acoustic samples Sunbird Library Based on 1962 Gibson Hummingbird Acoustic Guitar User Guide

: June 3, 2024
: acoustic samples

acoustic samples Sunbird Library Based on 1962 Gibson Hummingbird

Acoustic Guitar

acoustic-samples-Sunbird-Library-Based-on-1962-Gibson-Hummingbird-Acoustic-
Guitar-product

Welcome to Acousticsamples
Thank you for using the Sunbird library. We hope you enjoy playing the instrument and wish it supports your musical ideas or even better: inspires new ones. In this User Guide, we will provide you with an overview of how to use the Sunbird library.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at: samples@acousticsamples.com. or use the contact form on our website www.acousticsamples.net.

Requirements and Installation

Step 1

Authorize your library

The first thing to do is make sure you have an iLok ID and that it is the correct one. If you never used iLok, just go to the ilok.com website and create a free account. You will be asked to enter a user ID, this is what you will need to enter later on the authorization page. This will also be the ID you will need to get connected to the iLok license manager. On the download/serials page, you can find the serial number associated with your library, it should look like this: PROASXX-XXXXXXX. You can click on the authorize button or copy it and go to this page: http://acousticsamples.net/index.php?route=account/authorizeIlok you can find the link in the top menu under the account as well as on the “my account” page. Of course, you need to be logged in to view this page.

Now enter the serial number in the serial number box (it will be filled already if you used the authorize button) as well as your iLok id. The iLok id is the username you use to log into your iLok account, don’t confuse it with the number written on the key. Then simply hit the authorization button and wait for a little. At the end of this process, you will see a message telling you if the authorization was successful. You will also get a confirmation email. Sometimes the iLok servers will not respond and you will get a blank page, in this case, please contact us and we will proceed to the authorization for you manually.

Step 2

Download and extract your libraries

Registering your serial number will generate your download links, they will be created and available on the downloads/serials page. The files are delivered in RAR format and sometimes these files are split (for the large libraries). You need to use WinRAR on windows or UnrarX on mac (www.unrarx.com or directly here) to extract them, other software will probably not extract the files properly, we use the recovery functions of Rar (to avoid download corruption) and these two software are the only ones to handle it properly. If there are multiple parts (part01.rar, part02.rar), you need to put them all in the same folder before extracting. If the extraction gives you errors, then your download did not complete or got corrupted, you need to download it again.

Step 3

Download and install UVI Workstation

Download and install the UVI workstation (our free sample player) from here: http://www.acousticsamples.net/uviworkstation. Make sure you download the right version for your system, if you are on windows 64, but use a daw that only allows for 32-bit plugins, you need to install the 32-bit version of UVI Workstation. Follow step 4 to learn how to load a library into UVI Workstation.

Step 4

Transfer the license to your iLok key/computer

The license manager is installed with UVI Workstation, so you just need to launch it from you applications. Now make sure that your iLok key is plugged into your computer if you want to use it or just ignore this if you want to use the computer-based authorization. Click on Sign in and enter your iLok information, you will see the list of available licenses and your computer and iLok keys on the left panel. Now all you need to do is just drag and drop the license to your iLok key or your computer to authorize one or the other.

Step 5

Load your library and start playing

Now just open UVI Workstation in Standalone or one of the plugin formats in your sequencer. There are two ways of loading the library.

You can open the browser and navigate to the ufs file manually.
You can place the UFS in the default UVI folder: [Startup disk]: Library: Application Support: UVISoundBanks (on Mac) and C:\Program Files\UVISoundBanks (on Windows). You can also drop a shortcut to this file in this location, provided it has the same name.
The best practice is to have all of your UFS in a folder and let the UVI workstation index it. Simply go into the preferences/soundbanks and then add your UFS folder. If the authorization has been done, it will mount the UFS automatically (if automount is selected) or index it in the search (if the index is selected). The recursive is for subfolders, but too many subfolders can lead to a long indexation/mounting time.

After this, when you start UVI Workstation, you will see the UFS under soundbanks, select it and just double-click on the m5p file, it will load the library and you will be able to start playing.

Interface and Parameters

The Sunbird library is based on a 1962 Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar
The Hummingbird guitar was created in 1960 by Gibson and was the first square- shouldered dreadnought. It was designed to be extremely versatile so that it can cover many music genres and have a deep tone without being too powerful, which is perfect to accompany a voice. This is exactly in this spirit that we sampled it, together with our powerful strum, pattern and song engine, the Sunbird library is the perfect tool to create accompaniments. We recorded it with a pair of DPA microphones to get a detailed stereo perspective, with a U87 to capture the Bass and a precise mono perspective, and using a contact pickup in case you want to put the library through an amp simulation plugin.

We sampled it very deeply, all frets of all strings with upstrokes, downstrokes, round robins, releases, staccatos, mutes, palm mutes, hand blocks, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, retriggers, fret noises, percussions other articulations. All of these details allow us to reproduce the real playing of a guitar player, and easily. There are basically 4 modes (that you can choose using key-switches, G5 to C6), the solo mode that allows playing melodies, the chord mode that helps play strums or to pick very easily, the patterns mode that does all of the strummings or picking for you and the MIDI mode that allows you to use your preferred midi guitar controller.

Strumming machine

The Sunbird can strum, in various ways, up, down, muted, in legato, and allows finger picking. Everything is modeled after meticulously analyzing thousands of real chords played by guitarists. Every aspect of the strumming engine can be tweaked to achieve the sound you want. The chord recognition engine helps convert any chord you play on your keyboard to a real guitar voicing. Recognizing a chord is made through a database of thousands of standard chords, and you can edit every chord or even add new ones.

The chord hammers feature lets you play left-hand hammer-ons and pull-offs while strumming or picking.

C4 is the strum down,
C#4 is the strum down muted,
D4 is the strum-up,
D#4 is the strum-up muted,
E4, F4, G4, A4, B4, and C5 (the white keys) are for the 6 different strings,
F#4 triggers the chord but shifts from the Chord Slide value,
G#4 stops the chord and plays a hand mute sample,
A#4 stops the chord and plays slide-down samples,

A small chord panel displays the chord that you are playing as well as the octave it is in. Right under it, you have access to a voicing menu that contains all of the possible voicings of that chord on a guitar, and you can select one for each octave. In this panel, you can edit the chord you are currently playing, so just click on the edit button, then change the chord and hit apply to override that chord voicing, or press insert to add that chord to the list of available vicings for that chord. You can even export and load a chord configuration using the export and load buttons. The chord configuration will also contain the information present in the chord builder if you used it.

The Chord Mode can be set in two positions

The Guitar mode separates the notes selection from the triggers. So pressing a chord with the left hand only make the soft sounds that your left hand would make on a real guitar and you need to trigger the chords or the single strings with the right hand.
The Piano mode will trigger the chords as soon as you press a chord, the upstrokes and downstrokes are automatic depending on the position in the current bar. Repeating a chord can be done by releasing and replaying any of the notes contained in the chord. It can be more intuitive but does not allow for as much detail and realism when you play the chords.

The UP/DOWN Trigger controls if the automatic strum up and down is engaged. If set to manual, C4 is the strum down and D4 is the strum up. If set to Auto, C4 acts as a strum up or down depending on the position in the current bar. The Let Ring controls whether the chord stops when you release your right hand. This can be handy for fast/complex chord progressions.

The Mixed Mode is as its name implies a mix of the solo mode and the chord mode. If you play chords in a regular melody with one note at a time or two as a legato, it will play single notes or hammers and slides as selected in the solo mode If you play 3 notes or more or play two notes simultaneously, the chord mode is engaged and it will strum that chord just like in the piano mode. The Accent, Strum Speed, and Strum Center are all linked to the chord simulation. We extracted the data from hundreds of real guitar strums and allow you to control these parameters.

Accent controls how hard it is to trigger all of the 6 strings with velocity, the min strum number defines the minimum number of strings that are played in a strum at the lowest velocity.
Strum Speed controls the overall time needed to strum all 6 strings.
Strum Center is basically your right-hand vertical position over the strings, if it is at the top (position 1), then you will hear more of the first and second string and if you are at the bottom (position 6), you will hear more of the last two strings.

The Clean Play controls how dirty and precise you want the playing to be, if set at 6, the engine will always use clean samples, but if at 1, it will mostly use samples of “not pressed well” notes. The Chord Hammers is probably what makes the library the most realistic. It allows you to go from one chord to another and play the hammer-ons and pull-offs between them.

We used it a lot in the finger-picking demo. The Capo simulates a real capo, you can choose to make it transpose the chords or not, transposing can be useful if you want to play chords high on the neck. The Transpose is related to the Capo function. And it will decide if the Capo actually transposes the chord or not.

For example, an E chord with the Capo at fret one will sound like an F chord without the transpose function, if you enable it, the E chord will stay an E chord, but the engine will look for an alternate position to play it starting from the capo. The Auto Voicing feature enables the different guitar chord positions depending on the octave in which it is played. You can disable it if you play on a small controller or just want to play the first position.

Realistic patterns

The pattern’s mode is very similar to the chord mode, the chord recognition engine works the same way, but this time the triggers are not simple strums anymore, they are a set of patterns that you can loop, adapt to the tempo or the metrics, change the velocity in real-time using a controller, synch to your host, add groove to. You can choose from a large selection of patterns or create your using the pattern maker and assign them to each trigger to create a full song in a few clicks.

You can assign 13 different patterns of your choice to 13 different notes. Clicking on one of the keys on the interface will launch the pattern, triggering another one will stop the first one and start the new one. You can also trigger the patterns from the keyboard using the notes from C4 to C5. By default releasing the keys will stop the pattern. The velocity at which you press the key will determine the velocity of the whole pattern.

The Parameters can change a few aspects of the current pattern

Let Ring determines if the “off” events contained in the pattern will be played or not,
Length controls the length of the pattern, it can be anything from 1 to the length of the pattern and can be adapted the metrics of your song (even odd numbers),
The speed you can play the pattern at different speeds, half or double speed for example,
Link makes the let ring, length, and speed values of the patterns global for all patterns or only for the selected pattern. If it is on, then changing the let ring will affect all of the patterns, and when it is off, only the currently selected one,
Average Vel is the center velocity or the pattern, it starts at the velocity of the trigger you played, but can also be modulated over time using a midi controller. By default, we use the modulation wheel to control it,
Deviation is the difference between the lowest and the highest velocity of the MIDI events composing the pattern, it can also be modulated in real-time,
Shuffle adds groove to the pattern, we created a complex algorithm to allow for shuffle without quantizing, so you keep the realism and are still able to add some groove,
Latch determines if releasing a key will stop the pattern or not, when turned on, pressing a key will launch the pattern and you will need to press it again to stop it,
Bar Sync will sync your playing to the bars, meaning that whenever you play a key, the pattern will not start until the next bar starts, this is useful only when working in a sequencer,

Pattern Maker

Creating realistic guitar patterns has never been easier. You can create strumming, picking, or finger-picking patterns in seconds and even make them of infinite size. We even made the sharing of these patterns easy, just save them and send them to other users, and the database can only grow!

The Pattern Maker is an improved step sequencer made especially for guitar strumming. Each fret represents a quarter note and you can either add a whole chord or just a single string (if the link icon is unselected). If multiple events are in the same step, they will be strummed following our strum engine parameters.

You can control a few aspects of the pattern you create

The velocity of each event can be changed by selecting an event and dragging the mouse over it, if you set the velocity to 0, the event will be removed,
The up and down arrows at the top control the way you strum the chord (up or down),
You can mute a string completely by clicking on the speaker icon at the left of the sequencer,
You can play a muted chord by pressing the mute button on each step, The Stop buttons allow you to release a chord at the end of each step,
The Strum Speed controls the speed of the strumming of the pattern,
The Shuffle and Humanize knobs are general parameters and control the same thing as the ones present on the patterns panel,

You can create as many pattern pages as you want, giving you access to many variations by just pressing one key. Of course, you can copy the content of one page to another, reset a page or the whole pattern. You can also import the factory presets and modify them as you want, save your patterns, reload them and preview or add them to the pattern list. Once you click the “Add to pattern” button, the pattern you created will appear at the bottom of the patterns list in the pattern panel.

Song Builder

The song builder panel is the feature that will let you compose songs extremely quickly. Sometimes playing a series of chords can be complicated, especially if you are not an advanced keyboardist. The song builder allows you to decide which chord will be triggered when selecting only one note. For example, pressing only the C will be recognized as a C Major. You can repeat the operation for the whole 12 notes of the octave and this way construct your songs and play them easily.

We included a selection of presets to give song ideas, chord progressions, modes or chord types. Combine this with the patterns and pressing two keys at the same time is enough to play a song.

The song builder is available in chord mode or in patterns mode.
You can use set all chords using the first menu, it will put the same chord on all of the 12 notes.
The song presets are a set of predefined songs with the right chord progressions, you can change the root if needed and the progression is detailed under song info.
The mode presets is a list of most music modes and their corresponding chord progressions, you can change the root of needed.
You can now change the type of each chord along with its root. So it makes it easy to play songs that have different chords for the same root note.
When selecting one of the presets, some keys will appear in red and the corresponding chord will be a “5th”.
This means that there is no “valid” chord for this note in the selected song or scale. You can of course set each chord manually by clicking on them and selecting its kind, even starting from a preset.

Solo mode, automatic hand position

The solo mode is very simple and is suited to playing melodies. It uses a smart hand position system that decides for you where a real guitarist would put his hand and which string he would play. A piano only has one middle C for example, but a guitar offers a few different options and our script will decide it for you. You can of course deactivate it and use only the first-hand position if you want.
The Sunbird features our powerful legato engine that will automatically trigger legato, hammer-ons, pull-offs, or slides and the legato distance will define the maximum interval in which the legato will apply.

You also have access to key switches to play palm mutes, harmonics (flageolets), or even percussion sounds and control the legato engine.

The legato mode controls which sample will be triggered when you play legato notes on your keyboard, for example, press C2 and then C#2 without depressing C2.

Hammer , hammer-on, and pull-off samples will be triggered.
Slide will trigger slide-up and slide-down samples.
Legato will trigger regular sustain samples but will still stop the first played note.
Off deactivates the legato function.

The legato distance controls the interval in which the legato function is active. The slide speed is active only when the Slide legato mode is selected and controls the speed of the slide. The string selection enables the automatic string and fret selection or constrains the hand to the first position or the position of your choice.

Here is a list of the key switches

F0 will enable the Palm mutes when you press it and disable it when it is depressed. You can also toggle between palm and regular notes by pressing F#5.
F#0 enabled the Slide legato mode.
G0 enabled the simple legato mode.
G#0 completely disables the legato mode.
A0 plays fret noises.
A#0 plays a right-hand hit on the strings.
B0 to D1 play the percussion sounds.
D#1 enables the harmonics (flageolets) sounds, if you press it and play, it will trigger only harmonics and release them when you release the D#1 note.

Preferences/Microphone mixing

The Sunbird library comes with 3 microphone perspectives, and a stereo pair of DPA, and you can adjust the volume of each of them. Every aspect of the library can be tweaked, the release, fret and pre-notes volumes, as well as the midi response of your keyboard. A three-band EQ and a reverb module can be adjusted from the preferences panel, and you can enable and load/unload the pickup or the microphones.

The Preferences panel / Microphones mixing panel can be opened by clicking at the bottom of the interface, in there you have access to all of the different parameters of the library.
The Release Vol controls the volume of the release samples,
The Auto Fret noise vol controls the volume of the automatically generated fret noises, they happen when the left hand moves in solo mode and when you change chord in the chord mode,
The Pre Notes Vol controls the volume of the soft noises your left-hand makes when selecting a chord in chord/Guitar mode,
The Dynamics controls the volume of the lowest velocity,
The Velocity Curve controls the volume response of the library to velocity,
The Midi Sensitivity is some kind of a midi remapper, and it controls how hard you need to press a key for it to trigger a certain velocity,
The Reverb Amount and Room size are two simple controls for the UVI SparkVerb, and you can tweak it a little more using the FX section in UVI Workstation.
You can choose which playing style (picking or finger picking) will be used for every trigger mode.
The Palm Length controls how long the palm mutes last,
The EQ is a simple 3-band EQ,
You can load/unload/enable/disable/and change the volume of each microphone perspective.
You can also set the whole output as mono or stereo.

MIDI guitar

If you own a MIDI guitar and want to expand its sound capabilities, then the MIDI mode is for you, all you need to do is select the 7 different MIDI chanels your guitar outputs and you are ready to play.

The MIDI guitar mode allows you to play the Sunbird using a midi guitar controller, all you need to do is select the 6 midi channels. You maybe have to use the set patch as omni to allow the plugin to respond to all midi channels.

Features

8.16Gb uncompressed, 1.53Gb compressed in lossless FLAC format, around 13300 samples.
Strumming engine (features chord recognition and a smart strumming technique to produce guitar-like chords) and complete control of all its parameters.
67 realistic patterns for easy strumming, picking, and advanced playing styles.
Integrated song builder to create songs within minutes and very easily
Integrated pattern builder to automatically strum your chords
Legato script to play natural hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides.
Natural hand placement simulation.
39 different samples per fret and all 21 frets were sampled for each string.
Multi velocity Hammer on, pull off, slides up, slides down, mutes, ghost notes, pre notes.
Included sparkVerb©.
Control over the two microphone perspectives and pickup volumes.
Advanced bend control.
Advanced UVI scripting gives you access to a simple yet powerful interface and advanced features. and more…

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