[Travtek]

I think Toontrack sees the writing on the wall.  I believe the game has passed them by, and their lack of concrete communication implies their fatal hesitation.  One could hypothesize that the creative art and science of developing an EZ version of guitars would lead consumers to believe that adding two more strings to the fretboard wouldn’t be such a big deal since EZ Bass was published years ago.  And as any purist guitarist knows, consumers are oversimplifying what, in reality, is tens of thousands of lines of programming code written by a team of software engineers to attempt to capture the emulation of an imperfect instrument that’s been around since the Renaissance Period.  Maybe Toontrack’s ‘brain trust’ has retired or moved on to other pursuits in the music industry’s SAAS, and that’s the final shoe drop.  Nobody wants to work hard anymore; they feel disenfranchised after working somewhere for six months without becoming CEO.  We’d get a lot more done as a society if we all would just ‘shut up and do the work.’

The only thing I learned in the 1970s was how hard guitar playing is, and I never picked up a guitar again.  Then samplers became available in the 1980’s, and as cheesy as electric guitars sounded back then, you could hear me playing the opening guitar chords (minus the harmonics from Mark Knopfler) to ‘Money for Nothing.’

Fast-forward to the 1990s and sampled acoustic steel and nylon guitars began to sound more ‘convincing.’ Electric guitars: meh.  Not so much.

Then, in 2010, I finally dropped $400 on ‘Electri6ity’ by Vir2 Instruments.  With much pain, I was able to mimic an electric guitar solo from Steve ‘Luke’ Lukather.

And just like YouTuber guitar purist, Professor Rick Beato says, “Fake guitars just sound like keyboard synths.” Deep down, I agreed, until now.

To be honest, ‘Shreddage 3 Stratus’ by Impact Soundworks was never on my radar until I read Thomas Hansen’s post in this thread (Hat Tip).  But I did my due diligence and saw the company’s passion and commitment to its core consumers.  I remember when Toontrack did that about 15 years ago, with videos featuring a guy who was a guitar player and constantly gave shade to bass players because the bass instrument only had four strings and assumed that’s all bass players could handle.  But all I know is that Davie504 is the king of bass playing on YouTube and has perfected sarcasm to the point of slapping certain people, per se, in his reaction video reviews, besides slapping a bass.  But I digress.

Even as good as the digital sample libraries are now, with the advent of AI (GASP!), wannabe musicians can crawl out of bed and crank out a tune on Suno just by entering a prompt without any musical training or decades of experience in composing and writing lyrics (like some of us do for creating with AI generators breathtaking images in 4K to 6K resolution in a matter of seconds).  Some just enter a song title, and boom, the whole song is built in seconds.  Don’t get me started on the number of streams these AI artists are receiving and now are filling up streaming platforms like Spotify.  The number of fake bands that are created every few seconds is astounding.  Fake news – fake bands – fake music – fake personas.  Garbage in – garbage out.

But somewhere beyond those extremes, the good folks at Celemony, who brought untrained, tone-deaf singers ‘Melodyne’ (and its controversial impact for decades), have really come a long way with a completely different approach to state-of-the-art digital music production.  They take world-class musicians to not only play a note, but also play melodies of many genres, like real session players – just like old school style before the guys from TOTO finally formed a group, now well into their 4th decade.

Imagine having the players listen to your opening chord progression and then throw in some rhythm and blues or MOV country-pop chops that really inspire you.  I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the less motivated I am to learn the keys to technical prowess like the greats on all the instruments I love but will never learn play.  It’s a subscription-based model that’s totally affordable, either annually or monthly, and it gives you access to EVERYTHING in their libraries – far beyond guitars.  And for musicians like us, we know those guys should be able to earn commissions off these performances as ancillary residual income.

Personally, I can sleep better at night knowing I didn’t just send another talented and gifted musician down to Skid Row.  Their solution is called ‘Tonalic.’  This is the wooden stake, the garlic clove necklace, the holy water, the Holy Cross, and the silver bullet to any hope that Toontrack will ever produce an EZ Guitar series of libraries and expansion packs.  In a way, if you are already a guitarist with the whole rig setup, Toontrack is the glue that adds all the other instruments a guitarist might need (but never learned to play) for a band, helping you share concepts with your real-world bandmates using a demo.  And I think that still can pay the bills at Toontrack for at least another decade.  But if you’re ‘The Hitman’ David Foster, you will complete your arsenal with Native Instruments and their third-party NKS sample library makers to get all the finishing glitz and gloss. The takeaway for me is that I can vicariously feel like Steely Dan or Brian Wilson did back in the day and just produce music for the sake of music.  Not to tour and play live concerts.  I’ve composed, produced, and arranged about 60 songs back from my early adult years, and they are a cringeworthy catalog at best in terms of terrible mixing, much less any mastering, that would blow out speakers from the low end of the audio spectrum, the Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder with crosstalk galore, and later on VHS tape I used as recording media, for two-track digital recording instrumentals, complete with dropouts, and the low oscillating hums from unbalanced Radio Shack cables and connectors back in that era.  Now I can do justice to those long-ago ballads, jingles, instrumentals, and potential motion-picture soundtracks, and give them new life.   If I get booted from Toontrack for saying this, I hope it at least reaches someone like me before they delete the post.  I get nothing for mentioning this optional product that goes beyond owning a sampled library and some really cool DSP effects.  Tonalic just takes a good idea and finds a cohesive, synergistic solution where everybody wins.  The more you know…

Hope this helps,

Travtek

ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO INTEL ULTRA 9 24-CORE, Crucial 4X4 TB SSD, Corsair 7100 - 192 GB RAM 4400) Corsair AIO iCUE Link Titan 420 RX LCD CPU Cooler, 8 iCUE Link RX RGB case cooling fans, ASUS PRIME GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB 128-Bit GDDR7 PCI Express 5.0 x8 DLSS 4.0 Graphics Card, CORSAIR HX1500i 1500 W ATX12V 2.52 Power Supply, CORSAIR 7000D AIRFLOW Full-Tower ATX PC Case, NI KONTROL S88 MK3, NI MASCHINE MK3 R2, Fender Studio One 7, Quantum ES 2, Slate Immersion One Headphones, M-Audio BX8 Monitors.

• The post has been modified 4 times, last modified 9 hours, 13 minutes ago by Travtek.

1

Thanked by: Em_9

[Travtek]

I agree with the OP in this.  As a keyboard composer, I know I can play virtually any keyboard themed plugin.  I started programming a drum machine in the 80s starting with Roland TR-303 unit. Toontrack has realy elevated what’s possible nowadays.

I consider myself a ‘keytarist’ as well when I need a power ballad 80s style guitar solo with the works.  Vir2 came out with a plugin named Electri6ity that sampled the top 8 most popular electric guitars.

I was cutting my teeth on how to use it on my midi keyboard and came close enough with a Steve Lucather solo.

But we need more finesse guitarists doing their thing like in their respective playing atyles like those EZBass expansion packs bassists players do.

But I’ve tried using guitar plugins, but that’s for real guitarists.

ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO INTEL ULTRA 9 24-CORE, Crucial 4X4 TB SSD, Corsair 7100 - 192 GB RAM 4400) Corsair AIO iCUE Link Titan 420 RX LCD CPU Cooler, 8 iCUE Link RX RGB case cooling fans, ASUS PRIME GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB 128-Bit GDDR7 PCI Express 5.0 x8 DLSS 4.0 Graphics Card, CORSAIR HX1500i 1500 W ATX12V 2.52 Power Supply, CORSAIR 7000D AIRFLOW Full-Tower ATX PC Case, NI KONTROL S88 MK3, NI MASCHINE MK3 R2, Fender Studio One 7, Quantum ES 2, Slate Immersion One Headphones, M-Audio BX8 Monitors.

• This post was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Travtek.
  Reason: Grammatical clean-up

3

Thanked by: Tony Shaffer, Eric Turman and Oscar Stern

[Travtek]

Thanks Dave. This is still relevant for Sonar X3 in 2015. See attached screen grab for settings.

Cheers,
Travtek

ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 HERO INTEL ULTRA 9 24-CORE, Crucial 4X4 TB SSD, Corsair 7100 - 192 GB RAM 4400) Corsair AIO iCUE Link Titan 420 RX LCD CPU Cooler, 8 iCUE Link RX RGB case cooling fans, ASUS PRIME GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB 128-Bit GDDR7 PCI Express 5.0 x8 DLSS 4.0 Graphics Card, CORSAIR HX1500i 1500 W ATX12V 2.52 Power Supply, CORSAIR 7000D AIRFLOW Full-Tower ATX PC Case, NI KONTROL S88 MK3, NI MASCHINE MK3 R2, Fender Studio One 7, Quantum ES 2, Slate Immersion One Headphones, M-Audio BX8 Monitors.

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