless interface - film grooves – you know, cool, atmospheric, phased, filtered, odd drum grooves – would be extremely popular for Sub to release.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
HEAVYOCITY - EVOLVE - Feel The EVOL
Got a lot of response from people about the OMNISPHERE blog I posted so I thought I would try and keep up with all the stuff I buy and use – talk about the stuff that works for me. Talk about things that will improve your life, make you a better man, help you better understand the intricacies of choosing a qualified running mate.
When it comes to learning a new interface, my level of patience is on a par with a pissed off Bill O’Reilly. I load the new software up and just start poking at it until something oozes out. Apparently I have time to write blogs but not fiddle with software or read manuals. Because of this unbecoming flaw, I like software well organized, easy to use, with simple interfaces, big buttons - things a monkey(or a tv composer) can use even if their faculties have been – uh, compromised.
So I loaded up Heavyocity’s EVOLVE (www.heavyocity.com) – and btw – I tried real hard to come with some clever pun on the title involving the word LOVE and EVOLVE but kept getting stuck on EVOL which I realize is love backwards but figured you’d rather hear about the product than me complaining about the “jumbled word syndrome” I’m seeing a doctor about.
Heard about the product from a composer friend who heard from other composers in LA who are using it and loving it. I figured I should rush out and get it so I could sound like everyone else in LA and land that next weight loss reality show gig. Fingers crossed! You gotta buy EVOLVE direct from the website - $400 – no street price –– Heavyocity tells me they have made a distribution deal and it will be in stores soon. (Translation: cheaper???)
EVOLVE runs in Kontakt 2 - so that’s easy. It’s made by composers who know what it takes to score 4,000 minutes of music in a day. It’s geared towards tv/film/game composers who like to be dramatic. Wishy washy, namby pamby, “I’ll just score this bandsaw decapitation scene with flute and harp” maestros need not apply. The website blurbs claim it works on dance remix material as well but it didn’t strike me that way on my first pass but I’ll give it a spin around the block on this techno record I’m doing and let you know how it turns out.
THE ONE SENTENCE REVIEW:
Great sounding hits, FX, weirdness, rhythmic and tonal sequences that are well organized, easy to find and well suited for dramatic scoring.
Should you get it? 99% Yes. The only people who might not need it is the few freaks who already own 20 other pieces of software like both Storm Drums, Omnisphere, Stylus RMX, both original Distorted Reality sample CDs, another 100 sample CDs, and a bunch of other weird shit – and these people have spent 6 long months pulling the best stuff off them and reorganizing them into an easy to use interface in categories that make sense, making sure all the looped material syncs correctly to your sequencer, all the levels are balanced, blah blah blah. If you’ve done that, you can probably live without EVOLVE. The rest of us will buy Evolve and spend our time writing music and making money.
EVOLVE isn’t a band in a box. Evolve is the cherry on top, the specialty freaky groove in the middle, the ominous on the bottom, the bitch slap when you need it. There are no strings, brass, or other typical bullshit. Evolve is meant to slip over the top of your usual instrumental genius - kind of like a musical condom - only this one has sharp creepy prongy things on it.
EVOLVE comes as instruments and multis – so I loaded a multi first cuz I’m lazy– they have descriptive names like Trailer Smash or Ghost Stories. I threw some keys down in Logic for each of the 8 parts and had a scary weird cue done in about 5 minutes. It didn’t have much pitch or melody but then again if you add this to your habitual cheesy string parts I think you’ve got yourself an Emmy nod. I then tried an experiment where I loaded a new multi and kept the exact same midi tracks and voila! Another scary weird cue done. I muted one part cuz it was just too weird but the rest of it wasn’t bad. Time for me to enlist my gardener writing cues! I tell ya, loading up one of their multis really gives you about all you’ll need to amp up your track. I like things that are quick, easy and make me feel good. That’s why I like beer and girls with big boobs.
LIBRARY CONTENTS:
Looped grooves tonal, rhythmic, weird: real nice stuff in here. Definitely usable. One groove per key so you can just keep adding keys until you run out of fingers. Want more intensity? Have more fingers sewn onto your hands – do I have to think up everything for you?
Don’t be fooled by names in the rhythmic grooves section that say things like Tambourines or Hand Percussion – these have all been effected and fucked with so they aren’t your grandpa’s perc (there are some traditional instruments in the “Traditional” folder but you already own all that stuff.)
Don’t look for traditional rock drum kits – the kits here are all high on acid. Look for the unique here not the mundane.
HITS – I like hits that make me rectally bleed. And the hits here are top notch. I had to double up on my Depends just to get thru them all. In fact, although I said there weren’t many trad instruments – there is a bass drum that is the best I’ve ever heard. Not that washy, tubby, boomy realistic, authentic sound – but a ballsy, slappy, belly fat slap sound you can really rattle the viewers with. Kind of like the big Remo tom on Storm Drum 2 only better!
METALS & CYMBALS – Heavyocity knocked this shit out of the park. I am so sick of regular cymbal whooshes I wish I couldn’t hear above 2k. A while ago, I went so far as to effect my own cymbals so I didn’t have to use the same old thing again. Well, Heavyocity did it here too only they did it better. Prepare yourself for soggy Levis my friends.
The Dumpster Scrapes are the Distorted Reality sounds for 2009. Updated, rougher, meaner. I mean these scrapes are from the streets! You can almost smell the decaying food and discarded hookers in the dumpster they sampled. Use these now or forever be branded boring.
ODD NOISE & BUILDUPS – lots of different ideas in here. Ignorance alert! And I fully admit I write music and not software – but since these are all one shots that whoosh up to a climax, why make me waste my time backtiming the effect to land in the right place when a bit of programming would release the climax part when I release the key? That would make me happy. And when I’m happy, I drink less – no, wait – maybe I drink more – whatever – the point is for a piece of software meant for composers, everything needs to be geared towards saving time.
BASSES – there are only a few so you should really rely on your old standbys not Evolve. The few they threw in have standouts like Gnarly Piano Gods and Nuclear Bass Strike. Those 2 patches made me think that I want a section called something like “Final Notes” – huge, cranium exploding single notes that you would use to accent a very dramatic moment – like THE END! I do things like those 2 patches all the time but it takes me 10 minutes to stack the 5 synths and samples to make it. Evolve needs more of them.
There are a couple of drone type things but they didn’t really rock my world. Again, they’re fine but you probably have something better somewhere else. And I have a nit to pick about any synth or sound design patch made by anyone out there. Why doesn’t every programmer make my mod wheel do something? It is so ingrained in me to play a pad, a drone, etc and reach for the mod wheel expecting something extra to happen. I don’t know why I do it because most of the time no one has assigned the controller to do anything. But still I keep on twiddling my wheel hoping for some hot action. Now Heavyocity has done a pretty good job of assigning the mod wheel on quite a few patches but it seemed to me that it missed some opportunities. I’m not talking something fancy – hell, resonance only would be fine – I know I could assign it myself – but that slows me down – and if 1,000 composers have to do the same thing then we’ve all wasted time – time that could have been better spent smoking weed and watching Soul Train.
Lots of strange and different sounds can be found throughout. I have no idea why there’s an unaffected Toy Xylophone in the library – kind of oddly normal for the rest of the collection but still it’s A REALLY NICE TOY XYLOPHONE. There’s a bunch of female opera licks – again, surprised me to find it but when you need a diva hitting the high notes – you’ll be glad they are there. There’s a Pads and FX section – limited but good quality (alas almost no mod wheel assigning). It won’t replace Omnisphere by any stretch but they aren’t trying to. A lot of the collection feels like these sounds were created throughout the careers of the composers behind the software and they’ve pulled the best of them together in this collection. Sure, it’s eclectic but if you’ve created a killer Toy Xylophone, why not spread the love?
Overall, Evolve covers a lot of ground for the dramatically hip. The action/energy grooves are really great, the single hits fantastic, and the scary/weird factor is covered extremely well. Evolve has become my defacto sound design generator. But don’t expect this collection to be the only thing you need to land that Oscar. So lay it on top of your VSL, EWQLSO or your trip hop didgeridoo collection and sit back and wait for that call from the Wachowski brothers.
When it comes to learning a new interface, my level of patience is on a par with a pissed off Bill O’Reilly. I load the new software up and just start poking at it until something oozes out. Apparently I have time to write blogs but not fiddle with software or read manuals. Because of this unbecoming flaw, I like software well organized, easy to use, with simple interfaces, big buttons - things a monkey(or a tv composer) can use even if their faculties have been – uh, compromised.
So I loaded up Heavyocity’s EVOLVE (www.heavyocity.com) – and btw – I tried real hard to come with some clever pun on the title involving the word LOVE and EVOLVE but kept getting stuck on EVOL which I realize is love backwards but figured you’d rather hear about the product than me complaining about the “jumbled word syndrome” I’m seeing a doctor about.
Heard about the product from a composer friend who heard from other composers in LA who are using it and loving it. I figured I should rush out and get it so I could sound like everyone else in LA and land that next weight loss reality show gig. Fingers crossed! You gotta buy EVOLVE direct from the website - $400 – no street price –– Heavyocity tells me they have made a distribution deal and it will be in stores soon. (Translation: cheaper???)
EVOLVE runs in Kontakt 2 - so that’s easy. It’s made by composers who know what it takes to score 4,000 minutes of music in a day. It’s geared towards tv/film/game composers who like to be dramatic. Wishy washy, namby pamby, “I’ll just score this bandsaw decapitation scene with flute and harp” maestros need not apply. The website blurbs claim it works on dance remix material as well but it didn’t strike me that way on my first pass but I’ll give it a spin around the block on this techno record I’m doing and let you know how it turns out.
THE ONE SENTENCE REVIEW:
Great sounding hits, FX, weirdness, rhythmic and tonal sequences that are well organized, easy to find and well suited for dramatic scoring.
Should you get it? 99% Yes. The only people who might not need it is the few freaks who already own 20 other pieces of software like both Storm Drums, Omnisphere, Stylus RMX, both original Distorted Reality sample CDs, another 100 sample CDs, and a bunch of other weird shit – and these people have spent 6 long months pulling the best stuff off them and reorganizing them into an easy to use interface in categories that make sense, making sure all the looped material syncs correctly to your sequencer, all the levels are balanced, blah blah blah. If you’ve done that, you can probably live without EVOLVE. The rest of us will buy Evolve and spend our time writing music and making money.
EVOLVE isn’t a band in a box. Evolve is the cherry on top, the specialty freaky groove in the middle, the ominous on the bottom, the bitch slap when you need it. There are no strings, brass, or other typical bullshit. Evolve is meant to slip over the top of your usual instrumental genius - kind of like a musical condom - only this one has sharp creepy prongy things on it.
EVOLVE comes as instruments and multis – so I loaded a multi first cuz I’m lazy– they have descriptive names like Trailer Smash or Ghost Stories. I threw some keys down in Logic for each of the 8 parts and had a scary weird cue done in about 5 minutes. It didn’t have much pitch or melody but then again if you add this to your habitual cheesy string parts I think you’ve got yourself an Emmy nod. I then tried an experiment where I loaded a new multi and kept the exact same midi tracks and voila! Another scary weird cue done. I muted one part cuz it was just too weird but the rest of it wasn’t bad. Time for me to enlist my gardener writing cues! I tell ya, loading up one of their multis really gives you about all you’ll need to amp up your track. I like things that are quick, easy and make me feel good. That’s why I like beer and girls with big boobs.
LIBRARY CONTENTS:
Looped grooves tonal, rhythmic, weird: real nice stuff in here. Definitely usable. One groove per key so you can just keep adding keys until you run out of fingers. Want more intensity? Have more fingers sewn onto your hands – do I have to think up everything for you?
Don’t be fooled by names in the rhythmic grooves section that say things like Tambourines or Hand Percussion – these have all been effected and fucked with so they aren’t your grandpa’s perc (there are some traditional instruments in the “Traditional” folder but you already own all that stuff.)
Don’t look for traditional rock drum kits – the kits here are all high on acid. Look for the unique here not the mundane.
HITS – I like hits that make me rectally bleed. And the hits here are top notch. I had to double up on my Depends just to get thru them all. In fact, although I said there weren’t many trad instruments – there is a bass drum that is the best I’ve ever heard. Not that washy, tubby, boomy realistic, authentic sound – but a ballsy, slappy, belly fat slap sound you can really rattle the viewers with. Kind of like the big Remo tom on Storm Drum 2 only better!
METALS & CYMBALS – Heavyocity knocked this shit out of the park. I am so sick of regular cymbal whooshes I wish I couldn’t hear above 2k. A while ago, I went so far as to effect my own cymbals so I didn’t have to use the same old thing again. Well, Heavyocity did it here too only they did it better. Prepare yourself for soggy Levis my friends.
The Dumpster Scrapes are the Distorted Reality sounds for 2009. Updated, rougher, meaner. I mean these scrapes are from the streets! You can almost smell the decaying food and discarded hookers in the dumpster they sampled. Use these now or forever be branded boring.
ODD NOISE & BUILDUPS – lots of different ideas in here. Ignorance alert! And I fully admit I write music and not software – but since these are all one shots that whoosh up to a climax, why make me waste my time backtiming the effect to land in the right place when a bit of programming would release the climax part when I release the key? That would make me happy. And when I’m happy, I drink less – no, wait – maybe I drink more – whatever – the point is for a piece of software meant for composers, everything needs to be geared towards saving time.
BASSES – there are only a few so you should really rely on your old standbys not Evolve. The few they threw in have standouts like Gnarly Piano Gods and Nuclear Bass Strike. Those 2 patches made me think that I want a section called something like “Final Notes” – huge, cranium exploding single notes that you would use to accent a very dramatic moment – like THE END! I do things like those 2 patches all the time but it takes me 10 minutes to stack the 5 synths and samples to make it. Evolve needs more of them.
There are a couple of drone type things but they didn’t really rock my world. Again, they’re fine but you probably have something better somewhere else. And I have a nit to pick about any synth or sound design patch made by anyone out there. Why doesn’t every programmer make my mod wheel do something? It is so ingrained in me to play a pad, a drone, etc and reach for the mod wheel expecting something extra to happen. I don’t know why I do it because most of the time no one has assigned the controller to do anything. But still I keep on twiddling my wheel hoping for some hot action. Now Heavyocity has done a pretty good job of assigning the mod wheel on quite a few patches but it seemed to me that it missed some opportunities. I’m not talking something fancy – hell, resonance only would be fine – I know I could assign it myself – but that slows me down – and if 1,000 composers have to do the same thing then we’ve all wasted time – time that could have been better spent smoking weed and watching Soul Train.
Lots of strange and different sounds can be found throughout. I have no idea why there’s an unaffected Toy Xylophone in the library – kind of oddly normal for the rest of the collection but still it’s A REALLY NICE TOY XYLOPHONE. There’s a bunch of female opera licks – again, surprised me to find it but when you need a diva hitting the high notes – you’ll be glad they are there. There’s a Pads and FX section – limited but good quality (alas almost no mod wheel assigning). It won’t replace Omnisphere by any stretch but they aren’t trying to. A lot of the collection feels like these sounds were created throughout the careers of the composers behind the software and they’ve pulled the best of them together in this collection. Sure, it’s eclectic but if you’ve created a killer Toy Xylophone, why not spread the love?
Overall, Evolve covers a lot of ground for the dramatically hip. The action/energy grooves are really great, the single hits fantastic, and the scary/weird factor is covered extremely well. Evolve has become my defacto sound design generator. But don’t expect this collection to be the only thing you need to land that Oscar. So lay it on top of your VSL, EWQLSO or your trip hop didgeridoo collection and sit back and wait for that call from the Wachowski brothers.
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