The story
Heya, I’m Jesse McInturff. I’m an LA-based television composer and music educator, but mostly I’m a guitarist by trade. Composition isn’t friendly to guitarists, its a world of keyboardists, and most creative briefs have something against guitar; I’ve always made it my mission to try and sneak as much guitar playing into my cues. With the doldrums of the lockdowns striking me I reached out to three of my best guitar students and asked if they would be interested in helping construct a library: The Dorkchestra. I figured lots of people have sampled guitars with e-bows but I’d never heard a SECTION of guitars played with e-bow. The dorks, Sebastian, Jackson, and Riley (Left to right in the stereo image) are mic’ed from about 15 feet back outdoors on my student Jackson’s outdoor patio. Jackson also has a connection to the BBC as he is the grandson of Dennis Marks the head of music at BBC Television in the ’90s. As a result of Covid times, we did have to record the library outdoors and as such there are lots of bird chirps and wind noises, I’ve included a “room tone” recording for noise reduction. Everything labeled RR2 is a sample, and the RR1’s are alternates as they were supposed to be a set of round robins that were abandoned due to the weather. They only cover the first octave of the guitar. After a freezing Sunday morning and afternoon outdoors up in Laurel Canyon hanging with some teenagers, I humbly submit the Guitar Dorkchestra. It’s chaotic and imperfect, but sometimes that’s exactly what’s called for.
Reviews for Guitar Dorkchestra
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
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Interesting and unpredictable
As someone who loves ambient guitar i think these sounds are going to be useful for me. They come pretty dry which i actually prefer to them being really wet by default with no controllability. Even though its just one patch you get different sounding and unpredictable textures throughout the instrument which is awesome, some clean and some distorted. The tuning issues might make this a little less versatile and hard to fit into existing structures. I think this has alot of potential as a library and could definitely be improved upon
Tons of character, but just one default sound
This is a wonderful idea that trully has a lot of potential and can be inspiring to many artists out there. The different timbres combined while holding the keys down creates a unique sound signature, which seems both familiar and strange at the same time. The sound quality is very good, the playability may seem a little rough sometimes. Nevertheless, this can surely act like a unique touch in a few of your creations.
A touch of the old Frippertronics?
I may be mistaken but there seems to be something Bowie-esque about this instrument – and of course I mean that in a good way. It’s great for overlaying on separate tracks with delays and reverbs and some panning automation to create a sense of tension or textural variation to an otherwise run-of-the-mill piece. Try using it on one track to underscore a particular interval in a chord sequence, for example. The possibilities are many; if not endless. Just the basic vanilla Kontakt user interface, unfortunately.
Certainly one of my favorite Pianobook names
Cool concept with lots of various noises captured and some out of tune notes. A bit niche for me, but YMMV!
An interesting concept with a few issues
The concept of layering several of the same instrument in this case overdriven guitars is certainly interesting, and there are commercial releases that people seem to love that make heavy use of the concept. The issue here is that there are some pretty significant intonation problems within the scope of the samples. Some of the samples drift out of tune by as much as a half step, which limits their usefulness.
