Today’s computer-based musicians have a plethora of tools and possibilities at their fingertips (mouse-tips?). DAW (digital audio workstation) recording and mixing, endless plugins emulating classic effects processors as well as new imaginative concepts, and of course, recreations of every known instrument, plus plenty that could only exist due to today’s technology. There are hundreds of developers out there, and likely thousands of plug-ins to choose from, which is both a blessing and a curse. Musicians can (and do) spend countless hours on online forums and the like, asking for recommendations and guidance. What can really help is to have a mentor, or respected authority to help guide your choices.
At ILIO, we are proud of our history of choosing to represent only the best developers and titles. When we started out in the ‘90s, we carried CD-ROM sound libraries designed to be used with the hardware samplers that were the de rigueur tools of the day. From our earliest start, offering licensed Synclavier libraries, we soon became the authorized distributor for Eric Persing’s Spectrasonics sample CDs, which were the Rolls-Royce libraries of their day. In the early 2000s the advent of plug-in synths and effects began to appear, made possible by Steinberg’s ground-breaking VST 2 technology. We pivoted to start offering software instruments such as Synthogy’s stunning Ivory acoustic pianos, Spectrasonic’s Atmosphere and Trilian, and the acclaimed Vienna Symphonic Library of orchestral sounds. We continue on that path today. Some of the notable products in our catalog include Omnisphere and Keyscape by Spectrasonics, Audio Modeling’s SWAM instruments, Overloud’s suite of hardware processor emulations called Gems, and many other select instruments and tools.
We take a discerning approach to our business, and look for the best vendor to offer in each sound/technology category, rather than just collecting titles to fatten our catalog. ILIO offers carefully curated titles that can be trusted to provide musical and inspiring results for your productions. In this article we’re going to explore and discuss virtual instruments.
Jump to a section:
What Is a Virtual Instrument?
The Ways Developers Create Their Sounds
Sampled Piano
Sampled Orchestral Instruments
Modeled Orchestra/Modern Solo Instruments
Sampled Keyboard Instruments
Modeled Keyboard Instruments
Guitar Tone and Effects
Powerhouse Synthesis
Creative and Imaginative Synthesis
Expanded Performance-Shaping Possibilities
Orchestration Engine
Wrap It Up
A virtual instrument is a computer application that is designed to reproduce the sound of a musical instrument, or ensemble. This can be an acoustic instrument like a piano, nylon-string guitar, brass or woodwinds or drums, or even the sound of a vocalist or choir, to name a few. Or it can be an electro-mechanical instrument like an electric piano, an organ or a set of vibes. It can be a fully electronic instrument like a vintage analog synthesizer, or a digital synthesizer, or something completely imaginary and never-before seen or heard. This software application can run by itself on your computer/device, or it can be run within, or “hosted” inside your digital audio workstation (DAW) program.
If a virtual instrument is going to be used within a DAW, it is called a plug-in, and will be made available in one of the following formats. Both PCs and Macs can use the industry-standard VST (Virtual Studio Technology), either VST2 or VST3. On an Apple Mac it may be their proprietary format called Audio Unit (AU for short), or AUv3 for iOS devices. If you’re running Avid Pro Tools on either platform, it requires their own proprietary format called AAX (Avid Audio eXtension). So be sure that any virtual instrument you are looking for is available in the right format for your computer, device, or application.
Plug-ins running within a DAW offer some great conveniences, such as the settings being saved with your session (including any edits you made), and the ability to freely automate parameter changes.
In the same way that hardware companies develop sounds in their keyboards/modules, virtual instrument developers use any of a number of sound-creation technologies. Each has their strengths and characteristic sound. They are:
Sampling: this uses recordings made of actual instruments, delivering absolutely accurate reproductions of the individual notes played. In today’s technology environment each note an instrument can produce is sampled, often for the full duration of the sound (in the case of instruments that decay, like a plucked string, a piano, a drum etc.), and at many different velocity levels. The samples are then mapped across the notes of a keyboard, and stacked at whatever amount of velocity levels that were decided, to create what is called a multi-sampled instrument. Given cheap storage and fast drives, samples are usually spooled off the drive, so memory is no longer a constraint as it was in the past, and is still often the case in hardware.
Granular Synthesis: is an offshoot of sampling, in that it starts with a sample, or a recording of a sound. But rather than just play it back, the sample is divided up into many (hundreds, even thousands) small slices of the sound, and then the playback of each slice can be controlled in numerous ways. Each slice is usually looped, so it can be repeated for as long as desired, stretched and compressed and so much more. The slices can be smoothly stepped through, or you can jump from any slice to any other. Granular synthesis is commonly used to create ambient and unnatural sounds and soundscapes from very complex sound sources, as opposed to the more common timbral possibilities of a simple analog waveform or digital oscillator. In addition to other methods, Omnisphere by Spectrasonics is well known for incorporating granular synthesis into its deep synth engine.
Virtual Analog: is a form of digital synthesis that is dedicated to reproducing the sound of analog synthesizers, and closely emulates the characteristics of those specific circuit types. It offers all the common parameters and features we know from analog synths, and may be an exact clone of a known synth, or a new imaginative one that never existed in hardware form. Many companies tout that they are exactly copying each individual component in the original synthesizer they are reproducing, so it can be thought of as a form of modeling (more on that shortly).
Digital Synthesis: This is a large grab bag of possible technologies that employ DSP programming to create new forms of synthesis. Perhaps the most famous is FM (Frequency Modulation) which was discovered by Dr. John Chowning of Stanford University and was prominently used by Yamaha in the ‘80s and ‘90s in their DX-series synths and later instruments. But it is not exclusive to them, and many companies now employ FM as part of their palette of sound possibilities. In classic FM, a sine wave is used to modulate the frequency of another sine wave, and the amount of this modulation, along with the frequency of the modulating wave, produces a timbral change. The higher the amplitude of the modulating wave, the more timbral change will occur. Combinations of this modulation pairing can be created to enable very sophisticated sound-producing designs. This is a gross simplification of the technology, and isn’t meant to cover all that is involved: an online search will reveal many in-depth articles covering this important technology.
Wavetable is another digital synthesis technology, which takes groupings of small samples (usually single-cycle waveforms) or digitally-generated waveforms and allows the user to sweep through them in real-time, producing an ever-changing timbral quality. If the group of samples are closely-related in timbre the technique can produce smooth and subtle changes, but if they are not as closely related, they can produce quite jarring and interesting timbral jumps.
Vector Synthesis was developed first by Sequential, and then greatly expanded into Wave Sequencing by Korg and can be thought of as an offshoot of Wavetable Synthesis. In this adaptation, waveforms are either assigned to 4 positions of a vector, or diamond, and can be swept across the four points, or lined up in a series and then be smoothly cross-faded between, or stepped from one to the other in a rhythmic fashion, creating what sounds like a percussive sequence of timbres.
Additive Synthesis builds up complex timbres out of a broad array of simple sine waves, each tuned to a different frequency. How they are each tuned (and often slightly detuned over time), mixed at different levels and processed in other ways are how this technology produces quite interesting and imaginative sounds.
Phase Distortion is a variant of sine wave modulation, but it achieves timbral change/complexity by varying the phase of a sine wave (speeding up/slowing down the readout/playback to “distort” the timbre) to achieve its goals. First made popular by Casio with their CZ-series instruments, this technology has also become prevalent in many plug-ins that offer multiple forms of synthesis.
Physical Modeling: This form of synthesis recreates known instruments and sound sources by studying the elements of their design, and then recreating each element as a variable block of sound generating/processing. As an easy example, take a plucked string. Modeling would involve deciding the material the string is made of, its length, what type of object is hitting, or plucking the string, and so forth. By recreating each of these aspects in great detail and as separate elements, the user has infinite control over the desired result.
Many types of instruments are being modeled these days, including drums, orchestral string instruments, brass and woodwinds, electric guitar and bass, electric pianos, organs and even acoustic pianos. Companies like Audio Modeling are skilled at creating very realistic models of such instruments, while Applied Acoustics Systems uses physical modeling to design both realistic and very imaginative surrealistic instruments.
Knowing this background information, we can move on to the various titles that ILIO offers, highlighting each sound category and type of synthesis available to help you find the best virtual instrument(s) for your production and performance needs.
Most of us need a great piano sound for our music, and one of the pioneering companies to approach this task is Synthogy. Founders Joe Ierardi and George Taylor bring decades of experience in sampling and programming acoustic pianos sounds, starting with their years at Kurzweil, and moving on to their forming the company and developing their stunning virtual instruments. Every instrument they have developed has won numerous awards and they continue to innovate with every release.
With Ivory 3 they have advanced the art of sampled piano expression with their RGB engine, which stands for Real-time Gradient Blending Engine. This new technology seamlessly transitions from velocity level to velocity level, doing away with the sense of sample switching as you play at different dynamic levels, while delivering constant yet subtle timbral change like a real acoustic piano. No company samples a piano at all 128 levels of MIDI velocity (which has now been extended to over 65,000 levels with MIDI 2.0), but Ivory 3 delivers a subtly unique timbre for each of these levels. Their advanced DSP programming recreates the sympathetic resonances (harmonically-related strings vibrating in conjunction with specific struck notes) and sustain resonances (all strings vibrating when the sustain pedal lifts the dampers off all the strings) that occur in a real piano, greatly adding to the performance realism.
All Ivory 3 pianos are MIDI 2.0 ready and include multiple microphone positions, synth layers to add a pad/sustaining sound to enrich the sound, EQ and reverb, plus a unique hammer hardness parameter that is usually only found in modeled instruments. Current V3 models include a vintage 1951 Steinway® American D concert grand, a Hamburg Steinway® D concert grand, a famous Italian concert grand, and four flavors of upright piano including a Yamaha U5 and 1914 Hume.
Current V3 models include a vintage 1951 Steinway® American D concert grand, a Hamburg Steinway® D concert grand, and both Yamaha U5 and 1914 Hume upright pianos. Version 2 pianos include both 7 and 9 ft. Steinways and Bosendorfers, a stunning 10 ft. Italian grand, and both barroom and tack upright pianos.
It’s one thing to have a single instrument, perhaps a keyboard or a guitar available for your studio use. But when you need orchestral sounds there is no way you are going to be able to get that sound other than using virtual instruments. And there is no company more established and recognized for their expertise in this field than Vienna Symphonic Library.
Herb Tucmandl, a cellist from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra formed the company in 2000 to support his film work, both as a cameraman, director and composer/orchestrator. Dissatisfied with the limits of existing sample libraries (he famously complained, “Composing with sample libraries is 1% creativity and 99% damage control!”), he set out to break down the current barriers in sampling approaches and expand the expressive and sonic opportunities. Moving from libraries for existing software samplers to creating his own virtual instruments starting in 2005, Vienna Symphonic Library has been the leader in creating highly expressive orchestral ensembles and solo instruments.
They currently offer two different hosting environments for their diverse range of instruments: the first is Vienna Synchron Stage, an acclaimed scoring stage built to support film, TV, concert recordings and even game soundtracks. Instruments recorded here are bathed in the luxurious sound of a massive concert hall, finely-tuned for excellent sound quality and imaging. The second is their smaller Silent Stage, a small room that leaves the instruments free of any captured ambience, so you can place it into any imaging space you desire.
Vienna instruments are captured from multiple mic positions (using up to 20 mics), with all essential articulations and dynamics reproduced, and the dynamics can be varied in real-time via the Mod Wheel or a breath controller. Single notes, runs, arpeggios, note releases and VSL’s unique legato note transition technology (which provides natural, slurred or portamento-based changes) are provided. Mixing, EQ, impulse-based reverb and much more are included, delivering the most stunning and comprehensive collection of orchestral sounds ever. Instruments include ensemble and solo strings, solo and section brass and woodwinds, percussion, choirs, and special mixed instrument ensembles.
Taking a different approach than sampling, Audio Modeling have developed a range of technologies and products that were born from their desired to create truly expressive instruments that responded to the player’s gestures just like real acoustic instruments do. As their name implies, they use physical modeling, modeled gestural control and some sampled material manipulation to create instruments of unparalleled nuance and realism.
Starting with the germ of an idea from inventor Stefano Lucato, he found a software developer, Emanuele Parravincini, who shared his aspirations, and after over seven years of development, Audio Modeling was formed. The technology they developed is called Synchronous Waves Acoustic Modeling (SWAM for short) that employs what they call Multi-Vector/Phase-Synchronous Sample-Morphing technique. This technology allows them to transition from any possible timbre to another smoothly and naturally. They have different engines dedicated to woodwinds, brass and strings, but all of them provide continuous control over volume, timbre, articulation, vibrato and typical gestures per instrument family.
Each instrument is designed taking into account how the real target instrument is constructed and played: for wind-based instruments what is the exciter used to produce the sound: an open hole (flute), a reed (clarinet or sax) or a double-reed (bassoon, oboe etc.)? What is the body, or resonator of the instrument: an open pipe (flute), a closed pipe (clarinet), or a conical pipe like a saxophone? Does the instrument produce overtones, and via what method? Stringed instruments go through the same analysis and modeling, as do brass. Each element of sound-production process is analyzed, recreated with very finite parameters that you can adjust, and given extensive dynamic control via MIDI messages. The results are instruments that feel alive, and respond to your technique and gestural intentions in ways that sampling cannot provide.
SWAM Solo instruments available include double reeds, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, violin, viola, cello, double bass, trumpets, trombones, horns and tubas. New SWAM String Sections provide multiple violin, violas, cellos and double basses that can be placed in any location in the room to bring you string section sounds and performances that provide new levels of expression and authenticity.
Electric and electro-mechanical keyboards are so omnipresent in popular music from the ‘60s to today. From Ray Charles’ classic intro to “What’d I Say” to Stevie Wonder’s funky “Superstition” to D’Angelo’s moody vibe from the album Voodoo, and so many more, we all need great vintage keyboard sounds. Under development for over 10 years, Spectrasonics Keyscape Collector Keyboards is the motherlode of vintage, historic and essential keyboard sounds. Long a leader in musically-crafted sample-based instruments, Eric Persing and his team collected an extensive selection of keyboard instruments and then carefully and deeply sampled them and modeled their needed effects and common sonic treatments, delivering 36 instruments for your playing pleasure. All flavors and vintages of electric pianos, digital pianos, even acoustic pianos are provided, along with three clav variants, and a host of other rare and unique keyboard instruments. A large part of the character with these types of keyboards are the noises and sonic artifacts from their mechanical action, and these are recreated in this virtual instrument with total user control over how much is present. These sound sources are then programmed by Spectrasonics’ acclaimed team of sound designers, and even developed into new and imaginative timbres and dual-sound blendings. Keyscape stands on top of the crowd for being the most expansive collection of keyboard sounds ever delivered.
Physical modeling is a great technology to use to recreate classic electric piano sounds, and Applied Acoustic Systems have been at the modeling game longer than just about anyone. Their Lounge Lizard EP-5 virtual instrument focuses on the two most classic and desirable electric pianos ever developed, the tine and reed-based keyboards (we all know which keyboards we’re talking about here!). The beauty of using physical modeling is that you can get into the DNA elements of each product’s design and revoice them, changing the tone, sustain/decay, tuning, and even the composite material behavior of each element. Imagine being able to decide the size and density of your hammer tips, or the tuning and level of your tines? Or the tuning and presence of overtones for the reed, and the exact position of the pickups? No two versions of these vintage keyboard sounded exactly alike, and with Lounge Lizard EP-5 you are able to reproduce the widest range of tones and timbral change due to touch ever imagined. EQ and five simultaneous effects are included so you have a production-ready sound at your fingertips from a virtual instrument that doesn’t require gigabytes of storage and a powerful processor to run.
All too often, people think that virtual instruments and computers are only good for keyboard-driven music production. But this technology has advanced enough over the years that now guitar and bass players can finally consider plugging in and recording direct to their computer, without losing any of the sonics and feel that make the marriage of a great guitar and amp combination so special. Overloud is an Italian company who are DSP experts, and have been working for years to develop a range of products aimed at the guitar-playing musician. Their THU V2 amp sim plug-in uses what they call Fluid Modeling technology, coupled with Impulse Reflection capturing of speakers and spaces to perfectly recreate the sound and feel of 89 guitar and 4 bass amps, 50 guitar and 2 bass cabinets, 86 pedal and rack effects and 18 microphone models. If you can think of a brand or model it’s likely included in THU V2. All these building blocks are combined into what they call Rigs, giving you access to almost any amp/speaker/effect combination possible. They even offer THU artist signature packs, so you can have the exact sound chosen for you by the most influential players of today, across all genres. Overloud has a community online where they release new presets every month, and best of all, their virtual instrument even runs on iOS, so you could bring an iPhone/iPad to a gig and no other gear, and still rock out. It’s a great time to be alive!
Sometimes more is… better. Given all the advancements in both sampling and DSP-based synthesis, virtual instruments don’t need to draw on only one or the other. First developed back in 2015, Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere Power Synth has gone through multiple revisions, and v3 stands as the über-synth of all time. Born from the imagination of one of the most acclaimed sound designers of our era, Eric Persing, Omnisphere 3 offers up an astounding 5,590 sampled sources, along with a number of DSP-generated synthesis possibilities, like waveshaping, granular, wavetables, DSP-generated waveforms with analog and digital modulation possibilities, FM… the list goes on and on. Sixty-nine filter types, 8 LFOs, 12 envelopes, 20 oscillators per patch, 93 effects algorithms, up to eight powerful arpeggiators, and… all these specs wouldn’t mean much if it didn’t sound great, and great sounds is its raison d'être. The world-renown sound designers that make up Spectrasonics team have amassed over 41,000 sounds, with a newly-improved interactive patch browser to help guide you. Able to be integrated with over 300 different hardware synths and controllers for a truly hands-on performance experience, Omnisphere 3 has features designed to aid live performance like seamless sound switching, and expanded expression thanks to support for MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). There’s simply too much to convey in this simple overview; suffice to say if you wonder if something is possible within Omnisphere 3 it probably is, and there are multiple ways to achieve most any sound-design goal. So go check it out for yourself!
Sometimes you want to explore new and truly unique timbres for your music. You’ve got plenty of imitative sounds; strings, brass, leads etc. and now want to travel the more unexplored path. Virtual instruments are going to be the answer, as they are the area where developers are exploring the latest technologies, discovering new avenues in sound. Applied Acoustic Systems has been developing physical modeling-based synths for longer than just about anyone: over 25 years. Their Chromophone 3 Acoustic Object Synthesizer is the pinnacle of their research in this area.
As we discussed earlier in this article, we can define the elements of a physical model as two main objects:
Chromophone 3 offers a struck exciter (a mallet), and you can define the hardness/softness of it, and then blend in noise to richen the attack. It then goes into two separate resonators, each offering eight types: string, beam, marimba, drumhead, membrane, plate, open tube, closed tube, and manual. This covers the characteristics of a large variety of instrument types. For many types you can determine where you are striking, what material the resonator is made of, introduce a slight pitch variation and more. Add in an LFO for modulation and an envelope to control the volume characteristic, and then take advantage of five effects slots to color and process the sound. But we’re not done yet – a Chromophone 3 voice uses two of these configurations, so you can create incredibly complex and rich sounds. Add in Master Effects and an arpeggiator and you have a singularly unique synth sure to inspire you.
The black and white key layout of a traditional keyboard is not the most expressive option out there. It gives you pitch choice and dynamic sensing of the initial key strike, but once the key is pressed you have limited control over the sound. Things like a mod wheel to introduce some sound control (like vibrato or filter sweeps) is nice, and aftertouch adds to the expressive options, via pressure introduced at the bottom of the key travel, but there are other ways to perform highly expressive music. Enter GeoShred.
GeoShred is the brainchild of acclaimed virtuoso keyboardist and technologist Jordan Rudess (long-time Dream Theater member), and a company called MoForte, who are leaders in the development of DSP-based instruments. GeoShred combines a bevy of physically-modeled sounds/instruments with a unique isomorphic controller design played via an iPad or iPhone. It’s called an isomorphic controller because it is laid out in a series of six-rows that can be thought of as a guitar fretboard, with each string tuned in fourths (although that can be changed). It differs from playing physical strings in that you can slide your fingers across the screen, tap on multiple notes at the same time, and introduce expression to the sound via gestures made while holding a note down. Vibrato can be introduced by simply wiggling your finger, pitch-bend by dragging your finger across the screen, and many other ways. There is also an on-screen X/Y pad for controlling other sound parameters and the built-in effects.
While it is available as a stand-alone app for your iOS devices, using GeoShred Studio on your computer allows you to integrate its sounds and performance gestures within your DAW, just like any other plug-in instrument. The free GeoShred Control app is used on your device to “play into” the plug-in, giving you the unique MIDI MPE (multiple polyphonic expression) control that so expands your performance capabilities. Along with the included library of plucked string physically-modeled sounds, MoForte has partnered with other companies (like Audio Modeling to offer wind and brass sounds), and other companies provide a wide array of sound choices to expand your palette. Words cannot adequately convey the beauty of this performance innovation, so take a moment to watch this video to better understand and enjoy this breakthrough in expressive performance.
Creating multi-instrument phrases requires a fair amount of work within your DAW. You need to enter the line you want each instrument to play separately, which takes some time, and can be difficult for people to conceptualize without first writing down the score parts. This method does give you the most control over each part, but it’s tedious. When your part includes some single note, or unison sections that then become multi-note chord voicings, things only get more complicated.
In the commonly-heard pop/rock/funk concept of a three-horn section, you may have a keyboard or virtual instrument that already includes a section of this sort, but every note you play will play all three horns together. That’s fine for unison runs, but when you want a chord voicing, things go horribly wrong. Instead of spreading out the chord so the trumpet plays the highest note, the sax plays the middle, and the trombone (or bari sax) plays the lowest, you now have a total of 12 players, all playing all the notes. Wrong, wrong, wrong!! Thankfully, there is now an application that can handle all these needs in real-time, so you can just play your part and the software will intelligently divide up the parts as needed. That application is called Divisimate.
Divisimate can take any MIDI part either recorded or played live and redistribute the notes in any way you need. So a block chord can be divvied up into separate elements (like the horn example above, or a string quartet) or groups of players, like 3 violins and a piccolo for the top note, 4 cellos and an English horn for the middle note, and 2 double basses, a bass trombone and a tuba for the lowest note. It is simple to experiment with different orchestration choices without changing your recorded MIDI track, just call up a different Divisimate preset and compare the results. This is just the fundamental action that the software can perform; there are plenty of other options, like transforming controller gestures to limit or expand their range, or even trade one for another, so your Mod Wheel can be routed to become aftertouch, and notes can be transposed to fit within a certain scale or mode. Along with a built-in advanced arpeggiator and the ability to add slight variations to the data to “humanize” a performance, Divismate provides a new way to easily create highly expressive orchestrations and live performances, and is available in three sizes to meet your budget and needs.
We hope this information helps you to better understand the world of virtual instruments, so you can more easily find what you want. ILIO is ready to serve your needs, with our carefully curated collection of brands and titles, and our staff, who are ready to answer your questions and help you get the most out of your creative tools.