Strawberry Users Guide

Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry

User's Guide

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Preface ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Installation ...................................................................................................................................... 5

Extracting the RAR Files.............................................................................................................. 5

Loading in KONTAKT ................................................................................................................... 5

KONTAKT Sample Library Organization...................................................................................... 6

Interface .......................................................................................................................................... 7

Navigation Menus ...................................................................................................................... 7

Load/Save Preset ........................................................................................................................ 7

Section Lock ................................................................................................................................ 7

Interface: Performance ................................................................................................................... 8

Fretting ....................................................................................................................................... 8

Picking ........................................................................................................................................ 9

Tuning ......................................................................................................................................... 9

Strumming ................................................................................................................................ 10

Chords ...................................................................................................................................... 10

Resonance ................................................................................................................................ 11

Interface: Mapping ....................................................................................................................... 12

Articulations ............................................................................................................................. 13

Strum Keys ................................................................................................................................ 13

Strum Patterns ......................................................................................................................... 14

Pitch Wheel .............................................................................................................................. 14

Vibrato ...................................................................................................................................... 15

Interface: Effects ........................................................................................................................... 16

Guitar Tone ............................................................................................................................... 16

Stompbox 1, 2, and 3 ............................................................................................................... 16

Amp / Cab ................................................................................................................................. 16

Delay ......................................................................................................................................... 17


User's Guide

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Reverb ...................................................................................................................................... 17

Strumming Patterns ...................................................................................................................... 18

Recording Your Own Patterns .................................................................................................. 18

Automation ................................................................................................................................... 19

Built-in Automation System ..................................................................................................... 19

Credits ........................................................................................................................................... 20

Contact .......................................................................................................................................... 21


User's Guide

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Thank you for purchasing the Evolution Electric Guitar - Strawberry sample library! The

Strawberry library features over 3.4 gigabytes (compressed to 1.6 GB of NCW lossless samples)

of 24-bit electric guitar samples, powered by KONTAKT’s extensive scripting engine.

The guitar sampled for this library has a body made of tropical Mahogany wood, giving it a

powerful and warm sound. The top and neck is crafted out of North American Hard Rock

Maple, which provides a crisp tone. The fretboard is made of a custom composite wood (which

gives it a tone very similar to that of ebony) that is designed to eliminate any “hot spots” or

other unevenness in tone. The bridge and nut are both specially designed to give the guitar

maximum sustain. The alnico pickups are optimized for a fat, vintage tone. The strings used are

special coated steel strings (11s), known not only for their long life, but also their bright tone

and punch, which is characteristic of non-coated strings.


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The first thing you need to do when installing Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry is to extract

the RAR files that you downloaded, which can be done using 7-Zip (Windows), or UnRarX (Mac).

The main thing you need to bear in mind when extracting the RAR files is that all the files need

to ultimately extract into the same "Evolution Electric Guitar - Strawberry" folder.

Begin with extracting the "Strawberry-Engine.rar" file, which includes all the core files

necessary to play Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry, including the main patch to load in

KONTAKT, documentation, and the preset files.

Next, extract the "Strawberry-Samples.part1.rar" file. You only need to extract this first part

and none of the other parts, because the RAR extraction software will automatically draw the

files from these other RARs in the process. In the event that the files get extracted into a

different folder (with an alternate name, with a "1" at the end, for instance), just move the

"Samples" subfolder back into the main "Evolution Electric Guitar - Strawberry" folder.

After extracting the RAR files by following the above instructions, your installation is now

complete!

After launching KONTAKT in standalone or as a plugin in your DAW, click the "Files" dropdown

at the top of KONTAKT's interface, and click "Load...". Navigate to the "Evolution Electric Guitar

- Strawberry" folder that was created during the extraction of the library, and open the "EEG

Strawberry.nki" file.

TIP: If the extraction process was successful, the library should load without displaying a

"missing samples" dialog. If that does happen, please refer to the previous section in this guide

and ensure that you followed the installation steps exactly. Usually this error occurs when the

RAR files don't get extracted all into the same folder.

TIP: If the patch doesn't load, displaying an error, please ensure that you have the very latest

version of KONTAKT. Updating KONTAKT is a quick and easy process using the Native

Instruments Service Center.


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As your collection of KONTAKT libraries expands, it's important to keep them organized. For

example, keep them all within a main "KONTAKT Sample Libraries" folder rather than scattered

around your hard drive. Backing up the installation files for your sample libraries is also a good

idea.

The next step in organizing your sample libraries is in KONTAKT itself. One of the benefits of

storing your sample libraries all in the same place is that it makes finding them faster when

manually loading them. For KONTAKT Player instruments, there's the library tab, which is also a

useful shortcut to access instruments, but unfortunately is limited to only the libraries that

license the KONTAKT Player. One of the best library organization methods that KONTAKT

includes is the Quick Load menu. This allows you to sort shortcuts to your libraries in any

folder/subfolder format you wish, and can be quickly accessed with a single right-click in any

empty area of the multi-rack (the large portion of KONTAKT's interface that displays the loaded

instruments).


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The controls in Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry have been organized into different sections,

which can be navigated through by using the two section dropdown menus. The leftmost menu

is the main section ("Performance", "Mapping", and "Effects"), and the menu to the right of this

selects the page within this section.

Evolution Electric Guitar has the ability to store presets as external files, making it easy to share

presets and copy presets between separate projects. It also means that when updating

Evolution Electric Guitar, your external presets will remain compatible and not become

obsolete.

Clicking the lock icon will toggle the section lock for the currently selected main section (the

leftmost section menu). When loading a preset, it will not overwrite the settings in any locked

sections. That way you can preserve the mapping, effects, or performance settings while

auditioning other presets.

TIP: The section lock is indispensable if you already have a guitar track sequenced, and want to

load a different guitar preset without altering your articulation setup, any special effect keys

you've mapped, and so forth.


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Play Mode - While Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry models the physics of a real guitar, this

control lets you bypass the monophonic nature of each guitar string, allowing you to play

multiple notes on a single string. That way non-guitarists can easily sequence guitar tracks

without having to worry about the natural limitations of the guitar. It's great when playing the

sample library from a MIDI keyboard as well.

Fret Position - Because of how guitars naturally work, you can play the same pitches in multiple

areas of the guitar's neck, which results in very distinct tonal differences. The notes are brighter

and sustain longer when they are closer to the base of the neck (toward the right side of

Strawberry's interface), and warmer and punchier higher up on the neck of the guitar (towards

the left on the interface). Usually lead guitar parts are played with a higher fret position and

chordal parts are played lower, but you can determine the exact position of the notes using this

control.

Legato Range - This sets an interval value as a threshold for playing legato. That way when you

play overlapping notes within this interval, they will always get played as legato rather than

being played harmonically.

MIDI Guitar - There are two main MIDI guitar modes: single channel and multi-channel. The

multi-channel MIDI guitar mode accepts MIDI channels 1-6 as the input to each separate string,

so if you're using the multi-channel option, be sure to set the MIDI input for Strawberry to

"Omni" (the setting for this can be found in the instrument's header in KONTAKT's interface).

The single-channel mode is for using a MIDI guitar that outputs all its data to a single MIDI

channel. Both these MIDI guitar modes recognize muted notes from the MIDI guitar. When you

play a muted note on a MIDI guitar, it outputs it as an extremely short MIDI note, which

Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry recognizes when in either MIDI guitar mode. These muted

notes are then properly translated to use the muted articulation.

Fret Noise - Unless disabled, this sets the volume of the automatic fret noises. These fret noises

are played every time the fret position control is changed. If you need to manually trigger fret

noises, you can map a fret noise key to Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry's mapping. See the

"Extended Effects" section of the mapping section of this manual for more information on how

to accomplish this.


User's Guide

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Pick Position - This adjusts the location where the string is picked. Closer to the bridge of the

guitar will return a brighter, more nasal sound, while picking close to the neck gives you a

warmer, long sustain.

Style - This changes the style of picking, which determines whether the strings are picked as

downstrokes or upstrokes. Downstrokes have a meatier tone, while upstrokes are slightly

weaker and brighter sounding. This is a pretty subtle control, but useful for power users who

really want to get an exact sound out of the guitar.

Alternate - The "Alternate" picking mode strictly alternates between down and

upstrokes.

Economy - "Economy" picking takes into consideration the last pick direction with which

the next string to pick in order to determine a more ergonomic decision for which pick

direction to use. This picking technique is commonly used for fast playing and arpeggios.

8th / 16th Notes - The 8th and 16th note modes alternate picking based on when the

note is picked relative to your host, meaning that it syncs to the timing, with

downstrokes being used for downbeats and upstrokes being used for upbeats. These

two modes are useful for rhythmic playing.

Downstroke / Upstroke - Finally, there are "Downstroke" and "Upstroke" only modes,

which allow you to limit the picking to a single direction.

Pick Noise - This adjusts the volume and general length of the pre-pick noises. Pre-pick noises

are a proprietary technology that contribute a lot of realism to your guitar track by adding pick

scrape and tap noises which occur before the string is actually plucked. These noises that

anticipate the sustains can add a great deal of realism, particularly when using distortion or

compression in your guitar tone, which would emphasize extraneous noises such as these.

Capo - A capo essentially transposes the entire guitar upward. This is useful for chordal playing,

because many guitar chords use open strings for a fuller sound. So by transposing the open

strings (that is, the root pitch of the strings), these full-sounding guitar chords are available in

other keys.

Tuning Preset - This control lets you select between a large variety of commonly used alternate

tunings.


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Individual Tuners - These six controls allow you to individually tune the strings, coming up with

your own alternate tuning.

Strum Speed - This adjusts the overall speed of the strumming.

Vel > Speed - This controls how the velocity of the strum keys affect the speed of each strum.

That way, you can make it so that playing the strum keys louder will result in faster, tighter

strums as opposed to playing them softly.

Vel > Limit - When you strum on a guitar, sometimes not all the strings are strummed. This

control lets you adjust how velocity affects the number of strings strummed. That way, lower

velocities will strum fewer strings, while high velocities will strum the entire chord. This can add

a lot of life and realism to your strumming patterns.

Velocity Decay - When strumming, the last strings played are strummed softer than the first

strings strummed. This control adjusts the amount of velocity decay. At 0%, all the strings will

be strummed at an even velocity, while at 100%, the last strings will be strummed extremely

soft compared to the first strings.

Chord Mode - There are three chord settings available, "Disabled", "Held Notes" and, "Auto

Detect". The general playability of the latter two chord modes is to hold the desired chord in

the main playing area and then use the strumming keys, or strumming pattern keys to achieve a

guitar strumming part.

Disabled - Although the chord system is disabled, you can still use the strumming keys,

but manually played notes are still audible. This essentially allows you use the

strumming keys to repeat whichever notes you have just played--making it simple to

play fast repeating single notes or even chords (powerchords, for example).

Held Notes - This mode lets you strum the currently held notes as the exact chord

voicing. This is useful if you have very specific notes that you want strummed. The only

difference between this chord mode and having the chord mode disabled is that notes

that you play in the main playing area are silent.

Auto Detect - The auto detect mode figures out a real guitar voicing to use, interpreting

whichever notes you have held. The inversion in which you play the chord makes a

difference, and it will search for a guitar voicing closest to the fretting position.


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TIP: Automating the chord mode control allows you to easily switch between strumming and a

traditional style of sequencing--for example, it could be used for a rhythm guitar part that

momentarily includes single-note guitar riffs.

Chord Position - By default, the chord detection system finds chord voicings closest to the

fretting position as set in the "fretting" section of Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry's

interface. This control allows you to bypass the usual fretting position to set a specific position

to use only for the chord detection system.

Open Strings - When enabled, this allows open strings to always be available for use in chord

voicings, despite the current fretting position.

Low Limit - This allows you to set the low limit for the chords if you want to limit the strumming

to a certain range of strings.

High Limit - This allows you to set the high limit for the chords.

Amount - This sets the volume of the sympathetic resonance samples. This can add a realistic

body to the tone of the guitar, which is useful for chordal playing. However, be careful when

applying it to lead sounds that it doesn't add unwanted extraneous noises.

Muting - This controls how fast the resonance is muted when releasing notes.


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The mapping interface gives you the power to enable any articulations you need for your guitar

track. You can even set how you want to access the articulation, be it a custom non-latching

keyswitch, MIDI CC number, or even simply a velocity range.

The section of this interface labeled "Articulation" has dropdown menus which allow you to

first select the articulation you wish to edit, and then assign it to a velocity, MIDI controller

number, or keyswitch. If you don't need an articulation, you can disable it, which unloads the

articulation's samples from memory, saving you RAM and loading time. Underneath this

condition dropdown are the parameters for the condition, be it the velocity range, MIDI

controller number and range, or keyswitch note.

Here's a list of the articulations that are included in Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry:

Sustain - Regular picked sustain.

Palm Mute - The string is muted near the guitar's bridge with the side of the guitarist's

palm, creating a slightly muted tone.

Mute - The string is fully muted with the fretting hand.

Squeal - When the string is picked, the edge of the thumb briefly grazes the string,

creating a high-pitched harmonic.

Blues Strum - When picking the desired note, the adjacent muted strings also get picked

as well.

Strum Sustain - Because strummed notes sound different than single-picked strings due

to the difference in how the pick contacts the strings, we've included strummed

sustains.


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Strum Muted - Similar to the previous articulation, except muted.

Tapping - Tapped notes aren't picked, but are notes played directly on the fretboard.

This is achieved by fretting the notes with enough force to make them ring.

Natural Harmonics - These are the natural harmonics which correspond with the

harmonic series. Natural harmonics are played by lightly resting a fretting finger on the

harmonic node, and picking the string as usual.

Below this section are the extended effects. These are special effects such as scrapes, scratches,

and fret noises. The first dropdown menu allows you to select the special effect to edit. You can

use the speaker icon button to enable auto-auditioning of the selected effect--that way you can

preview the effect before assigning it to a key. Lastly, the button below this dropdown menu

lets you assign the selected effect to a MIDI note. To do this, press the button and then play the

MIDI note you want the effect to reside on, either by playing the note on your MIDI keyboard or

clicking it on KONTAKT's keyboard graphic. To unassign an effect, simply click the "X" button.

The right-side display acts as an overview of your entire mapping, along with a display showing

details about the articulation or effect currently playing. That way you can see the entire

mapping for the guitar at once.

Vel Morphing - Enables the velocity morphing feature, which smooths out the changes

between velocity layers, at the expense of extra CPU and polyphony usage.

Vel Bias - Decreases the threshold for both the loud dynamic as well as the soft dynamic.

Essentially, it makes the loud dynamic accessible at a lower velocity, and the soft dynamic

accessible at a higher velocity.

Release Vol - Sets the volume of the release samples.

Alt Release - Selects an alternate release sample style.

Alt Chance - Sets the percent chance that the alternate release sample will be played instead of

the normal release sample.

Downstroke - Sets the keyswitch for the downstroke strum key.

Upstroke - Sets the keyswitch for the upstroke strum key.


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Single Strings - This sets the range of seven single strum keys. The first strum key plays the

lowest fretted note in the detected chord, while the next six keys play each string from the

lowest to highest pitch (E, A, D, G, B, high E). When in the "held notes" chord mode, these

single strum keys do not correspond with individual strings, but the notes in order of their

pitch. It works this way so that the strumming patterns retain compatibility whether you're in

the detected chord voicing mode or the held notes mode.

TIP: You can use the "L" button to MIDI learn the value for any these controls.

TIP: In order to use the strum patterns, you must have the strum keys mapped.

Octave - This sets the octave that the strumming patterns are mapped.

TIP: You can use the "L" button to MIDI learn the octave for the strum patterns.

Start Timing - You can use this control to set whether you want the strumming patterns to sync

with your DAW's position, or use the "free" setting so that the strumming pattern starts exactly

when you press the key. The "sync" mode is not only useful if you want to ensure that the

pattern plays in perfect sync with your DAW, but also if the strumming pattern doesn't start on

the first beat of the measure.

Speed - This controls the playback speed of the pattern, whether you need it to play at the

same tempo it was written in, double time, or half the tempo.

Load Pattern - You can use this dropdown menu to load external pattern files into the various

strumming pattern keys. You can also remove patterns from this menu, too.

Mode - This sets whether the pitch wheel creates a bend, or whether it acts as a slide. Bear in

mind that you can automate this control if you need to switch between these options in

realtime.

Affect - Selects which notes are affected by the pitch wheel. That way you not only have the

power to bend or slide all the held notes, but can bend/slide single notes as well.

Distance - Sets the distance of the bend or slide.


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Amount - Sets the width of the vibrato--this control is automated to CC #1 (mod wheel) by

default, because the mod wheel is traditionally used to control vibrato amount. Of course, you

can always remove this automation if you prefer otherwise.

Speed - Sets the speed of the vibrato.


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Pickup - Switches between the bridge, bridge/neck mix, and neck pickup settings.

Tracking - Selects how many guitar tracks you want for double/triple/quadruple tracking.

Double/triple/quadruple tracking is a recording technique that allows you to create thicker,

wider guitar tones by recording the same guitar track multiple times and layering the takes.

Each guitar track is automatically panned in opposite, balanced directions.

Humanization - Sets the timing humanization between the different guitar tracks when using

double/triple/quadruple tracking.

Output Volume - Sets the overall output volume of the guitar in order to equalize the volume

between presets or prevent clipping in high-gain effects setups. If you need to create volume

swells, it's better to use the volume pedal stompbox, which consumes less CPU than

automating the output volume control.

Type - Selects between a variety of available stompboxes.

Bypass - Enables/disables the stompbox.

Bypass - Turns off all amp/cab modeling, if you want to bypass Evolution Electric Guitar

Strawberry's internal guitar effect processing in favor of using an external plugin. Of course, this

control only bypasses the amp/cab modeling, and not the virtual stompboxes.

Cab Type - Lets you select from a variety of cab sizes, mics, and mic positions. Due to size

limitations, initials were used for the cab setting label. Here's what they mean:

Mic positions:

C - Close

OA - Close, off-axis

E - Close, edge

F - Far

Mics:

57 - Shure SM57 (dynamic)


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421 - Sennheiser MD 421-II (dynamic)

609 - Sennheiser e609 (dynamic)

i5 - Audix i5 (dynamic)

2A - Rode NT2-A (large diaphragm condenser)

184 - Neumann KM 184 (small diaphragm condenser)

112 - AKG D 112 (dynamic)

Amp Type - Switches between several amp models which excel at different distortion tones.

Gain - Sets the amp's gain, which can vary from "crunch" in the low values to distortion in the

high values.

Spring Verb - Controls the amount of spring reverb.

Amount - Sets the overall volume of the delay rack effect.

Time - Sets the delay time--essentially the time between each echo in the delay effect.

Damping - Controls the high frequency attenuation in the delayed signal.

Pan - Adds a ping-pong effect to the delay, by panning each delayed signal in opposite

directions.

Feedback - Controls the decay of the echos in the delay effect.

Amount - Sets the overall volume of the reverb rack effect.

Pre Delay - Adds a delay before the reverb takes effect.

Size - Controls the length of the reverb.

Damping - Sets the amount that the high frequencies are attenuated to simulate absorption in

the reverb.

Width - Sets the stereo width of the reverb.


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While creating your own strumming pattern presets is more of a power-user feature, Evolution

Electric Guitar Strawberry features a unique and powerful solution to overcome the limitations

of built-in pattern editors. This is achieved by letting you work in your own DAW's sequencing

environment and then recording that data into Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry.

To record your strumming sequences into Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry, open

KONTAKT's back-end interface by clicking on the wrench icon in the upper left corner of the

instrument's interface. Located in the script editor portion, you'll find the strum pattern

recording interface. You may have to open the script editor if it is hidden from view, by clicking

on the "Script Editor" button in the upper right corner of the backend interface. Also, make sure

that the script editor has the "Pattern" tab selected, which is the very leftmost tab.

Arm - Arms the pattern recorder to accept input. After arming the recorder, the next step is to

press "play" in your sequencer and let the entire pattern play so it inputs the data into

Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry. Afterwards, stop your sequencer, and the pattern recorder

will automatically halt recording. Only the strum keys and single string strums will be recorded,

while any held chords or other notes will be ignored.

Save Pattern - After recording your pattern, use this button to save the pattern as an external

strumming pattern preset, which can be shared or loaded into the available strumming pattern

keys in your current and future projects.

TIP: In order to allow the strumming pattern to properly loop, make sure to not let the last

strumming key hold past the end of the last measure.


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Evolution Electric Guitar - Strawberry has the ability to integrate with KONTAKT's powerful

automation system, which means that you can assign a MIDI continuous controller to directly

affect a control, whether used for real-time playing or for sequencing. Most of the controls in

Strawberry's interface can be automated. This is achieved by two methods. Firstly, you can

right-click on any automatable knob and use the MIDI learn option to assign the MIDI CC #. The

second method is to manually drag a MIDI CC # from the listing of CCs in KONTAKT's

automation section on KONTAKT's left sidebar onto one of the knobs on Strawberry's interface.

This is accessed in the "Auto", then "Midi Automation" tab.

TIP: You can also set the automation ranges for MIDI CCs in KONTAKT's MIDI automation tab.

This is helpful if you want to limit the range of controllers.


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Production, scripting, graphics:

Greg Schlaepfer

Beta testing:

Alejandro Tiscornia, Jani Kaataja, Perry D'Armond, Geert Bevin, Blake Robinson, Frederic

Moueza, Bob Bergen, Bill Thompson, David Reinstein, Richard Penrose

Special thanks to:

Oriana Schlaepfer, Peter DeLegge


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We’d love to hear from you! If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for the

improvement of our products, please don't hesitate to contact us. For the latest updates on

what's going on at Orange Tree Samples, you can subscribe to our newsletter from the Orange

Tree Samples website, and visit us on Facebook.

Email: [email protected]

Website: orangetreesamples.com

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Thank you once again for supporting Orange Tree Samples! It is our sincere pleasure to provide

you with high-quality, affordable sample libraries.

Orange Tree Samples, Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry are trademarks property of Orange Tree Samples.

Native Instruments, KONTAKT, 7-Zip, UnRarX, Shure, SM57, AKG, D 112, Neumann, KM 184, Sennheiser,

e609, MD 421-II, Audix, i5, Rode, NT-2A are trademarks property of their respective owners.

© 2008-2012 Orange Tree Samples. All Rights Reserved.

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Documents

Strawberry Users Guide