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🍊🔥 Orange Tree Samples Group Buy 60% Off, ENDS TODAY, July 12, 2025.
The signup for our Summer Group Buy sale starts today!
The Orange Tree Samples Group Buy just hit the highest discount level, 60% off with three days left.
During the signup period, the more people that join the greater the discount becomes–up to 60% OFF!
To join, all you need to do is add an instrument to your group buy order.
Once the signup period ends on July 12th, you’ll have the rest of the month to complete your order at the discount tier we reach.
Of course, if we reach the highest discount tier before then, you’ll be able to complete your order early with the 60% OFF discount.
If you aren’t sure which instruments you want, just make sure to save your spot in the sale by adding something to your group buy order before the signup period ends. You can always change your order at any point, even after the signup period has ended.
NOTE: I’ve consulted to Orange Tree Samples and am friends with the founder. In my experience and that of many other developers, there are no other guitar and bass sample libraries from another developer that are at the same level of realism. It’s because they use a combination of very high-quality, highly detailed sampling (while a lot of guitar sample libraries are recorded in people’s home studios and not always by pro guitarists, consider that the latest Evolution library was recorded in a pro studio and was played by the guitarist in the band, The Killers) with an innovative approach that other guitar sample and plugin developers have told me they admire and consider the best in class. Evolution libraries have long been used by top composers and producers on final productions.
I’ve had numerous, well-known Kontakt developers tell me that they know their guitar libraries aren’t in the same league as OTS guitar libraries. I use them in nearly every project I’ve ever done featuring guitar and bass guitar. Of course, their reputation means that people often overlook their other libraries. I’d highly recommend checking out the new version of Rosewood Grand. I liked the original version, but the new version, which they resampled the piano for, has become one of my favorite grand piano sample libraries. Other standouts include their Famous E — a Rhodes electric piano that was a collaboration with music legend Jay Graydon. While a lot of sample developers in this industry are still making sample libraries in homes and have flaws in the libraries — one pro in the industry pointed out that a popular guitar sample library has a TV on in the background of the samples. Orange Tree Samples not only uses pro studios, but collaborates with well respected musicians like legend Jay Graydon, the Killers’ guitarist on one of their latest Evolution libraries, and has the scripting and attention to detail that made Greg himself a legend in the sample development circles (Greg started out doing scripting with Cinesamples that was widely viewed among developers as innovative back when I first learned about him). I am a superfan of Orange Tree Samples and yes, I am a big fan of Greg as a friend — he’s a wonderful person. I’m also a superfan of Galaxy Pianos and don’t know the developer or even his name. Except for the pricing (which I’m not in love with or their lack of offering upgrade pricing to owners of SD2 for SD3), I’m a huge fan of the quality and innovations of Toontrack SD3 and libraries. All of these developers are innovators who set the way and continue to be the best in their areas of specialty.
From Orange Tree Samples Group Buy Web Page:
UPDATED 7/09/2025, 12:35 PM CST
Current Participants: 1251 Time Remaining: 3 days, 6 hours Discount Tiers: 1 – 49 buyers: 10% OFF 50 – 99 buyers: 15% OFF 100 – 249 buyers: 20% OFF 250 – 499 buyers: 25% OFF 500 – 749 buyers: 30% OFF 750 – 999 buyers: 40% OFF 1000 – 1249 buyers: 50% OFF 1250 or more buyers: 60% OFF * * Current discount level
Current Participants: 541 Time Remaining: 20 days, 1 hour
Discount Tiers: 1 – 49 buyers: 10% OFF 50 – 99 buyers: 15% OFF 100 – 249 buyers: 20% OFF 250 – 499 buyers: 25% OFF 500 – 749 buyers: 30% OFF * 750 – 999 buyers: 40% OFF 1000 – 1249 buyers: 50% OFF 1250 or more buyers: 60% OFF * Current discount level
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Thanks for sharing the group buy announcement, Peter!
Only four days into the signup period and we’re already nearly halfway to the highest discount tier–incredible! I’m blown away by everyone’s support!
One thing I’m curious about is what instruments you’d like to see us release in the future.
We have a ton more guitars, basses, and other instruments for our Evolution series already sampled and lined up for development, but it would be helpful to know what to prioritize.
Of course, we’ll still be working on the next major update for the Evolution engine itself. In fact, some of the instruments we’ve sampled will rely on the updated engine due to needing certain features like supporting more than two pickup positions, fretless and slide playing, etc.
It would be cool to release more tone presets and strumming presets for the existing libraries, too. Some of the older Evolution libraries only use the legacy guitar cabinet models, and would benefit from using the newer cabinet models, spring reverb tanks, etc. that were added in updates.
A Dobro / Resonator Guitar – I’ve been wanting one of these forever. There was a developer that made one a decade ago, and I helped him name with naming or something, and I have his library, but it’s not a very user-friendly, intuitive library that can be played in real time without remembering a bunch of keyswitches. I want libraries that I can play in real time and get a realistic-sounding performance without editing MIDI. Consequently, I’d LOVE to see an Evolution resonator guitar.
Fender Mustang (of course, Kurt Cobain)
Fender Jazzmaster guitar (yes, Madison Cunningham inspired)
Gibson SG (Back in Black, Sunshine of Your Love, Paranoid — it’s a legend)
Ibanez TOD10N nylon string acoustic-electric guitar (yes, Tim Henson inspired)
A guitar sample library with reverses (backwards samples) and unusual effects. I’m in love with using reverse / backwards sounds. It would be great to be able to play single notes and chords. I could also imagine tremolo effects, eBow, (I have an amusing story of interacting with Greg Heet, who invented and markets the eBow; he’s a character) in this library. I think it could be exttremely useful.
Keyboards:
A Wurly – A Wurly library done with the same level of depth as the Famous E and with a lot of presets would be a dream come true for Wurly fans. Yes, there are a bunch of Wurly sample libraries on the market, so it might not be a giant seller. I think the best sounding ones are from SonicCouture and AcousticSamples. I love how the latter gets the clunk of the keys in the samples just right. What MOST Wurly sample libraries and plugins fail mightily at is what makes a Wurly have such incredible character — its dynamics. It’s sweet when you play gently and it has bite when you really slam it. I think the Orange Tree Samples treatment would absolutely make the best Wurly library on the planet.
A Valente electric piano – To my ears, it’s somewhere in between a Wurly, a Rhodes and a Hohner Pianet. I don’t know of any existing sample library made from it.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Hey, LMers, the CEO of one of the most respected sample library developers in the business just asked for what instruments we’d like to see next from them. I just shared my wish list. How about yours?
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
I might need to take another look to see if it’s improved, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the real-time time stretching processes. Beyond the artifacts they introduce, time stretching uses more CPU and the complete samples have to be loaded into memory. That causes the instrument to potentially use a lot more RAM and take longer to load.
Maybe something like the roll mode our Paradise Marimba library has would work for emulated tremolos. That way you could hold down a note/notes and use a MIDI CC to control the overall dynamic (and maybe another CC for speed) of the tremolo, while the engine takes care of the natural slight variation in dynamic/timing. Additionally, if there were enough round-robins for variation, and possibly special transition samples between each note, I wonder if that would replace the need for sampled tremolo.
As of right now, whenever I need control over the speed/dynamic of the tremolo, I use the downstroke/upstroke repeat keys that are mapped right below the main playing range.
This video demonstrates the sampled tremolo options that our mandolin libraries include, and halfway in shows the manual approach to playing tremolo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6noh1RCIUY
I’ll second @Peter’s Resophonic suggestion, but I suspect offering slide play might be tough, or “limited”. I still think it would be worthwhile to sample a round-neck reso played “guitar style” fingers on the fretboard. The tone is pretty cool (I have one).
A Dobro / Resonator Guitar – I’ve been wanting one of these forever. There was a developer that made one a decade ago, and I helped him name with naming or something, and I have his library, but it’s not a very user-friendly, intuitive library that can be played in real time without remembering a bunch of keyswitches. I want libraries that I can play in real time and get a realistic-sounding performance without editing MIDI. Consequently, I’d LOVE to see an Evolution resonator guitar.
Oh man, we have several already recorded and the samples chopped up… They’re in the category of instruments that will require the new Evolution engine to support the slide playing. They’ll expand on the tech originally used in our SLIDE Acoustic and SLIDE Lap Steel libraries. With how realistic and expressive the vibrato/slides came out in those two libraries, I’m really excited for how they’ll turn out!
Ibanez TOD10N nylon string acoustic-electric guitar (yes, Tim Henson inspired)
That would be a cool one to sample, especially if it covered extended techniques like tapping, tapped artificial harmonics, and those sorts of things that Tim Henson uses all the time. I think the piezo pickup is a big part of this particular guitar sound, too. It works nicely with effects, and really helps bring out the sustain and clarity in those extended techniques that tend to be naturally quieter.
A Wurly – A Wurly library done with the same level of depth as the Famous E and with a lot of presets would be a dream come true for Wurly fans. Yes, there are a bunch of Wurly sample libraries on the market, so it might not be a giant seller. I think the best sounding ones are from SonicCouture and AcousticSamples. I love how the latter gets the clunk of the keys in the samples just right. What MOST Wurly sample libraries and plugins fail mightily at is what makes a Wurly have such incredible character — its dynamics. It’s sweet when you play gently and it has bite when you really slam it. I think the Orange Tree Samples treatment would absolutely make the best Wurly library on the planet.
I’ve been doing research on these. It seems like the 200A and 140B have pretty distinct sounds, so it seems like it would be ideal to sample both. A lot of the challenge is tracking down one that’s well-maintained, plus they can get pretty expensive, too…
A Valente electric piano – To my ears, it’s somewhere in between a Wurly, a Rhodes and a Hohner Pianet. I don’t know of any existing sample library made from it.
@gregjazz I just had a simple little promotional idea for an abandoned shopping cart containing the Big Bottom Bundle. It’s probably the best idea I’ve had in a while. I would say, brilliant, but I’m far too modest to say something like that. 😉
SUBJECT LINE: How can you leave this behind? BODY: We noticed that you left your shopping cart with the Big Bottom Bundle…
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
I haven’t looked too deeply into what’s out there right now for jazz brushes, so maybe there have already been some innovations I’m unaware of.
On the snare, there’s just so many ways you can articulate the hits and sweeps–it’s so expressive. Speed, pressure, and where on the drum you play makes such a huge difference.
Often it seems like libraries just give you some taps, hits, and press stroke type accents, and then a menu of random sweeps. I often find myself layering together multiple taps and sweeps to try to approximate the sound I’m after.
Hope it’s okay to mention another developer’s product, but a plugin that takes a novel approach to brushed drums/percussion is Klevgrand’s Borsta. The way you can have dynamic curves separate from the initial attack of every notes ends up giving you a really realistic, expressive sound. It might be tough to get it to fit in when using another library for the rest of the drums/cymbals, though, but I think an approach like this in a sample library might be the key to getting more realistic sounding brushes.
I’ve spent a good deal of time researching jazz brushes drum kit plugins and sample libraries. I don’t really think any developer has completely nailed it. Comparably, getting a stick, rod, or even brushes to whack a drum is simple. But there’s much more to the sounds of jazz brush drumming with sweeps (as opposed to straight hits with a brush, which, by comparison, is simple to record). Of course, as a former drummer—and I did study jazz for a short time, played some jazz gigs and met Buddy Rich, Louie Bellson (Duke Ellington, etc.), Jack DeJohnette (Miles Davis, etc.), Billy Cobham (Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra, John Ambercrombie, etc) — I would love to be able to do great recordings using MIDI from my electronic drum kit, simulating jazz brush sweeps… Suffice to say, while tendinitis stopped me from playing/performing, I never stopped loving playing drums or listening to great drummers.
From a business perspective, I think demand for a jazz drum kit is so small and the drum sample market is so fragmented with several plugin ecosystems, that I think it would almost certainly be a product that would have a negative ROI. Apart from the plugin you shared above, @gregjazz, I had a document that I cut and pasted my observations about jazz brush drum libraries from below and added some additional commentary for the community. All of my observations are based purely upon the audio demos:
BEST: The Jazz Sessions SDX An excellent sampled jazz drum kit with realistic jazz brush playing. I don’t know how they achieved it, but their jazz brushes demo is the most realistic I’ve heard from a sampled drum kit. This is the demo that I’m referring to: https://hwhcs.toontrack.com/mp3/The_Jazz_Sessions_SDX_-__C_Main_-_Bop_Kit_Brushes.mp3
VERY GOOD (but using loops): Authentic Soundware Jazz Drums A large collection of jazz drum loops with many authentic-sounding brush patterns. Offers isolated “stirring patterns for custom programming. These are loops and multisampled Kontakt drum kit with a script for jazz brushes sweeps. The sample library doesn’t have anything near the detail of the SDX kit – but the audio demos sound great. I think that the combination of loops and the multisampled kit is likely a great option for most non-drummers looking for jazz brushes. The art of playing jazz brushes isn’t something that is easily figured out in minutes, nor is it easily translated to a MIDI controller.
GOOD-ish: Abbey Road Vintage Drummer includes brush articulations for added expressiveness. I’m not in love with the tone of the jazz brush sweeps they’ve captured, but they sound okay, and more importantly – based on some of the other sampled jazz brush kits I’m comparing them against – they don’t stand out as fake with odd, awkward sweeps, like BFD kit and Fluffy Audio kit.
OKAY – ish: Addictive Drums 2 The Modern Jazz Brushes ADpak is a specialized expansion pack for Addictive Drums 2. It features a specific drum kit designed for jazz with brushes and includes a unique “RealSweep” system for realistic brush sweeps and accents. Includes production-ready presets and MIDI grooves played by professional drummers.
DON’T MAKE THE CUT: Fluffy Audio Jazz Drums – Brushes The sweeps don’t sound realistic or played by even a rudimentary jazz drummer by the most generous assessment. The average listener would merely say that “something doesn’t sound right,” about these, whereas a jazz fan would likely say they sound bad. Any jazz musician would find them unusable.
BFD Player Jazz Brushes / BFD Jazz Noir The Player kit is culled from the BFD Jazz Noir expansion pack. Neither is realistic by the most generous assessment. The BFD Player version truly sounds like the person who scripted it didn’t really understand how jazz drummers use brushes to do sweeps or how to make it swing.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
I ended up using Loops de la Creme Jazz brushes. They were easy to get to work well enough for me, but I’m not a drummer. I just thought I’d add these as an additional option to check out.
But what is everyone’s favorite Orange Tree Samples electric guitar library? Acoustic guitar library? Bass guitar library?
My opinion changes from week to week, but I use them on nearly every project, and today I was using Evolution Indie Electric Guitar, and Rock Standard on a track. It’s really hard to pick just one favorite, but I think Evolution Indie might be my favorite electric guitar library for rock. The Archtop Electric is my favorite for jazz and mellow rock (I used it for the licks I improvised on “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” for anyone who’s heard that. For acoustic guitar, it might be Dry Relic, but I find it incredibly difficult to decide on a favorite there too. For electric bass, definitely Evolution Vintage Violin Electric Bass with the Evolition Flatwound Bass (a Fender Precision bass) and the JJ preset. I’m not sure that I ever verified with Greg that the preset was inspired by James Jamerson, but it seems so clear that it was that I have always just taken that for granted.
Evolution Engine Version 1.3.0 Available An update for our Evolution-based instruments is now available!
Here’s a list of the changes:
– New settings: “Legato Time Start” and “Legato Time Length” that let you set time thresholds for whether or not the legato articulations will get triggered.
– New setting: “Strum Pattern Dynamic” to control the strumming pattern dynamic in real-time.
– New setting: “Mapping Octave” that shifts the instruments’ entire mapping up/down by octaves.
– New setting: “Performance Effect Muting” to make things like string slaps mute any held notes.
– Improved: String overriding keyswitches are now MIDI channel specific, only applying to notes on the same MIDI channel as the keyswitch.
– Improved: MIDI guitar setting is now a dropdown menu with different options for how each string is mapped to different MIDI channels.
– Improved: “Dynamic Memory” setting is now a dropdown menu named “Sample Purging” that contains an addition option to revert to Kontakt’s own built-in memory handling.
– Improved: “Release Slide Down” articulation can now get selected even after a note is initially triggered.
– Fixed pitch bend modes intermittently not affecting notes.
– Fixed a bug where strumming performance FX wouldn’t mute notes held on the keyboard in certain situations.
– Fixed a bug where certain strummed chords would get played as legato in specific scenarios.
I have been contemplating if I should sticky this thread, like I did with NI’s Summer Sale, as a lot of our community members are users of NI Kontakt / Komplete and Orange Tree Samples libraries (including me), and because it’s a group buy, people are watching the number of people currently enrolled, interested to see if their discount has increased.
Okay, I think I just answered my own question. I’ll sticky this thread. It’s time to remove the NI one anyhow.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Evolution Dry Relic Evolution Songwriter Evolution Nylon Evolution Flatpick 6 – this sounds different and really comes alive in mixes, especially when playing lead parts Evolution Jumbo 12 – This demo features the tone I love:
Evolution Vintage Violin – The only demo I’ve ever made for a developer a medley of the chord progression of Paul McCartney’s “Dear Boy” along with a a very McCartney-esque song I wrote when I was around 14 years old that, until this demo, was only ever played for my late mother. It’s featured on the OTS site but credited to some guy named Peter with an Italian-sounding name, not Peter Woods. Thief! Not sure about that guy trying to take credit for my tune! Besides Evolution Vintage Violin, the guitars are all Evolution guitars.
I feel I should explain how a guy who long counted Chris Squire as one of his favorite bass players didn’t put the Rick bass on his favorites list. I really like the Rick distorted, but in real life, I prefer the Fender Precision, Jazz, and Hofner 501 bass tones. That doesn’t mean I don’t use the Rick, I do, just a lot less than those other models.
I liked the first version of Rosewood Grand. It was nice, but it wasn’t one of my favorite piano sample libraries, and I fell in love with the Yamaha grand pianos as a kid. I even preferred their tone over Steinways—which I also love, of course. But when OTS released version two of the Rosewood Grand with new samples and a felt version, I fell in love with the library. It quickly became one of my favorite piano libraries. As far as the famous E, I love it. But I am a Wurly guy, so I can’t help but wish OTS also comes out with a Wurly that is at the same level as the Famous E. That would be amazing.
This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by peter.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Time Remaining: 6 days, 22 hours Discount Tiers: 1 – 49 buyers: 10% OFF 50 – 99 buyers: 15% OFF 100 – 249 buyers: 20% OFF 250 – 499 buyers: 25% OFF 500 – 749 buyers: 30% OFF 750 – 999 buyers: 40% OFF 1000 – 1249 buyers: 50% OFF * 1250 or more buyers: 60% OFF
* Current discount level
It shouldn’t be hard to take this from 1129 (the current level) to 1250 in 6 days as long as people keep posting and sharing. A 60% discount on their libraries — easily among the highest quality sample libraries in the industry –is pretty sweet.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
I’m very confident that the Evolution Rosewood Grand is soon going to be just under $60 with this group buy. For the level of quality, that’s a fantastic deal. This piano library is far superior to other Yamaha C7s I have in my collection.
I first played a Yamaha C7 as a kid, after playing a Steinway Model D, at the music studio where my mother worked (she was a musician and music teacher, with the piano being her main instrument, the organ being her second, and then the guitar; she was a killer musician who expected her kids to take playing seriously, and I fell in love with music early on). Because of Steinway’s reputation, I expected that the Steinway would be my favorite piano. But when I played it, while I thought it was beautiful, I went over to the Yamaha C7 next and to my surprise, that was my favorite grand piano. It cost considerably less than the D. I told my mother that I preferred the Yamaha because the tone was more “bright” than the Steinway. She said that she expected that I would prefer its tone, as I was such a huge fan of rock music, and the piano was more suited for rock.
So, decades later, I have numerous Steinway and Yamaha piano sample libraries. My long-time favorite grand piano sample library is the NI Nore — sampled by a great piano sample developer, Galaxy Instruments (nope, I don’t know anyone there, I just love their piano libraries). But I love it largely for the gentleness of it and the felt piano samples. The Noire is a Yamaha CFX 9. But it’s not great at cutting through rock mixes. The first version of the Evolution Rosewood Grand was nice, but I wasn’t in love with it. The new version — with an entirely new set of samples plus a felt sampled version (there wasn’t one in the first version, so it’s really like getting two piano libraries) — instantly became a go-to piano for me, and, I find, that it cuts through rock mixes far better than the Noire. Even more, it’s one of the small group of top-tier sample libraries in my collection that instantly inspires me when I play them. And, with 20+ of no practice since tendinitis stopped me from performing, I don’t play very well anymore, and the only time I feel I even play okay is when I’m very inspired. And this is one of the instruments that inspires me. I put my fingers on the keyboard and hear what comes out, and suddenly, I’m capable of something more than I would expect. It’s why I still yearn to play after all of these years, and even with my physical limitations. This is an instrument that moves me like only a handful of sample libraries can move me. Listen to the presets below starting at 28:17. Listen to presets like Practice Tapes, Raindrops, Rock Squash, Rolling Hills, Room for Two, Secret Garden Piano, Soft Underscore (felt) and beyond. A lot of those are presets more suited for soft playing — and as I mentioned, this piano can cut through a mix really well — but it also has a gentle beauty. It’s extremely versatile.
Just close your eyes and listen and you might understand how deeply this moves me, because it may move you too.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
We just reached the highest discount tier, giving you 60% OFF all our virtual instruments and bundles!
That means you can complete your group buy order early now–we just sent out an email notification, but the link to complete your order (and a discount code in case you need to manually add the discount to your cart) is also on the group buy page in your account, too.
Of course, the group buy sale is still accepting new signups, so until July 12th at 23:59 UTC you can still join and get the 60% OFF discount right now.
It’s the Group Buy of group buys. Heck, it’s the only Group Buy worth considering. And yes, we did it again, all the way up to the highest tier. Pretty pretty nice.
From an email from Orange Tree Samples I just received:
“There are less than 24 hours left to join our Summer Group Buy sale and get 60% OFF all our virtual instruments!
All you need to do is head over to the group buy page in your account to sign up and get the discount right now.
You have until July 12th at 23:59 UTC to join, after which the sale’s signup period will be closed. Once you’ve joined, you have until July 31st to take advantage of the discount.
If you’re looking to get the best deal possible on our virtual instruments, now is your chance!”
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
Today is the final day to get in on Orange Tree Samples Group Buy. You don’t have to complete your purchase today, you just have to join today, and you’ll get until July 31, 2025 to complete your purchase.
LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.
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