Sunbird

The triggers are set from C4 to C5.

• C4 is the strum down,
• C#4 is the strum down muted,
• D4 is the strum up,
• D#4 is the strum up muted,
• E4, F4, G4, A4, B4 and C5 (the white keys) are for the 6 different strings,
• F#4 triggers the chord but shifted from the Chord Slide value,
• G#4 stops the chord and play a hand mute sample,
• A#4 stops the chord and plays slide down samples,

A small chord panel displays the chord currently being played and the selected octave range. Immediately beneath this panel is access to a voicing menu that contains all of the possible voicings of that chord on a guitar, and each chord can be selected for each octave.

In this panel, the chord currently being played can also be edited; click on the edit button, then change the chord and hit apply to override that chord voicing, or press insert to add that chord to the list of available vicings for that chord.

You can even export and load a chord configuration using the export and load buttons. The chord configuration will also contain the information present in the chord builder if you used it.

The Chord Mode can be set in two positions,

• The Guitar mode that separates the notes selection from the triggers. So pressing a chord with the left hand with only make the soft sounds that your left hand would make on a real guitar and you need to trigger the chords or the single strings with the right hand.
• The Piano mode will trigger the chords as soon as you press a chord, the upstrokes and downstrokes are automatic depending on the position in the current bar. Repeating a chord can be done by releasing and replaying any of the notes contained in the chord. It can be more intuitive, but does not allow for as much detail and realism when you play the chords.

The UP/DOWN Trigger controls if the automatic strum up and down is engaged. If set to manual, C4 is the strum down and D4 is the strum up. If set to Auto, C4 acts as a strum up or down depending on the position in the current bar.

The Let Ring controls wether the chord stops when you release your right hand. This can be handy for fast/complex chord progressions.

The Mixed Mode is as its name implies a mix of the solo mode and the chord mode. If you play chords a regular melody with one note at a time or two as a legato, it will play single notes or hammers and slides as selected in the solo mode If you play 3 notes or more or play two notes simultaneously, the chord mode is engaged and it will strum that chord just like in the piano mode.

The Accent, Strum Speed and Strum Center are all linked to the chord simulation. We extracted the data from hundreds of real guitar strums and allow you to control these parameters.

• Accent controls how hard it is to trigger all of the 6 strings with velocity, the min strum number defines the minimum number of strings that are played in a strum at the lowest velocity.
• Strum Speed controls the oversall time needed to strum all 6 strings.
• Strum Center is basically your right hand vertical position over the strings, if it is at the top (position 1), then you will hear more of the first and second string and if you are at the bottom (position 6), you will hear more of the last two strings.

The Clean Play controls how dirty and precise you want the playing to be, if set at 6, the engine will always use clean samples, but if at 1, it will mostly use samples of "not pressed well" notes.

The Chord Hammers is probably whatmakes the library the most realistic. It allows you to go from one chord to another and play the hammer ons and pull offs between them. We used it a lot in the finger picking demo.

The Capo simulates a real capo, you can choose to make it transpose the chords or not, transposing can be useful if you want to play chords high on the neck.

The Transpose is related to the Capo function. And it will decide if the Capo actually transposes the chord or not. For example an E chord with the Capo at fret one will sound like an F chord without the transpose function, if you enable it, the E chord will stay an E chord, but the engine will look for an alternate position to play it starting from the capo.

The Auto Voicing feature enables the different guitar chord positions depending on the octave in which it is played. You can disable it if you play on a small controller or just want to play the first position.

The Preferences panel / Microphones mixing panel can be opened by clicking at the bottom of the interface, in there you have access to all of the different parameters of the library.

The Release Vol controls the volume of the release samples,

The Auto Fret noise vol controls the volume of the automatically generated fret noises, they happen when the left hand moves in solo mode and when you change chord in the chord mode,

The Pre Notes Vol controls the volume of the soft noises your left hand makes when selecting a chord in chord/Guitar mode,

The Dynamics controls the volume of the lowest velocity,

The Velocity Curve controls the volume response of the library to velocity,

The Midi Sensitivity is some kind of a midi remapper, and it controls how hard you need to press a key for it to trigger a certain velocity,

The Reverb Amount and Room size are two simple controls for the UVI SparkVerb, and you can tweak it a little more using the FX section in UVI Player.

You can choose which playing style (picking or finger picking) will be used for every trigger mode.

The Palm Length controls how long the palm mutes last,

The EQ is a simple 3 band EQ,

You can load / unload / enable / disable / and change the volume of each microphone perspective.

You can also set the whole output as mono or stereo.