Reasonfreaks

Hey there, today I received in the mail, the Elektric guitar audiowarrior refill, and now here I am writing a review of it.

The first thing I did when I got this CD is open up the case and slap the CD in my computer, in doing so I found out that it comes with a guitar pick, nice touch.

This refill uses a cool concept for strumming guitar chords on your MIDI keyboard, until now, it was next to impossible to play authentic sounding strummed guitar chords on a keyboard in real time, because the notes are stretched out over multiple octaves and a considerable playing distance for one chord, whereas on a guitar neck the chord is easily within one hands reach.

To solve this problem, this refill uses a concept called G-mapping, G-mapping takes only the notes you need for one chord and puts them close together, from C3 onwards, meaning to create a cool sounding strum of a guitar, all you need to do is run your finger up the MIDI keyboard from C3 onwards, as each individual note for the chord is mapped right next to each other. Meaning it’s easy to create great sounding chords without any musical knowledge. You can even use the included guitar pick, and play your keyboard as a guitar! Buy dragging the pick along the keys to create a chord. Sure you will look stupid along the way, but who cares when it sounds this good?

Now onto the sounds. I opened up the refill in my NN-XT and the first thing that hit me what the sheer volume of sounds that’s in it. The root of the refill contains 11 folders, they are as follows:

Combinator key patches
Combinator songs-keys nosustain
Combinator songs-keys sustain
Chromatic reason songs
Electric strummer
Harmonic vibrato samples
NN-XT chromaPatches
NN-XT chromavibe patches
NN-XT G-mapped chords susNO
NN-XT G-mapped chords susYES
NN-XT G-Mapped Chords TopHarm

Plus each folder contains subfolders with literally hundreds of samples and patches! Great value and will last a lifetime!

Now the question was, with all these folders, which one do I pick first? Well this G-mapping concept sounded rather intriguing. So I decided to go to the folder NN-XT G-mapped chords susYES, and chose the patch “440_A_major.sxt” then simply ran my finger up the keyboard. I was greeted with a wall of pure guitar strumming bliss. Now it all became clear why these guys chose to do it like this, not only was it nice-sounding, and practical, it was damn fun too.

All notes on every string and fret including harmonics have been meticulously sampled in high resolution 24-bit unprocessed natural stereo capturing each sound and individual notes unique tone, sustain, and characteristic. This all means that it sounds VERY VERY good. And completely natural. It’s as if you were in the room with the guitar player!

But don’t worry! If you don’t like the concept of G-mapping, don’t turn away from this refill, it also comes with all of your standard mapped guitar samples too.

Conclusion:
This is a must have for any guitar player, or rock fan, that has the urge to make some wicked sounding chords and guitar sound with the simplicity of running your finger up down and in all directions on a MIDI keyboard.

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