Orange Tree 2019 Group Buy - up to 60% off

[Guy Rowland]

They only have one big sale a year, and I missed it last time - boo.

How It Works

In the group buy, the more people that join the sale, the greater the discount becomes, up to 60% OFF at the highest discount tier. Starting today, all you have to do is add a library to your group buy order. You can modify your order at any time during the group buy.

The sale applies to all our sample libraries, including bundles and bundle upgrades. In fact, if you've saved up any of those tasty Orange Slices points, they can be combined with the group buy discount for even greater savings.

The group buy signup period lasts until July 22nd (at 8 AM PDT), after which you have until August 12th (at 8 AM PDT) to complete your purchase. Of course, if we reach the highest tier before then, you'll be able to check out early.

You can change your group buy order at any point, even after the group buy has ended (as long you joined the group buy by committing to purchase at least one library). So even if you're not sure which exact library or libraries you want, be sure to add something to your group buy order to save your spot in the sale.

Once the group buy has ended (or if we reach the highest discount tier before then) you'll receive an email with a link to complete your group buy purchase. This link is also accessible from the group buy page in your account.

Contests & Giveaways

During the sale, we'll have contests and giveaways. We also have a special freebie that will get unlocked once we reach the 1,000 participants tier, and two other smaller freebies at the 500 and 1500 tiers. Once available, the download links for each freebie will be on this page.

Last year's group buy ended with nearly 2,000 participants. If we all work together, reaching the highest discount tier will be a cinch. Don't miss out on this opportunity to get incredible savings on all our libraries!

https://www.orangetreesamples.com/group-buy

I've got my eye on the Nylon guitar as I still don't own a real one and most of my sampled ones are so-so.

[playz123]

I'm in. Signed on for the two new basses. Great response to the sale so far.

[Guy Rowland]

50% off now, which means we all get a freebie - Simple Steel. Yes, its the age of the lapsteel it seems - I'll report back on it when I've had a play.

[Lawrence]

Did you get an email to that effect, Guy?

[Guy Rowland]

Did you get an email to that effect, Guy?

No, but its there in my Orange Tree group buy thing. Slightly embarrassingly, I also found in my download section the full SLIDE Lap Steel which I, um, genuinely can't remember buying. I'll try and do a quick comparison report tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's the intro from the manual:

Simple Steel is by no means an exhaustive reproduction of the full capabilities of a pedal steel, but rather its goal is to provide you a quick and easy way to create convincing pedal steel tracks without having to understand the inner workings of the pedals and knee levers. That being said, we still wanted give you the feeling of playing a real pedal steel by having your left hand control the key of the chords (which is essentially moving the tone bar on a pedal steel), while your right hand plays the chord itself. There are more details on how the playability works later in this guide. We sampled the pedal steel in the Nashville E9 tuning, with a single grip (the 4th, 5th, and 6th strings). The term "grip" refers to the group of strings a steel player plucks to get different inversions of the root chord, or to add extensions to the voicing. We didn't sample every grip possible of course, but focused on one we felt was in a good range for typical chordal "pads" or single notes to harmonize with other instruments.

[Lawrence]

The Lap Steel is quite good, actually.

[Guy Rowland]

First and before I forget, there is also another unlocked freebie for those in the Group Buy, which is a Kontakt multiscript to convert keyswitches to midi CC commands. I haven't tried this since I do all that in Cubase.

Simple Steel (the freebie). This sounds great, and there's instant gratification at overlapping notes (legato style) to play lovely distinctive lapsteel sounding slidey chords. However, I did find the layout borderline impenetrable. At the lowest rung there is a keyswitch cluster that sets chords, multiple or single strings (so far so good). Next comes the keyswitches for the root note - again, this is ok in theory. However, in tandem with the main keys, it feels like the old rubbing your tummy and patting your head trick. The main keys offer diatonic chord variations as follows:

I chord (major)
ii chord (minor)
iii chord (minor)
IV chord (major)
V chord (major)
iv chord (minor)

...and its between these 6 variations you get the whole slidey thing. This means you can't slide between root notes (which I understand is how a lapsteel actually works), but changing chords between the right major and minor combinations that you want becomes positively dizzying.

So great tone, sounds authentic but I wouldn't want to use it in a real piece because I just know it would take a very long time to get it to do what I wanted it to do.

Lap Steel Guitar is a totally separate product, and actually doesn't sound as nice on a first play as Simple Steel imo. Unlike Simple Steel, which triggers slides using the legato overlaps when playing notes, this uses the pitch wheel of your controller. You set the conditions for how the bends behave using the GUI controls, such as how low / high the interval is. Where it becomes more tricksy is you can set up a particular scale and type of chord it slides from, and here again I find it not intuitive - in fact I couldn't make any apparent sense of how those chords related to what I was actually hearing. The manual says "This way you can simulate how lap steel players angle the slide in order to bend notes within diatonic scale tones" - terrific, in practice its probably the reason why I forgot I bought it in the first place. That said, if set to its most basic conditions I think it would be pretty easy to get simple parts out of it.

For me both products are wanting, OT in these cases haven't found an effective way to traslate those distinctive tones from a multi stringed instrument to a keyboard. I'd have thought the most logical way would be to have your main notes trigger chords, and the keyswitch cluster choose what types of chords they are (or single notes). Legato would then trigger the slide.

[Lawrence]

Have you tried the ISW Pedal Steel yet?

[Guy Rowland]

Have you tried the ISW Pedal Steel yet?

No - how is that conceptually as compared with the 2 above?

The thing is - I think the last time I used any pedal steel was 8 years ago or thereabouts, and that was for a cue that ended up not being used. It's one of those instruments I need to have just in case, but its an extreme rarity for me, so I figure I can pretty much bodge it with what I have with some grumbling and wailing on my part. If ISW gets to super-bargain level though I'll definitely be ineterested.

[Lawrence]

To my ears, the harmonization schemes make for a more realistic result, without a lot of screwing around. However, I love the Pedal Steel as an instrument and so am probably looking at it through a different lens.

[Guy Rowland]

Whoop whoop, 60% has been reached. On a whim I added Jaco Bass (I don't really have a good playable fretless and I sure as hell can't play a real one) and MesaWinds. Stupidly cheap, especially when combined with these Orange Slices that I discovered I had.

[Guy Rowland]

Very brief feedback on the ones I bought yesterday:

Evolution Nylon. This plays very nicely. Tonally I find it on the bright side, but some of the presets take the edge off, the appropriately named "Full Bodied Nylon" is closest to my taste. Love the way of customising articulations. I find the pattern / strumming engine not quite as intuitive as the NI series, but pretty flexible. I'm not sure this is my desert island virtual nylon (do you think I'd need one on a desert island?) but its very serviceable and easily better than the ones I have already.

Jaco Bass. An older library, but I see what it has its stellar reputation. Easily possible to get a great fretless performance out of it, and the sound has pleasing grit if required.

MesaWinds. I'd love to see OT update this at some point, as its very crude programming-wise compared to the stuff of the past few years. That said, once I found all the hidden controls and keyswitches, terrific sound.