Reply To: What Black Friday Deals Did You Pick Up? What are You Thinking About/Hoping for?

[superabbit]

On anxiousmofo said

I got my MComplete for cheap and am full of the good old gladness. Scouring for Melda deals was the driving force of my GAS for years and now I am past that.

Congratulations and welcome to the MClub!

I wonder if you’ll experience the (not kidding, it’s documented on VI Control) slight feeling of loss that some of us felt once we topped out our MComplete licenses. It’s not unlike school graduation where you had a goal you were working toward for years and then you reached the goal and while you have the prize, you don’t have the goal any more. And you miss it in a way.

Sure, it’s amazing to be able to mess around with even all of those weird plug-ins that you didn’t care about because you couldn’t see how they might fit into your process, but the dream is now a reality, and sometimes we miss a dream when it’s gone. That sweet feeling of anticipation is replaced with “what the hell do I do with all of these things?” Fortunately, they trickle out new sounds for MSoundFactory with enough regularity that it’s good to check in every so often. Also occasional new plug-ins like MDelay, which is a handy little 2-tap delay, part of the MFreeFX bundle.

Anyway, my big holiday plum was Sonuscore The Orchestra Essentials for $49. It expands the set of preset instruments (and their underlying samples) from the 20 you get with the free version to 99. For anyone who tried The Orchestra Elements for free and was knocked out, yep, it’s worth the 50 bucks.

Many if not most of the presets are kinda too “cinematic” (read “bombastic”) for me to use in songs, but it’s easy enough to turn off or modify the arpeggiators and thin things out.

Of course, you can use it right out of the tin as intended, which is a very fast shortcut to credible film, TV and game scores just from holding chords.

Many of my music software purchases are impulse buys from favorite manufacturers where I like them enough that I’ll buy almost anything they kick out, but this is one where I waited months for it to go on sale at 50% off.

I’ve been having fun using it to make silly orchestral “overtures” for existing songs. Copy the main chordal MIDI track, slap on The Orchestra Essentials and it’s instant overture.

-Erik
___________
superabbit.bandcamp.com

41