The Sound Board

Matt just released his teaser trailer and damn this sounds good again!

During the introduction he has a Nordic Noir week: http://www.theunfinished.co.uk/nordic/

The teaser was really nice!

Dammit this might tip me over the edge for Zebra. Congrats to Matt - designing the synth sounds for The Bridge is peak Scandi.

Oh you are not yet on Zebra Guy?

There's 2 walkthroughs available if you guys haven't seen them.

Jaap wrote: ↑Feb 12, 2018 7:31 am Oh you are not yet on Zebra Guy?

No, honestly I've never felt I need it. Really I still don't, but this is just a bit too juicy a proposition.

I saw mention somewhere of this being for Zebra and Dark Zebra - do you need both or something?

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Feb 12, 2018 9:27 am

Jaap wrote: ↑Feb 12, 2018 7:31 am Oh you are not yet on Zebra Guy?

No, honestly I've never felt I need it. Really I still don't, but this is just a bit too juicy a proposition.

I saw mention somewhere of this being for Zebra and Dark Zebra - do you need both or something?

No not persé as he often sells them seperately, but on the other hand, if you go for Zebra 2, then The Dark Zebra is worth it and also will make you eligible for a free update when Zebra 3 comes out

That is indeed a lovely teaser.
I think most of it is in the composition and the arrangement / sound design though?
I reckon you could get reasonably close to that with Omnisphere, the $2 Spitfire Felt Piano, and some FX ? (might take a little longer)

You doubtless could Paul, but it’s the thought of a huge body of patches (if that’s a thing) that is Scandi Noir that tempts me. The Dark Zebra never floated my boat cos it felt like yesterday’s news, but this feels much more me. Just been reading up, and i see there are Diva filters in Zebra HZ, which in turn you get with Dark Zebra, and as Jaap said you then also get a free upgrade to the 5-years-and-still-waiting Zebra 3. It’s all very complicated.

Hmm, I think for now I'll stay away from Zebra. I re-tried the demo and two overwhelming thoughts - 1, I don't get excited by the sound and 2, I can't face learning another synth. It would be lovely to have Matt's patches, but what with all the Horizons and Colloususes I'm not starved for moody dark cinematic stuff.

Interestingly enough, one day I made 2 short tracks with Matt's soundsets : one for Omni, one for Zebra. My best musician's friend - for lack of a better word - told me the Omni thing whas ok but the Zebra one sounded "like these Workstations from the early 90's that tries to mimick analogness". Gosh, that was harsh ;-)
He didn't know about these 2 VSTis as he uses mostly Papen Albino and some free stuff and don't care at all about hype, GAS and gear lust.

I ended buying Zebra and still learning it. It can be fun to program, though frankly, its arpegiator is clumsy, so is its enveloppes. And I've always found it a tad brittle, probably because I mainly work on Focal 40's, so I don't hear that loooow end Zimmer is raving about.

When you have Omni and rely on presets, I'm not sure Zebra to be that much appealing. And Avenger is so much more fun to edit !

But as I said, I'm learning my way through the gigantic Zebra possibilities...

Interesting observation from your friend! It does seem quite cold and hard, and no noticeable difference from many other soft synths I have. It goes without saying that talented programmers like Matt, Hans and Howard Scarr can produce brilliance with it, but I don't think there's anything sonically that means Zebra is the best tool for this, much more likely it just has a workflow that they find appealing. I do a good amount of tweaking and Avenger has really enthused me to do more programming from scratch, but Zebra didn't leap out as being especially intuitive or fun to program. It would have meant a lot of graft to move it beyond a preset machine for me, which is sort of what swung it really. I'd rather spend the time getting to know what I already have better.

I do wonder if Zebra had been released today if anyone would pay all that much attention to it.

I bought ZebraHZ because it had Diva filters but honestly I haven't found anything in there so far that wowed me even close to Diva itself, which continues to make me gush. There is just something magical about Diva to my ears.

On the other hand, if I had the slightest bit of creativity in terms of patch design, Zebra looks like it offers a hell of a lot.