Unlike many other ukulele sample libraries, UKU can both play strums and solo notes, but not only!

You can play any chord, any voicing, and even create your own, even impossible ones and play them using strum, finger picking or patterns.

We used a very common Kala Mahogany 4 strings concert ukulele (GCEA tuning) and sampled it very deeply, all frets of all strings with upstrokes, downstrokes, round robins, releases, staccatos, mutes, palm mutes, hand blocks, slides, hammer ons, pull offs, retriggers, fretnoises, percussions other articulations. All of these details allow us to reproduce the real playing of a ukulele player, and easily.

Just like for our other guitar libraries, there are basically 4 modes (that you can choose using key-switches, G5 to C6), the solo mode that allows to play melodies, the chord mode that helps playing strums or picking very easily, the patterns mode that does all of the strumming or picking for you and the MIDI mode that allows you to use your preferred midi guitar controller.

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Overview & walkthrough

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Strumming machine

The UKU can strum, in various ways, up, down, muted, in legato and allows finger strumming or finger picking. Everything is modeled after meticulously analyzing thousands of real chords played by ukulele player. Every aspect of the strumming engine can be tweaked to achieve the sound you want.

The chord recognition engine helps converting any chord you play on your keyboard to a real ukulele voicing. Recognizing a chord is made through a database of thousands of standard chords, and you can edit every chord or even add new ones.

The chord hammers feature lets you play left hand hammer ons and pull offs while strumming or picking.

The triggers are set from C4 to C5.

C4 is the finger strum down,
C#4 is the finger strum down muted,
D4 is the finger strum up,
D#4 is the finger 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 that you are playing as well as the octave it is in. Right under it, you have access to a voicing menu that contains all of the possible voicings of that chord on a ukulele, and you can select one for each octave.

In this panel, you can edit the chord you are currently playing, so just 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 ukulele 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 ukulele 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 ukulele 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.

Realistic patterns

The patterns mode is very similar to the chord mode, the chord recognition engine works the same way, but this time the triggers are not simple strums anymore, they are a set of patterns that you can loop, adapt to the tempo or the metrics, change the velocity in real time using a controller, synch to your host, add groove to.

You can choose from a large selection of patterns or create your using the pattern maker and assign them to each trigger to create a full song in a few clicks.

You can assign 13 different patterns of your choice to 13 different notes. Clicking on one of the keys on the interface will launch the pattern, triggering another one will stop the first one and start the new one. You can also trigger the patterns from the keyboard using the notes from C4 to C5. By default releasing the keys will stop the pattern. The velocity at which you press the key will determine the velocity of the whole pattern.

The Parameters can change a few aspects of the current pattern.

Let Ring determines if the "off" events contained in the pattern will be played or not,
Length controls the length of the pattern, it can be anything from 1 to the length of the pattern and can be adapted the metrics of your song (even odd numbers),
Speed you can play the pattern at different speeds, half or double speed for example,
Link makes the let ring, length and speed values of the patterns global for all patterns or only for the selected pattern. If it is on, then changing the let ring will affect all of the patterns, and when it is off, only the currently selected one,
Average Vel is the center velocity or the pattern, it starts at the velocity of the trigger you played, but can also be modulated over time using a midi controller. By default, we use the modulation wheel to control it,
Deviation is the difference between the lowest and the highest velocity of the MIDI events composing the pattern, it can also be modulated in real time,
Shuffle adds groove to the pattern, we created a complex algorithm to allow for shuffle without quantizing, so you keep the realism and are still able to add some groove,
Latch determines if releasing a key will stop the pattern or not, when turned on, pressing a key will launch the pattern and you will need to press it again to stop it,
Bar Sync will sync your playing to the bars, meaning that whenever you play a key, the pattern will not start until the next bar starts, this is useful only when working in a sequencer,

Pattern Maker

Creating realistic ukulle patterns has never been easier. You can create finger strumming, or finger picking patterns in seconds and even make them of an infinite size.

We even made the sharing of these patterns easy, just save them and send them to other users, the database can only grow!

Song Builder

The song builder panel is the feature that will let you compose songs extremely quickly. Sometimes playing a series of chords can be complicated, especially if you are not an advanced keyboardist. The song builder allows you to decide which chord will be triggered when selecting only one note. For example pressing only the C will be recognized as a C Major. You can repeat the operation for the whole 12 notes of the octave and this way construct your songs and play them easily.

We included a selection of presets to give song ideas, chord progressions, modes or chord types.

Combine this with the patterns and pressing two keys at the same time is enough to play a song.

Solo mode, automatic hand position

The solo mode is very simple, and is suited to play melodies. It uses a smart hand position system that decides for you where a real ukulele player would put his hand and which string he would play. A piano only has one middle C for example, but a ukulele offers a few different options and our script will decide it for you. You can of course deactivate it and use only the first hand position if you want.

The UKU features our powerful legato engine that will automatically trigger legato, hammer ons, pull offs, or slides and the legato distance will define the maximum interval in which the legato will apply.

You also have access to key switches to play palm mutes, harmonics (flageolets) or even percussion sounds and control the legato engine.

Preferences

Every aspect of the library can be tweaked, the release, fret and pre-notes volumes, as well as the midi response of your keyboard.

A three band EQ and a reverb module can be adjusted from the preferences panel.

MIDI guitar

If you own a MIDI guitar and want to expand its sound capabilities, then the MIDI mode is for you, all you need to do is select the 4 different MIDI chanels your guitar outputs and you are ready to play.

Tech specs

User guide

1Gb uncompressed, 260Mbb compressed in lossless flac format, around 3058 samples.

Strumming engine (features chord recognition and a smart strumming technique to produce ukulele-like chords) and complete control of all its parameters.

67 realistic patterns for easy strumming, picking and advanced playing styles.

Integrated song builder to create songs within minutes and very easily

Integrated pattern builder to automatically strum your chords

Legato script to play natural hammer ons, pull offs and slides.

Natural hand placement simulation.

53 different samples per fret and all 18 fret sampled for each string.

Multi velocity Hammer on, pull off, slides up, slides down, mutes, ghost notes, pre notes.

Advanced bend control.

Advanced UVI scripting giving you access to a simple yet powerfull interface and advanced features.

and more...

Sample player

UKU plays in UVI Player (formerly UVI Workstation), UVI's free sample player. We provide it with every library you buy, so you don't need an expensive sampler to use our products. It works on Mac (macOS 10.14 or later, Intel or Apple silicon) and Windows (10 or later), standalone or as a plug-in (VST / VST3 / AU / AAX), in 64-bit only. More about it here.

VSTVST3AUAAXStandalone

Copy Protection

We use the iLok system to protect our products and you can choose to register your license to your computer or to an iLok dongle. If you decide to use an iLok dongle, both V1 and V2 are compatible with our products. You can activate your license on up to 3 computers or iLok dongles at the same time and you can deactivate one and activate another as many times as you want.

Registration

Once your order is complete, you will be provided with a serial number. You will then be able to register it to your iLok account from our website on this page (you need to be logged in to access this page). The whole process is described in the FAQ (instructions + screencast).

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