Red Room Audio / Traveler Series

[Piet De Ridder]

Red Room Audio's new Traveler Series is "an ongoing collection of boutique sample libraries featuring traditional world instruments faithfully recorded on location from destinations around the globe. Traveler Series libraries focus on delivering a genuine purity that can only be captured where the instrument and musical style originated, preserving its true character and history. The series launches with 3 separate instruments - Celtic Fiddle, Bluegrass Fiddle and Bodhrans & Bones."

CELTIC FIDDLE
Deep-sampled Celtic fiddle library for Kontakt recorded in Dublin, Ireland with award-winning fiddler Niall Murphy. 20 standard articulations and traditional Celtic ornaments, plus 360 authentic phrases & FX. 4 performance modes, customizable double stops, adjustable bow attacks and rebowing options & more. Features TACT articulation control system plus an 8-slot FX rack.

BLUEGRASS FIDDLE
Deep-sampled Bluegrass fiddle library for Kontakt recorded in Kentucky, USA with Grammy nominated multi-instrumentalist Ronnie Stewart. Over 25 standard articulations and traditional Bluegrass ornaments, plus 400 authentic phrases & FX. 4 performance modes, customizable double stops, adjustable bow attacks and rebowing options & more. Also features TACT articulation control system and an 8-slot FX rack.

BODHRANS & BONES
6 unique traditional Irish bodhrans recorded in Dublin, Ireland with Marcin Oracki, lead drum builder at Mighty Bodhrans. Each sampled with 5 stick types at a variety of locations on the drum, with sound design controls, multiple dynamic layers and round robins. Change pitch and dampen realistically on the fly. Bones patch features 2 sets of bones with hits and rolls. Library also features our robust 8-slot FX rack.









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[Guy Rowland]

As someone who's often said fiddles are about the hardest things to sample besides the human voice, this looks very impressive. Only watched the Celtic one so far, and it's a storming effort. All the way though I was waiting to see if they'd figured out a way to do the distinctive playing one string with a second as an open note, and they haven't, but that's the very first thing you hear when they played a phrase. Those phrases by the way sound terrific and with the best will in the world about 1000% better than the pure samples, but what do you expect from a sampled fiddle? I'd imagine judicious use of each could be very convincing and allow for a certain amount of genuine composition.

The bluegrass demo sounds terrific, will watch that video later.

The programming looks very slick. And was pretty staggered at the prices - I was thinking $199 each having watched the video, but it's $89 for the fiddles and $49 for the Bodhran and Bones.

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) this looks very impressive. (...)

It is. One third into the first video and I jigged over to the Red Room Audio website to buy the lot. (The Bodhrans are free if you purchase the two Fiddles.)
Fast download, simple installation (no serial, no activation required in Native Access) … I don’t think it took more than five minutes between pressing ‘Purchase’ and starting to play the first notes with the Celtic Fiddle. And it's been a great pleasure ever since.

Amazingly well thought-out, these instruments. They are no doubt pretty complex things under the hood, but they're so cleverly designed and so well programmed that they’re very intuitive to play and quickly have you thinking: this is how it should be. (A thought that's never crossed my mind and still doesn't when trying something with the Boulder Fiddle.)

There's just one tiny-tiny-tiny thing that puzzles me a bit: neither of these Fiddles respond to pitch bend. Understandable from one angle perhaps, in that the instruments include several articulations that have performed bends, but even so, it seems like an odd omission to have no pitch bend for instruments that speak a language in which bended pitch is so big a part of the vocabulary. Anyway, no biggie and solvable (since the patches aren't locked).

It's too early to write much more on these libraries — only had them for an hour or so — but let me quickly add that the selection of parameters on the GUI (not just of the Fiddles but of the outstanding Bodhrans as well) betray a musical intelligence on the part of the developer that I've rarely encountered.

If my Traveler experience continues the way it has started, this trio gets full marks from me.

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[EvilDragon]

Thanks for the kind words, Piet! I only worked on Bodhrans, but your thoughts are very much appreciated. Davide Magni scripted the fiddles, and I'm sure he'll read your thoughts as well.

Regarding the pitch bend, I hear ya. It's really not hard to add it, though. In a jiffy, for anyone who can be bothered (I know you can do this for yourself since you're also a tweaker by nature):

1. Open instrument edit mode
2. Make sure Edit All Groups is enabled
3. Right-click the Tune knob in the Source module (next to sampler mode dropdown) and choose External Sources->pitch bend

That's it! You get 2 semitones pitch bend by default, and you might want to reduce the LAG parameter to something like 100-150, just so that you don't get a too sluggish pitch bend.

[magneto538]

Hi Piet,

Thanks for your kind words! We've put an amazing amount of effort into making the fiddles sound and play just great.
I'm glad to hear you're having such a good time with these instruments and we're looking forward to hearing some wonderful pieces of music made with these!

[chrisr]

These look absolutely fantastic, well done! I'll pick them up only when I actually need them because I'm juggling so many things right now - but I'm sure to need the bluegrass fiddle at some point in the coming months for sure.

[Red Room Audio]

All the way though I was waiting to see if they'd figured out a way to do the distinctive playing one string with a second as an open note, and they haven't, but that's the very first thing you hear when they played a phrase.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Guy, I believe you're referring to Unisons and you're right, it's a very common technique in fiddle playing. And they're in there! You can set both fiddles' 4 open string notes (G, D, A and E) to trigger one of three options: (1) open string samples, (2) fingered versions (fingered on the next lowest string at 7th position, except for the low G of course since there isn't a lower string) or (3) Unisons, which plays both the open and fingered samples together to create a Unison, which has a slight chorusing effect. To take this a step further, the Bluegrass has sampled Bend Up Unisons in the Phrases patch and the Celtic has an ornament called a Scrunch that's basically a Bend Up Unison, available in 2 speeds. So lots of options for Unisons in both fiddles. Hope this helps!

[wst3]

I am intrigued - I've spent way too much time listening to the demos for all three libraries. The intro offer is tempting, especially since I suspect there is a bit of time required to learn to use the libraries, so I am conflicted. I have to stretch reality a bit to come up with a known project that would benefit<G>!

I probably will... I'd love to hear a couple demos from users.

[Guy Rowland]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Guy, I believe you're referring to Unisons and you're right, it's a very common technique in fiddle playing. And they're in there! You can set both fiddles' 4 open string notes (G, D, A and E) to trigger one of three options: (1) open string samples, (2) fingered versions (fingered on the next lowest string at 7th position, except for the low G of course since there isn't a lower string) or (3) Unisons, which plays both the open and fingered samples together to create a Unison, which has a slight chorusing effect. To take this a step further, the Bluegrass has sampled Bend Up Unisons in the Phrases patch and the Celtic has an ornament called a Scrunch that's basically a Bend Up Unison, available in 2 speeds. So lots of options for Unisons in both fiddles. Hope this helps!

I saw that in the video, Red (Hi! Can I call you Red?), but if I understood correctly its not quite what I meant. I was referring to when the player plays both an open string as a drone, and a 2nd fingered string simultaneously. That feature you mentioned lets you chose between open or fingered notes as a whole, and the unison plays both together but for a chorusing effect.... don't think there's a way to do that distinctive combined style? As I say I heard it immediately in the first phrase played in the video, but its hard to translate such an idiomatic string style to a keyboard.

(I'm not a fiddle player, so maybe I have all this wrong, its just how its always sounded to me).

Likely the best way would be to do it right now would be to do one pass as the fingered note, then copy the midi to a 2nd track, blitz all the ornamental keysswitches, set all the note pitches to the one drone, set that instrument to open string in the UI, and then play both together (?)

But maybe in a version 1.1 (this seems a churlish request given how good it already clearly is), is to have an added feature to the double stop intervals, where you can set one of the three available open strings as a drone, rather than tracking the pitch of the main note. It would also have to be clever enough to ignore the ornaments but track the bow direction and changes, but that might be a given already in open string mode, I'm not sure.

(I could be wrong but fiddle players don't usually drone with the top E do they? Hence 3 strings not 4? Again could very well by my fiddle-di-ignorance asking).

[Red Room Audio]

Ah, yes. So just to be clear, sustaining an open string while playing a melody, ornaments, etc on an adjacent, right? Great suggestion, thanks, and doesn't sound too difficult to implement. I'm going to pass that along to the team for v1.1!

[Guy Rowland]

Yes! Amazing, Red.

[Guy Rowland]

With just a couple of days left on the introductory promo - closes midnight on the 27th - I thought I better get on with this. What a huge amount of fun it is, plays incredibly well out of the box.

Figured I needed to get my hands dirty with it though and try it on a piece using no phrases to see how it is in action. Truthfully it was more fiddly (excuse the brilliant pun) than I first thought, getting the keyswitches just right takes a while. The main legato patch plays so well on fluid lines that it's deceptive. I ended up using very few of the ornaments, lovely though they are, but a lot of that is because the piece itself was so damn fast and I was probably writing like a keyboard player, frankly - probably I should have played a line with the instrument with the ornaments in place from the word go rather than proscribe a tune. Anyway, one thing led to another and I got carried away, went the full Titanic on the thing. Its the Celtic Fiddle, Bodhrans and Bones, and most of the other instruments are ProjectSAM. At least its only 30 seconds long. https://www.dropbox.com/s/oftdtkgy8ko8m ... D.wav?dl=0

It is of course not perfect, and doubtless I could have done better with the shiny new thing but imo its immeasurably better than anything I currently have, and think I almost get away with it. Given how hard fiddles are to sample, that's quite something - very happy with the purchase.

[Lawrence]

I like it, Guy!

Are you saying that the piece is too fast for the included ornaments?

[wst3]

I also enjoyed your track, and that may well be enough to push me over the edge...

[Guy Rowland]

Thanks you two!

Are you saying that the piece is too fast for the included ornaments?

Speed is part of it, but it's more the specific melody I wrote I think. The cut articulation, for example, is really quick but I so rarely ever held a single note long enough to make it really effective. Then the twiddly turns tended to go in the wrong direction, that sort of thing. But I guess that was my exercise, I was trying not to write to the samples just to see how it performed. Writing to the samples you'd likely get something quite considerably more convincing, more so again if you drop in the odd phrase, beginning or ending I think.

Most of that piece is one of the main legato patches, usually the default, but sometimes a variation with more attack. And its really smooth and performs really well at speed by and large, so its not the case that it can't do fast at all - it sure can.

The other day when template building I gave EW's Gypsy another go, which I remember for a long time was held in pretty high regard, stereo image madness notwithstanding. But, damn. These two fiddles vs Gypsy:

[Lawrence]

Gypsy violin has the 8Dio disease-it bounces around the stereo field.