Gravity by Heavyocity

[sporkles]

So Daniel James will be going through Heavyocity's new library, Gravity, tomorrow in a YouTube live stream. youtube.com/dazexus
I'm very skeptical about these "sound designy" hypersampled electronic Kontakt libraries; I do appreciate good electronic/hybrid soundtracks, but I feel that these libraries mostly lets everyone piggyback on the hard work of those visionaries that inspire such libraries with groundbreaking experiments and sonic manipulation. It's not quite the same when it comes pre-packaged like this.

[Machinesworking]

I hear you, and I'm all about designing my own sounds, but some things sample wise are hard to do on the limited budgets of most musicians. I upgraded to Komplete Ultimate based on the drum libraries including Damage. I don't own the vintage gear they do in order to come up with the samples in the first place.

Not sold on gravity yet, but when it comes to sample libraries it's hard to write off buying them based on the presets that come with them IMO.

[beats me]

I sometimes find it somewhat difficult mixing Heavyocity’s epic sounds with sounds that aren’t, well, epic. Gravity seems like it’s going to be the next level of epic.

[beats me]

Well I liked what I saw/heard...but $450? That kind of throws it out of the cost to usefulness ratio, depending on what you typically compose.

This 2 to 3 samples at a time seems to be a big thing for Kontakt library developers lately.

[sporkles]

Yeah, it certainly gets more interesting when you can deconstruct and mix and match, as in the "designer" tab in Gravity's impact patches. The thing is though, that I'm pretty sure that with a little bit of effort, I can create most of this stuff in Alchemy (may it rest in peace!). I wasn't completely sold on Heavyocity's own demos, but Daniel James' dissection made me a lot more interested. Again, though, I don't think I'm going to fork out for this. I did get a $90 coupon, but I guess I just wasn't quite ... pulled in.

[beats me]

Well, most things can be accomplished with other options and a little skill. Heavyocity has always been about the quickest way to epic possible. One of the things I agreed with Daniel about is the inability to choose samples for the complex (3 at a time) patches. Seems like a big oversight considering you do have access to all those individual samples but only one at a time which doesn’t give you the interplayability if you could load them in the complex interface.

The Signal Kontakt library is very similar to Gravity for pads but not as deep. You only have 2 samples at a time but you can pick which samples. Daniel also mentioned Orbit is similar in that you can have it auto transition between the 3 samples. In a lot of ways Gravity is what is already available out there on steroids.

[mholloway]

Most heavyocity stuff is targeted at lazy 'composers' who want canned sounds / loops rather than learning how to make this stuff on their own. Or, of course, for "time strapped professionals" who have no creative ambition beyond their next paycheck. And hey, if you're getting paid to throw three Heavyocity-designed loops into a car commercial, you're doing alright! But the bedroom hobbyists shelling out hundreds so they can press a single key and sound like Zimmer, et al, well.... let's just say I think Heayocity is the only one getting anywhere in that arrangement.

I bought Damage years ago because it seemed a perfect fit for my main genre interest (industrial); I've used it about 2 or 3 times, and tried to use it about 30 or 40 times. The stuff is just way too pre-arranged, polished, and finished to be helpful in an actual creative context. Even the single-hits kits are so fully realized and polished that it's damn near impossible to "sculpt" them into anything useful in your own material.

I'm sure many will disagree with me, -shrug-. Just my view, if somebody can come up with awesome original results with this material rather than just canned playback of Heavyocity's (admittedly great sounding) work, I'd love to hear it. But I haven't yet.

-M

[beats me]

I bought Damage years ago because it seemed a perfect fit for my main genre interest (industrial); I've used it about 2 or 3 times, and tried to use it about 30 or 40 times. The stuff is just way too pre-arranged, polished, and finished to be helpful in an actual creative context. Even the single-hits kits are so fully realized and polished that it's damn near impossible to "sculpt" them into anything useful in your own material.

I’m with you for the most part. To me they sound too tell-tale or the sounds are so far removed from what I’m working on that I would have to mix every other track differently around the Heavyocity sound. It’s like if you want everything to gel great then you need to use nothing but Heavocity libraries.

But as somebody who is interested in dabbling in soundtrack type music for my own entertainment I don’t see how to do it without heavy usage of libraries that are meant for that type thing. As an example I just discovered the CineBrass Pro library. Just watching the demo you’ll quickly realize what a major part of soundtrack music that sound is and you can’t just pull it off with some arbitrary horn sample or emulator. Even NI’s Session Horns Pro is only good if you want to sound like Chicago. A horn is not a horn is not a horn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkTW0oEN6AQ

For the amateur I think you are just going to have to check-in any integrity issue you may have as soon as you start the track.

[sporkles]

Hey, Heavyocity never advertised their stuff as mellow, sublime spice for meditation music. It's all about in-your-face, aggressive, hard-hitting instant gratification.

I can absolutely agree that stuff like Aeon and possibly Gravity will dictate your music way too much, but I disagree as far as their drum libraries go. I really love Damage and their Master Sessions series; just loading Kontakt in standalone and banging away on my controller is incredibly satisfying. Also, toning down a very aggressive drum shouldn't be a huge challenge to a reasonably seasoned audio tinkerer. I liken a hyper-processed drum kit to a RAW photo file - only somewhat opposite. With the RAW image, you can extract an immense amount of information out of one exposure and then process it. With the Heavyocity drum kit, that job has been done, and it's up to you to "take away" information as needed.

[beats me]

Seems like the drums in DM-307 are way more tamable. Plus if you have Damage it can access that library too…for taming. I’ll probably hold out until Heavyocity offers some discount on that though.

Anybody know how their perc libraries stack up against NI’s Action Strikes? Seems like they cover a lot of the same territory.

[beats me]

I feel kind of bad for Wide Blue Sound. They just released from what I can tell is their first Kontakt library a couple months ago, Orbit. Looks and sounds good from the demos/tuts I’ve seen and a lot of time went into the presentation. The core of it is morphing through 3 different sounds based on a rate you set. Then Gravity came out and does exactly that and a bunch of other things. Got an email from Wide Blue Sound saying you can get Orbit for $50 off for a limited time using code Defy Gravity. That’s them pretty much going “Damnit!”

But Orbit is only $200 ($150 for a short time) compared to Gravity at $450.

[Machinesworking]

I'm sure many will disagree with me, -shrug-. Just my view, if somebody can come up with awesome original results with this material rather than just canned playback of Heavyocity's (admittedly great sounding) work, I'd love to hear it. But I haven't yet.

-M

I don't entirely disagree with you. Like most things though there's room for more than a black and white depiction of the situation.
My roommate plays goth industrial, 90bpm stuff, heavily processed with a 4AD type sound. Female singer the whole deal. He's a classically trained pianist but he's not much of a synth programmer, so he heavily gravitates towards good libraries. For me and you maybe we hear various presets etc. but the average listener hears his great sense of space and arrangement. He plays bass on most of his tracks, and is pretty adept at Live, mangles audio etc.

Do I think he would be better served by coming up with his own presets and learning more synthesis techniques? yes, but it really wouldn't change things that much. It kind of becomes one of those grey areas where you have to ask if it's important or not. All that said, modern EBM Industrial is seriously guilty of using too many canned presets. :Wumpscut: come to mind, Canibal Anthems got boring really quick because of that IMO.

I know one thing, he writes about three times faster than I do. Probably because he's not spending days tweaking on soft and hardware synths.

[jmobley]

The hate is pretty shocking. Lazy composers? I call bullshit on that one. Heaviocity products are geared towards a very specific group of composers. Composers that work in the cinematic genre. Pulses, builds, rises, impacts epic hybrid drums, etc are par for the course in the cinematic world. In trailer scoring, heaviocity products are basically required. It's not about being lazy. That sound is demanded. And as anyone in the scoring game knows, timed emotion and timed sound design is just as important as the music itself.

To the person who finds heaviocity products hard to mix in, turn the punish setting off.

But yeah, the price is very reasonable for people like us that are making music to picture. It's a downright bargain.

If you are doing music that's not geared to picture, the price can be hard to justify.

[beats me]

The hate is pretty shocking. Lazy composers? I call bullshit on that one. Heaviocity products are geared towards a very specific group of composers. Composers that work in the cinematic genre. Pulses, builds, rises, impacts epic hybrid drums, etc are par for the course in the cinematic world. In trailer scoring, heaviocity products are basically required. It's not about being lazy. That sound is demanded. And as anyone in the scoring game knows, timed emotion and timed sound design is just as important as the music itself.

To the person who finds heaviocity products hard to mix in, turn the punish setting off.

But yeah, the price is very reasonable for people like us that are making music to picture. It's a downright bargain.

If you are doing music that's not geared to picture, the price can be hard to justify.

Cool site and nice credits.

Watching the tut videos on Gravity and DM-307 helped me to better understand the Heavyocity libraries I already have and how to tame them. I can get better use out of them now. I pulled the trigger on Gravity for the $80 discount and free expansion pack. Attempted the further discount by Tweeting on my long dormant Twitter account but it didn’t work. Whatevs.

My research on score music composing has shown it’s not a cheap endeavor on even the completely digital level. You could easily drop $300 - $500 on just a string library and you probably need several of those because each has their strengths and weaknesses. By comparison something like Omnisphere or Komplete could be more than most producers need for a lifetime of electronica productions without ever upgrading.

[sporkles]

Also, certain companies are incredibly skilled when it comes to convincing you that you need their stuff. Like the Cinesamples Pro stuff (the video you posted is one I've drooled over previously). And forget about the absolutely INSANE amount of (specialised) libraries from Spitfire. It's easy to get distracted from writing actual music and melodies with all these niche libraries, and that's the way trailer and movie music are headed, I think. It's a lot more about sound than melody today. I guess it's unfair to compare anyone to John Williams, but the Jurassic Park score, man... That's a movie score (incidentally, my favourite score of all times, but I'm rambling now).

I keep wondering how long the "Heavyocity sound" will be in demand. I mean, all action movie trailers sound the same these days - partly also because the "Requiem for a Dream" syndrome, where they don't even bother going beyond the "temp music" stage. It's like musical stock photos, and it's a bit worrying, to be honest. Will there be work for composers when the soundtrack is mostly sound design and source music?

By the way, Josh: nice seeing you here. You used to be a Reason man, didn't you?