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The Embertone Shire Whistle Could Be a Historic Advance for iOS Instruments

edited February 2018 in General App Discussion

I realize that there has already been a post on the introduction of Shire Whistle.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/24748/embertone-shire-whistle-au

But I wanted to make this specific point.

I have never previously seen an articulation changing system that was anywhere near the equal of what you find on Kontakt instruments.Before this.

Look at this page:

You can assign your CC of choice to legato, slide, poly, short, volume, vibrato. If you a controller with enough knobs or buttons, that is an articulation switching system that rivals many Kontakt instruments. (Not behemoths like Chris Hein's, but many)

You can set up a velocity threshold for "ornaments" If you happened to have a breath controller, that would be amazing.

You can choose whether you want round robins or not. If you don't know what that is, it means that when you play the same note repeatedly it will play a different sample, avoiding the machine-gun effect. I don't know why you would want to turn off round robins, but it might make the app less demanding on your device.

Embertone's Jubal Flute previously let you turn on and off legato with a cc controller (it defaults to cc2 for breath control) Embertone's Sensual Sax has a switch for legato, sustain and staccato. I don't have it, so I don't know if it is remotely switchable.

Whether or not you want this particular instrument, Embertone is blazing a new trail with Shire Whistle, opening the door to more iOS instruments that rival the realism and musicality of Kontakt instruments.

Comments

  • @Reid said:
    I realize that there has already been a post on the introduction of Shire Whistle.
    https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/24748/embertone-shire-whistle-au

    But I wanted to make this specific point.

    I have never previously seen an articulation changing system that was anywhere near the equal of what you find on Kontakt instruments.Before this.

    Look at this page:

    You can assign your CC of choice to legato, slide, poly, short, volume, vibrato. If you a controller with enough knobs or buttons, that is an articulation switching system that rivals many Kontakt instruments. (Not behemoths like Chris Hein's, but many)

    You can set up a velocity threshold for "ornaments" If you happened to have a breath controller, that would be amazing.

    You can choose whether you want round robins or not. If you don't know what that is, it means that when you play the same note repeatedly it will play a different sample, avoiding the machine-gun effect. I don't know why you would want to turn off round robins, but it might make the app less demanding on your device.

    Embertone's Jubal Flute previously let you turn on and off legato with a cc controller (it defaults to cc2 for breath control) Embertone's Sensual Sax has a switch for legato, sustain and staccato. I don't have it, so I don't know if it is remotely switchable.

    Whether or not you want this particular instrument, Embertone is blazing a new trail with Shire Whistle, opening the door to more iOS instruments that rival the realism and musicality of Kontakt instruments.

    Yes! It’s revolutionary, but a shire whistle is just not that usable for most productions. We really need their Josh Bell violin! I’ve been writing them and asking

  • I played around with this last night and i think it sounds wonderful, even tho it is very limited in what it can do. I found putting mod wheel to reverb really nice, but wished i could put mod wheel to control more than one parameter on it, very light vibrato, reverb amount and size would be really nice. And ofc being able to adjust the range would be pretty essential.

  • @ToMess said:
    I played around with this last night and i think it sounds wonderful, even tho it is very limited in what it can do. I found putting mod wheel to reverb really nice, but wished i could put mod wheel to control more than one parameter on it, very light vibrato, reverb amount and size would be really nice. And ofc being able to adjust the range would be pretty essential.

    My point is that is not limited--just the opposite, it is possibly the most fully featured iOS instrument ever. But you need to have a controller with knob or buttons to make full use of its features.

    If your keyboard doesn't have them, all you need is a powered hub and something like an early nanoKontrol which can be gotten used for very cheap.

  • @Reid said:
    But you need to have a controller with knob or buttons to make full use of its features.

    That lessens my interest. I would be very pleased to buy more apps like Sensual Sax. Especially violin app. But a whistle, no matter how good, isn’t something I need.

  • edited February 2018

    @ion677 said:

    Yes! It’s revolutionary, but a shire whistle is just not that usable for most productions. We really need their Josh Bell violin! I’ve been writing them and asking

    The Joshua Bell is almost 9 GB in size and requires 4GB Ram--but 6 GB is recommended. This would likely strain the resources of the fastest iPad Pro yet available, limiting the market.. But that's a moot point because it also can only run within Kontakt so you probably would need to have Kontakt for iOS before this could be available.

    But if iPads keep getting more powerful and adding RAM, the idea of iOS Kontakt becomes a possibility. Or maybe they could figure out how to offer the JB without it (but again, why do it if the market is so limited) Or the free UVI player, which would allow the Bohemian Violin, which many composers who have both prefer to the Joshua Bell.

    But the Joshua Bell is indeed amazing. If I didn't already own the Bohemian Violin and Cello I would be very interested. Here's what it can do:

  • Good point and while just a whistle is limited, let’s hope thus sets a more general trend.

  • @Reid said:

    @ion677 said:

    Yes! It’s revolutionary, but a shire whistle is just not that usable for most productions. We really need their Josh Bell violin! I’ve been writing them and asking

    The Joshua Bell is almost 9 GB in size and requires 4GB Ram--but 6 GB is recommended. This would likely strain the resources of the fastest iPad Pro yet available, limiting the market.. But that's a moot point because it also can only run within Kontakt so you probably would need to have Kontakt for iOS before this could be available.

    But if iPads keep getting more powerful and adding RAM, the idea of iOS Kontakt becomes a possibility. Or maybe they could figure out how to offer the JB without it (but again, why do it if the market is so limited) Or the free UVI player, which would allow the Bohemian Violin, which many composers who have both prefer to the Joshua Bell.

    But the Joshua Bell is indeed amazing. If I didn't already own the Bohemian Violin and Cello I would be very interested. Here's what it can do:

    They would need to trim it down and dumb it down, for sure. But look at what neo soul keys studio did. 21 gb library on desktop, compressed to 4 gb for iOS version. It’s almost the same quality as the desktop version!

  • @ion677 said:

    @Reid said:

    @ion677 said:

    Yes! It’s revolutionary, but a shire whistle is just not that usable for most productions. We really need their Josh Bell violin! I’ve been writing them and asking

    The Joshua Bell is almost 9 GB in size and requires 4GB Ram--but 6 GB is recommended. This would likely strain the resources of the fastest iPad Pro yet available, limiting the market.. But that's a moot point because it also can only run within Kontakt so you probably would need to have Kontakt for iOS before this could be available.

    But if iPads keep getting more powerful and adding RAM, the idea of iOS Kontakt becomes a possibility. Or maybe they could figure out how to offer the JB without it (but again, why do it if the market is so limited) Or the free UVI player, which would allow the Bohemian Violin, which many composers who have both prefer to the Joshua Bell.

    But the Joshua Bell is indeed amazing. If I didn't already own the Bohemian Violin and Cello I would be very interested. Here's what it can do:

    They would need to trim it down and dumb it down, for sure. But look at what neo soul keys studio did. 21 gb library on desktop, compressed to 4 gb for iOS version. It’s almost the same quality as the desktop version!

    Yeah the major workstation keyboard makers (Roland, Yamaha, Korg etc) have been squeezing great sound sets into small memory spaces for years. It’s quite possible. You find that desktop sample sets went the other way due to large hard drives and the fact that large sample sets look good to some buyers.

  • It’s actually a flute, not a whistle like a referee would use, so more useful than a whistle. :)
    With that being said, I play some Irish Tin Whistle and there aren’t a whole lot of articulation to do on it that couldn’t be handled by aftertouch type controls. I’m not sure you can articulate reverb time or amount on the real thing either, but I am only a novice at best.
    This is definitely an interesting development from this dev though. I would also like to see it applied to a little more sophisticated instrument, but maybe they went simple for the first go at implementing these controls. I hope they have more lined up for release in their next instrument.

  • edited February 2018

    @ion677 said:

    But look at what neo soul keys studio did. 21 gb library on desktop, compressed to 4 gb for iOS version. It’s almost the same quality as the desktop version!
    >

    Yup. If there is a will there is a way. I’d buy that Joshua Bell for a tenner.

  • not a whistle or a violin, but you can have a lot of fun with a Casio dgital horn
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_digital_horn
    DH100 is the silver model, DH200 is black, more rare but otherwise identical.
    For synth control use a midi-mapping app to set channel aftertouch to various CCs with different scalings.
    Regardless of simplicity it's a very(!) responsive controller, the split between velocity and aftertouch (initial/late blowing pressure) is quite a smart solution.
    It's battery powered and does it's own sounds with a built in speaker or cans, I guess about 50-100 bucks currently.

  • @ion677 said:

    They would need to trim it down and dumb it down, for sure. But look at what neo soul keys studio did. 21 gb library on desktop, compressed to 4 GB for iOS version. It’s almost the same quality as the desktop version!

    If anybody can do it, it would be Embertone, if they wanted to. The Joshua Bell is 9 GB and Virharmonic's Bohemian Violin is 24 GB. So they are not trying to impress anybody with how many GB they use. And they are one of the few virtual instrument companies experimenting with the iOS market.

    Still, I don't know if it makes sense for them to take Joshua Bell, their most successful instrument thus far, and make it available at a huge discount. It's very well priced at $199 and I bet they are selling a lot of them at full price.

    But to keep repeating what I said, it's not about everybody needing to rush out and buy a shire whistle. It's a pretty niche instrument. I'm just saying it's a technical milestone. And if Embertone can do this, maybe they will come out with their excellent Friedlander Violin, Blakus Cello, and Leonid Bass for iOS. These instruments would blow away all current iOS solo string instruments.

  • The oriental Garegaband instruments with my keytar controller sound pretty convincent for the platform we are working (even I can’t control each parameter due Apple crappy midi support). Also Roli has good instruments but again the control relies on advanced controllers.
    IMHO the weak point is controllers and with the recent Midi MPE support it’s a matter of time more instruments with better sintesis (more than multisample layers) will emerge and obviously will be less memory disk dependent (and more cpu hunger).
    As fact Sensual Sax is amazing for playing legato mode but not fun from keytar legato controller. It’s a clever solution to actual (and old) technology which probably should evolve when MPE become the standard... over 2050 I suspect. :bawling:

    Ps: I will end buying any flute or whistle instruments due for my reggae dub or folkie experimental music...

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