Vir2 - Apollo: Cinematic Guitars

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  • Plug-ins producing realistic electric and acoustic guitar samples might not seem like a priority for producers inclined to electronic dance music. But Vir2's Apollo: Cinematic Guitars goes way beyond regular guitar sounds and offers colours applicable to a huge range of styles. While the source material at the heart of this library has been captured from guitars, the ways in which they have been recorded and the flexibility with which they're presented to the user means that there's something inherently synth-like about much of what Apollo has to offer. The library requires Native Instrument's Kontakt as its host and, once downloaded and installed, offers five folders of sonic content. The idea of the first folder, Swells, is for the samples to replicate the behaviour of the volume dial on a guitar, allowing you to soften the attack time and produce lush pad-like sounds of chords or signal notes. Further envelope control is available with the Decay, Sustain and Release dials, while the browser also offers an EQ section at the very top. There's a comprehensive internal effects section towards the bottom left where you can further enhance sounds with a flexible and comprehensively spec'd effects wheel. This allows you to select a Stereo Spreader effect, plus Chorus, Rotator, Skreamer, Compression, Delay, Reverb and Flanger treatments, with each effect category offering a pleasingly broad range of parameters. The second sound category is Pads. The central section of the interface allows you to choose patches from Basic, Calm, Distorted, Motion, Tension and Uplift sub-sections. You can actually layer two sounds here, with a volume and pan control available for each, so you can balance and widen the patch as you like. There's a Modulation section with ADSR- and LFO-style controls for each sound source, which can help you shape further the overall sound. It goes without saying that all of the source material stems from guitar recordings but most are so heavily processed that you'd never guess it. The general mood is on the calm side but there are grittier options if that's what you're looking for. It's clear that capturing the source recordings has been a labour of love, with many sounds tracked through careful amp settings, effects and multiple pedals, and this sonic richness is apparent in every sound. However, it's the Ambient Designer category which may well appeal most to producers of sound design-based music. Loading the folder initially maps six sound categories—Air, Reverse Sounds, Slides, Ambient Loops, Simple Phrases and Sustainer—to each octave of the controller keyboard. For instance, Air sounds are mapped from C1-B1. Each key triggers a different sound from each category and the Latch button keeps them looping and sustaining so that you don't have to hold down a key or use a sustain pedal. If you trigger a key whose sound you don't like, simply press it again to switch it off. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Clicking the Edit button in a category opens up a sub-mixer where you can set the level and pan position of each key, and there's an option to reverse the sounds too. The same effects wheel found in Apollo's other patches is available here too but you have the option to either engage it on a per-category basis or globally. This means your Sustainer sounds can be bathed in reverb, while the Ambient Loops are Delayed. In the penultimate octave, you can choose the key of all loops, so it's easy to match their pitch to your project. However, the real clincher comes an octave higher. This acts as a trigger key for the entire Ambient Program you've designed and remembers which keys are active from any sounds you've triggered in Latch mode. As a result, you've got a single key to trigger your entire Ambient Designer patch, so long as you activate Latch mode before you start designing your patch. If you don't like the sounds assigned to each category, no problem; you can call on a number of others from long sound lists in each group. The results are stunning and they produce ready-made beds which will light up the imaginations of many a producer and soundtrack composer. The Phrase Builder offers a way to bring musical guitar phrases to your music without the need to pick up an actual instrument. This section also provides different sonic content in every octave. Each key offers a short musical phrase designed to overlap with other phrases from corresponding keys in higher octaves. Imagine a strummed chord in the bottom octave, a short lick in the same key in the octave above and another phrase in the octave above that. They're designed to lock together like jigsaw pieces, giving you the chance to add something simple or complicated from one section of your track to the next. Again, effects are controlled per group, so you can add delay to one phrase while assigning distortion to another. As you're trawling though the effects-heavy content, you might be wondering where the regular guitar patches are. If you're looking for more traditional guitar tones, these are available in the Instruments category. Here you'll find a range of electric, acoustic and bass guitars in various flavours like Drive, Ambient and Chorus. These tags represent the effects that the original guitars were recorded through, rather than the internal processing added after the fact. So if you choose a patch with an effect printed to its core sound, you're free to add additional effects. Spitfire Audio's Engima libraries are a good comparison for Apollo Cinematic Guitars, but while Leo Abrahams' libraries sound fantastic, there's considerably more flexibility here, and a broader range of options, too. That's no surprise when you consider the increased price of the Apollo, which is substantial enough to demand careful consideration. However, there's no doubting the calibre of this library. If you're a little tired of reaching for the same sound sources and are looking to introduce sounds from an unexpected instrument to your dance music or sound work, Apollo Cinematic Guitars is a plug-in where your experiments are richly rewarded. The Ambient Designer, in particular, is capable of mesmerising results. Ratings: Sound: 4.6 Cost: 3.6 Versatility: 4.5 Ease of use: 4.2
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