Hi pals
after some years tickling the ivories and other stuff, I realized what I need to have fun with music, drawings, and shoots: a balance
What balance?
A balance between Too much help and Too little help, as explained here for the music
(but relevant to my other hobbies as well)
The rest of the discourse is not easy to make, so I’ll write it down later, piece after piece
At the moment I can anticipate I found a plugin to put after “Something here” and you will be very surprised finding what it is
During these years I got some lemon (for example the KK ones and the Evolution Hollowbody Blues below), i.e. instruments that seemed possible to play, while they were rather impossible to tame
I have to say that videos (even if not made by devs) are rarely fair, as they often let the potential buyer believe they can use the tool easily while it isn’t at all
This is particularly true for guitar and brass plugins because the articulations that are almost impossible to re-create with a keyboard, unless you are a keyboard wizard AND you are also trained in using the articulation keys of each plugin
Considering that I am not a musician, not a composer, I don’t know musical theory, I am an erratic genius not a genius, and I am too old to learn everything, I knew since the beginning that I could never have played certain instruments, notable bass and drums, so I was, and I am perfectly happy having EZbass and EZdrummer stuck on the left of the formula
But, once I was a guitar player, so I made the big error thinking that I was able to play a guitar plugin: it was not true, for the reason I explained before
And every attempt to find a guitar plugin with a good balance failed, at the point I decided yesterday to drop the guitar close to EZBass and EZdrummer and putting my solo focus only on the keyboards (notably the Hammond and the Moog)
N.B: The same applies to woodwinds, and only with the amazing Sounpaints I was eventually able to play decent solos with flute and sax
Well, coming back to guitars, I also realized that each plugin may have its place in my toolbox, so I reinstalled my UJAM Sparkle
Now, do you remember my UAJM saga?
I abandoned it ranting that it was boring, and I uninstalled it after some time with no regret
Well, during the re-installation…
…
…
I was offered the trial of Sparkle 2
I tried it and WOW!
I found the most balanced guitar plugin ever!
So now the guitar is again in the middle of the formula, or rather quite on the right, why?
Let us reason about the GUIs of guitar plugins I have used so far
I drop all them, then I’ll explain what I can do, and I cannot do, with them
Note: I am not speaking about using them with Scaler feeding chords and the plugins using its MIDIs, because this way I have no control on the output, so a lot of boredom
I am speaking about using Scaler to send chords, and setting plugins in their “guitar” mode, so leaving space to my control and creativity, so having a lot of fun
AAS strum GS 2
KK Sunburst
Orange Tree Blues guitar
UJAM Sparkle 1
UJAM Sparkle 2
Now I have to do my job
Later I’ll add my critics and insight about each one