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As a guitarist, it feels just so… wrong to me to extensively sample my instrument. Of course, this is stupid – I use sampled instruments all the time, drums especially. My stupid limbic system is just feeling things that don’t make sense, and it’s just screaming “They’ll put you out of a job! It’ll be the soup line for you!” despite the fact that the earliest sampler (the Mellotron) came about in 1963 and never put anyone out of a job. So when my friend Greg Schlaepfer of Orange Tree Samples asked for some advice on 8 string guitars for his upcoming sample library, that same part of my brain was like “DON’T YOU FUCKING DO IT TRAITOR!”. Luckily for everyone involved, logic prevailed and I gave him some solid advice, and now many months later, this extremely patient man has released Evolution Banshee, an extensive sample library of a Schecter Banshee 8 string with Bare Knuckle Juggernaut pickups.
In an article we wrote up last year, we talked about drum hero Anup Sastry and his compositions which feature live drums and sampled guitars, which is a bit backwards from the normal recorded guitar and sampled drums thing I hear all the fucking time. But it makes perfect sense – why shouldn’t drummers have access to the same kind of tech that guitarists do to make their songs come to life? I see no reason.
Evolution Banshee might not be the first of its kind, but it’s likely the most extensive – over 15,000 samples were used for maximum realism and usefulness. 15 gigs of samples ensures that all the articulations you want are right at your fingertips.
Evolution Banshee is $139, direct from the Orange Tree website. Check out some audio samples below:
