DEVELOPMENT

Console is Impact Soundworks’ custom-built, fully modular FX rack, pedal board, and channel mixer available for the first time in Shreddage 3 Stratus. Unlike our previous FX racks, which were locked into a specific set of 8 or fewer modules in a specific order, Console gives you total flexibility. You get 8 inserts per channel which can have any effects you want, in any order!

There are now THIRTY (30) FX units at your fingertips, from guitar amps and pedals to EQs, modulation, and dynamics – everything that Kontakt 5.7 has to offer, plus some custom ISW effects as well. Each one is fully editable with a single click and can be easily randomized or initialized.

The New Cab Arsenal

Produced in collaboration with Dan M at Skyhouse Recording, Console now sports a wide selection of custom cabinet IRs (impulses responses) which will help you create excellent guitar & bass tones. Eight different cabs were captured, each with at least two mics (dynamic, condenser) and two positions (on, off-axis). These include:

• Modern Hi-gain 4×12 (Mesa/5150 type)
• British Rock 4×12 (Marshall 1960 type)
• American Clean (Fender Twin type)
• British Open-back (Vox AC30 type)
• Doom/Stoner 2×15 (Vintage Sunn type)
• Bass Portaflex 1×15
• Bass Classic 4×10
• Bass Modern 2×12

These sound absolutely fantastic and blow the old Shreddage 2 cab IRs out of the water. Of course, if you want to use the old IRs, those are included as well!

New Tone Possibilities

Here are some sample FX chains now possible with Console, new amps, pedals, and our custom IRs!

Fully Portable Presets

Since Console lives in its own script tab, any FX presets you create are fully portable: not just between channels or the master track, but between different projects or even different instruments entirely! For example, if you create a killer guitar chain in Shreddage 3 Stratus, you can save that tone and import it to a future instrument like Shreddage 3 IBZ

Plus, any updates we do to Console are applied across all instruments, ensuring full compatibility even if we add new effects or controls!

Learn More!

Want to read about all the features of Console in depth? Check out the manual!

Download Console Manual (PDF)

Our next generation of virtual guitars and basses will be powered by a custom script & UI we’re calling the S3 Engine. Rather than a simple update to our Shreddage 2 guitars, we’re using all the tools available in Kontakt 5.7 to build an entirely new instrument engine from scratch. In the next few blog posts, we’ll cover some of the key features you can expect with this exciting new technology!

Talk to the Hand

One of the big challenges in programming a virtual guitar is how to translate MIDI notes to a guitar’s fretboard. The same pitch can be played on different frets & strings, so how does the instrument know which one to use? Our approach to this challenge is a “virtual hand” that emulates the position and reach of a guitarist’s hand and fingers as they perform a part.

By improving the way our virtual hand moves, we can avoid unrealistic voicings that send MIDI notes all over the fretboard. Not only do these look wonky on the UI, but the tone is inconsistent, as string and fret selection has a huge impact on tone!

While the virtual hand is by default controlled entirely by S3, it’s possible to automate both string selection and hand (fret) position – something we think power users will appreciate!

Multiple Algorithms = More Power

With S3, we realized that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to fret selection. The logic that works for a screaming solo part does not necessarily work for jazzy accompaniment, or quick strumming. So, we created several fretting algorithms in S3 that will help you find the right type of voicing for your MIDI parts. Together with the ability to set a fret preference range, you can easily change the tone of your performance without doing any automation at all!

For example, with the Moving Lead algorithm and a monophonic lead part, you can achieve some killer-sounding solos with super-realistic solo voicing:

But this same algorithm doesn’t work as well for slow strummed chords.

With S3, you can keep your ‘lead’ instance on the appropriate lead voicing mode, while your rhythm part can use our Polyphonic mode. This algorithm prioritizes realistic voicing of large chords:

The goal of these modes is not only to deliver better-sounding performances, but also to save you time. We’d rather you spent time simply writing and perform MIDI as opposed to painstakingly automating hand position, string, and fret selection. By selecting the right mode for your performance, you’ll get incredible results with 0 hassle.

Simplified Strumming

One of the biggest feature requests from our S2 guitars was a way to more easily perform strummed chord parts without manually sequencing (or playing) every single note. We heard you loud and clear, and we’ve introduced a brand-new Strumming Engine as part of S3.

When Strumming Mode is enabled, you can play notes in the blue (lower) range of the keyboard to set up your chord, then play notes in the red (upper) range of the keyboard to trigger various strums.

But this new engine goes beyond just simple down and up strumming of played chords! Two notes in the strum range are reserved for partial strums of the upper or lower played notes, which is a handy effect for realistic rhythm parts: after all, guitarists don’t always strum every single note of a chord every time they play it. You can also pick single notes from the chord with the second octave, another useful technique used in countless songs.

And much more…

In the next post, we’ll cover our new Console tab which gives you complete control over pickup blending and effects!

Since Impact Soundworks’ first library in 2007, we’ve committed to deep-sampling in all our virtual instruments. This means recording as many dynamics, round robins, articulations, and mic positions as necessary to best capture the essence of acoustic instruments and ensembles. Though it takes much longer, we think this approach gives the best possible results.

The drawback to deep-sampling is that it can be overwhelming! Even though modern computers can easily handle many gigabytes of sounds, organizing lots of articulations and playing techniques is no easy task. Faced with so many options, composers may find it difficult to find the right articulation or adapt it for their particular MIDI setup.

After producing dozens of sample libraries with a variety of disparate articulation systems, we decided to create a complete solution to this problem: Total Articulation Control Technology, or TACT.

Design Goals

TACT was built to achieve goals for both us (as developers) and you (the user!)

• Provide a consistent interface for managing articulations, located in a separate tab one click away in ANY instrument
• Give users tons of control over exactly how articulations are triggered: velocity, MIDI CC, keyswitch, key range, pedal
• Offer ways to adjust each articulation’s dynamics, offset, and legato interaction (where applicable)
• Make it extremely easy for users to create an advanced mapping setup with just a couple clicks
• Save us (ISW) resources by alleviating the need to create a new articulation system in each library

 

Finding a way to offer deep control for advanced users while also making it easy to use is something we’ve always aimed for in all of our libraries. Restricting control can make things simpler, but we want to accommodate all producers & composers, even those with unusual MIDI setups or non-standard DAWs. That means flexibility is a top priority.

The value of creating a reusable system also can’t be overstated. Creating new code for every library means wasting time & money ‘reinventing the wheel’. It also introduces the possibility of new bugs and losing (or breaking) existing features. Plus, it can be confusing and frustrating for users to learn something new every time.

Key Innovations

With TACT, we think we not only achieved our goals, but also created one of the most powerful articulation managements tools in the virtual instrument world. Here are some of the most important and unique features:

1. Conflict Detection: TACT makes it easy to see if multiple articulations have conflicting mapping setups, for example the same keyswitch or MIDI CC value.
2. Presets: Saving or loading an entire articulation setup takes just one click, and can be easily shared with other users.
3. Automap: It’s now possible to map multiple articulations at once with almost no effort, using schemes like ascending keyswitches or split velocity range.

Download the TACT Manual

Supported Products

Ventus Ethnic Winds – Shakuhachi
More to come soon!

To date, our rock/metal-focused electric guitar libraries Shreddage and Shreddage 2 have been the most popular instruments in the Impact Soundworks family. We’re extremely proud of these releases, particularly Shreddage 2, which pushes the limits of how realistic a virtual guitar can be. But while we’re thrilled with the aggressive, heavy tone of these libraries and how well they handle rock/metal music, we’ve always wanted to explore the softer, more dynamic side of the 6-stringed spectrum.

Enter Archtop: Hollowbody Electric Guitar, our upcoming release. We’ve collaborated with virtuoso guitarist and session musician Josh Workman to produce an incredibly detailed library capturing the sounds of a Sadowsky Jim Hall Model archtop hollowbody guitar. This gorgeous instrument is one of the world’s finest guitars, particularly for clean styles like jazz, pop, R&B. It’s also quite capable for many rock and alternative genres as well.

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What’s in a name? With so many virtual instruments and sample libraries available for composers and producers today, it’s important to pick a name that is both descriptive and memorable. We decided to switch the name of the library previously known as “Cinematic Synthetic Drums PRO” to JUGGERNAUT: Cinematic Electronic Scoring Tools. Why the change, and what’s the difference?

• JUGGERNAUT truly communicates the size and impact of this flagship instrument.
• Cinematic Synthetic Drums did not do justice to all of the non-percussive samples in the library.
• Scoring Tools best describes the range and purpose of all the sounds included.

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Creating a modern virtual instrument requires more than just great recordings, editing, and programming – the user interface and layout of the instrument can make the difference between a great library and an unusable one. This is especially true with libraries that have a great variety of sounds, such as Cinematic Synthetic Drums PRO. Together with Constructive Stumblings, we’ve been building, testing, and iterating on an intuitive and powerful UI for CSD PRO, and we’d like to talk about that process here.

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Organizing Patches

One of the first questions we had to address was how to make it as easy as possible for composers to pull up ready-made presets. There are two distinct approaches to this: one is to have each patch (in this case, a drum/FX kit) as a separate .NKI file on the hard drive. The other approach is to have presets switchable within the instrument interface. We decided to use a hybrid of these two options to get the best of both worlds. From the main patch, you can easily switch presets using up/down arrows and thus audition sounds very rapidly…

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In our first blog post, we talked about some of the high-level concepts involved in making a single sound for a library like our upcoming Cinematic Synthetic Drums Pro. Now, we’d like to give you an introduction to some of the very talented and creative sound designers involved in crafting this behemoth.

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Jordan Fehr

Jordan’s talent for creating fantastic sonic worlds is evident in the high praise for titles like Super Meat Boy, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Hotline Miami, The Binding of Isaac, Jamestown, Wind-Up Knight, and 20+ other film & game credits. An experienced sound designer, foley artist, and sound mixer (among other things), Jordan brings his skill and passion to the table and has already designed over 60 sounds for Juggernaut, primarily trailer-inspired FX such as impacts, slams, reverses, sweeps and textures.

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Welcome to the first post of the official Impact Soundworks blog! We hope to give you insight into the process of designing, recording, and editing sample libraries and virtual instruments.

 

   The idea for the Cinematic Synthetic Drums (CSD) library was perhaps originally inspired by the soundtrack to Tron Legacy by Daft Punk. As an electronic musician myself, I found the blend of grand orchestral elements with highly electronic synths and drums to be very interesting and effective. What pushed me to actually construct and release this collection was the free, high-quality work of people like Blake Robinson (Blakus) on VI-Control who deserve great respect for their contributions to the TV/game/film music community!

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