'…Just one word : STUNNING!...'  K-Slash on KVR

'...Incredible. Great library! Next on shopping list...'  synesthesia on KVR

'...I thought sample-based virtual guitar would suck, but boy was I wrong!!!...'  benjamind on KVR

'...I can't play keyboard quite that well but it's pretty amazing what this VI can do on the fly. Once I have the spare cash I will be all over electri6ity for sure. Nicely done vir2....'  dmichaelsmusic on KVR

'...This is great, I honestly never thought something of this caliber could be achieved in the range of Guitar Synth's / VST's. It sounds real. I can't wait until it comes out....'  kirbyfighter12 on KVR

If you're wondering what all that buzz is about, it's about Electri6ity, our brand new virtual electric guitar instrument. I'm Benjamin, one of the developers of Electri6ity and today I want to give you some insight into the development of this massive guitar library. I also want to tell you what makes it so special.

Let me start with some facts about Electri6ity: more than 200,000 44Khz/24bit DI samples, eight famous guitar tones (Strat, Tele, P90, Les Paul, Rickenbacker, Danelectro Lipstick, ES335, L4) and more than 50.000 lines of Kontakt scripting.

Sometimes I've read that people don't like advertising numbers when it comes to virtual instruments. Most of the time I agree. For example: I don't care if a library contains 10,000 patches, if I only like one of them. I also don't care if it has a million samples, if I can't use it because the learning curve is too steep. But sometimes the amount of samples and the size of a library does matter.

Let's start with size: Do you like a 30-second sustain note with natural decay better than a 5-second looped one? I do. At least when it comes to guitar or bass libraries.

Let's talk about the amount of samples: Of course I agree with everyone who says that the amount of samples doesn't tell you anything about the quality of a library. That's true. If a library however is carefully recorded and each of the samples is manually edited and you want to cover all important articulations, the sample count will rise. And in this case it makes sense. Thanks to the new Kontakt 4's new compression feature, however, we were able to keep this gigantic library at a reasonable size of 28GB.

The reason for the large amount of samples is the concept behind Electri6ity: every articulation is sampled with the same detail. For example: when we recorded a hammer on, we also recorded a muted hammer on. When we recorded a pull off, we also recorded a muted pull off. Same for the single fret slides. Same for the noises. We recorded every imaginable facet of the electric guitar. If you can imagine it, Electri6ity can play it!

Another key concept of Electri6ity is its artificial intelligence. This is very important if you want to emulate a guitar on a keyboard, since those instruments are so different in the way you play them. For example, on a keyboard every note has it's own key, but on a guitar you have six strings and many notes are available on different strings. Depending on which string you choose, you'll get a different timbre. And for a realistic performance it's important you have access to those little nuances, especially if you are playing chords.

That's why Electri6ity automatically transfers keyboard chords to guitar chords and - by watching your playing - is selecting the right string for you.

To make it short: we wanted to create an instrument which doesn't need MIDI programming or editing. For my part, I'm a bit impatient when it comes to that. I don't want to spent hours in the sequencer, tweaking controller changes, adding hundreds of keyswitches or loading patches for each articulation I'm going to use. I just want to write a song, I don't want to engineer one!

That's why the artificial intelligence behind Electri6ity takes care of that part, so the performer can concentrate on their creativity. This doesn't mean, by the way, that you can't exactly tell Electri6ity what to play and how to play it. You can - but you don't have to!

I hope you enjoyed this insight into the concept behind Electri6ity and I hope you'll see why we are so excited about its release after three long years of development.

For more information and demos visit the Electri6ity page or, if you just want to see it in action, the YouTube page, where you'll find a lot of demonstration videos.

Cheers, Benjamin
Vir2 Development Team