Guru – Fxpansion
In a world where we are inundated with Vstis and Vsts, is Guru a breath of fresh air? Guru is promoted as a ‘Beatbox’ and I cannot argue with that.
Here is FXpansion’s promo:
‘Advanced step sequencing, groove manipulation, sample editing, and beat slicing - an inspirational, all-in-one workstation. Based on an enlightened approach to drum loop creation, GURU makes building that perfect beat faster and easier than ever.
GURU's architecture is perfect for anything from straight-up breaks and stomping floor-fillers to complex polyrhythmic, multi-layered grooves. The powerful built-in FX and graphical parameter automation allow you to mutate your beats into new, unheard forms, or create subtle variations. Mash up your sounds with pitch modulation, repeat triggers, start-point and timing manipulation, resonant filters and much more. Everything from precision funk to disturbing sonic mangling and glitch beatscapes is at your fingertips.
Breathe new life into your loops with GURU's unique intelligent loop slicer, which categorizes slices as kick, snare, hihat or percussion hits, letting you use any audio material effortlessly and in the context of your pattern, or extract individual hits and the timing feel from loops. The extensive editing and processing tools then allow you to tweak samples and slice points, or layer more sounds.
GURU gives you back the hands-on feel which you crave... Record performances with the mouse or a MIDI controller, fire off sequences with a MIDI key, layer multiple engines, drop parts in and out and switch grooves on the fly. GURU is a complete sample workstation environment, ideally suited for live use or for intuitive composition in the studio.’
To be more precise, Guru is actually a sampling drum machine, built to function as a beatbox but with some added and detailed tools. Being a Vsti, it integrates within any host application that runs all the standard protocols (VST, RTAS, Rewire, Audio Units and DXi). Guru is also available for Windows 2000/XP and Mac Osx 10.3 and higher.
Ok, enough of the tech and on with the review.
Installation was a breeze and Guru can, as mentioned earlier, be run from within the host application or as stand alone. Boasting a huge library of samples and grooves, and a printed manual, you are offered a comprehensive product.
As you can see, from the image below, Guru’s interface is very user friendly and uncluttered.
Guru’s hierarchy is actually quite simple.
Engines:
It has 8 engines, an engine being akin to a whole Guru on it’s own (pattern player/recorder), 16 pads per engine with each pad being able to house 8 samples as layers.
An engine is simply a Pattern and it is important to mention how tempo is used within Guru. Tempo can be governed by the host’s tempo or independently via Guru’s own tempo. Although engines are independent of each other, it is important to note how tempo is used by all 8 engines.
The first engine dictates the whole tempo (be it slaved to host or independent) and the ensuing 7 engines act as multiples of the first engine’s tempo. Multiples range from 1/8 to 8/1. This detail to tempo manipulation is a great bonus and one that seems to be amiss on competitors’ products. An engine can contain as many as 24 different patterns. The eight Engines respond independently on MIDI channels 1 to 8. All engine data can be snap shot to a scene.
Patterns:
A pattern has 4 pages and a total of 128 steps. Patterns can be recorded in real time or by using step edit. The detail of control within each pattern is excellent and one that we will come to shortly. You can load pre defined Pattern templates from the menu tree on the left of the pads and main screen. You can select a Pattern for recording or editing by simply clicking on it and by using the menu options below the pattern screen, you can further define the Pattern’s data.
By right clicking on a Pattern button, you enter edit mode (image below).
The image above clearly shows the notes (steps) I have input using the step edit mode, by simply drawing (clicking) in the notes. The image also shows the Pattern edit drop down menu accessed by right clicking on the Pattern pad.
Groove:
The velocity and timing of each Pattern can further be defined by using the wonderful little tool called Groove (see image below).
This feature also houses pre defined Groove templates and you can even create and save your own, for call up later. Depending on the style or genre of music you are writing, the drop down menu of the Groove templates can come in really handy. You are also not committed to using the same template for all the Patterns. You can change these templates for each and every Pattern, creating interesting rhythms.
Graphs:
As the images below show, you have detailed control, via graphical ‘drawings’, over pan, tuning (fine and coarse), filter cut-off and resonance and velocity of any step you select.
These graphs of steps are played along with the Pattern.
The velocity graphs are crucial in attaining a non-rigid velocity of each step and the shift graphs are equally important in altering tiny step deviation which allow for human feel quantizing of the Pattern. Scrub is a control over sample start time, again in graphical mode, and this obviously has an effect on the feel of the Pattern being played.
Graphs can be saved with any Pattern and used later as Grooves, an invaluable tool and one that I particularly like.
Scenes:
The image above displays the 48 scene slots available for Guru, accessed via the scenes tab on the mid section menu. Scenes are snap shots of all data and parameter settings associated with each and/or every engine. It stores all data pertaining to Patterns, graphs, mix, effects, etc. You can save a scene to an allocated slot and retrigger it either manually by clicking on the midi note number where the scene was saved to, or by using the midi note itself. Scenes and the handling of them are a great way to arrange your songs and trigger them with simple midi numbers triggered from a controller, a great live use tool.
Effects:
Effects are accessed through the Pad Edit, Aux Effects and Mix. Pad efx inserts assigned one per pad, and are accessed via the Pad Edit page and have the following effects (image below): From compressors to oscillators (generating tones) used for creating pitched percussive elements, you are not left wanting.
The effects are all highly usable and work surprisingly well.
Mix allows for defining effects for all 8 engines as single inserts/engine, or as auxes whereby you have 3 auxes for each engine, or globally via the Master section for all engines (image below).
All the Master effects listed above are excellent, but I found Freezer to be of particular interest. This manic effect grabs the last piece of incoming audio and loops it in a multitude of ways. One of it’s parameters that interested me immediately is called Scratch. This parameter scales the pitch of the loop and allows you to forward and reverse it, in any section, much as a DJ deck does to vinyl. Tasty!
Loop/SmartSlice
By using the Loops option in the left hand tree, you access the SmartSlice function.
This acts much in the same way as Recycle, slicing sampled loops into slices, but is more detailed, offering options that most slicing softwares do not have.
It analyses transients and determines which pad the slices should be mapped into. It then breaks the loop down into it’s subdivisions (kick, snare, hi hat, percussion) and assigns the slices to the pads, working off 4 kicks for the 4 kick pads and so on until it ends up slotting percussive sounds into the percussive pads.
You have three options that determine how SmartSlice behaves:
Both: Guru loads the detected slices into a new Pattern and plays them in the sequence that the loop was recorded in.
Score: This simply creates the Pattern (sequence of slices) for the loop but does not load the slices.
Audio: This loads the slices but no Pattern is created.
As the menu option in the image above shows, you are offered varying levels of sensitivity (Fast to Hi-Sens) for the slicing tasks. Additionally, you are offer Equal-16ths which, obviously, slices a loop into 16 equal segments.
SmartSlice is a great tool and highly effective. I was quite surprised by it’s accuracy and find it such a simple tool to explore that it would be inexcusable to omit it from your tasking.
The browser on the left hand menu pane is a great tool and more so when in Loop mode.You can ‘browse’ and select any loop from your hard drives and by clicking and opening the filename, you will also notice all the detected slices. By pressing OK Guru allocates the slices to their relevant pads.
The Pads themselves have good editing functions, as mentioned earlier, and offer all that you would expect from a software based sample management drum machine. I do not feel the need to go into Pad edit too much as it is self explanatory, but rest assured that it is detailed and powerful.
I think if I had to find any flaws with this product, it would be more in the way of stand alone versus plugin applications. Not being able to export an audio file in stand alone mode is a bit of an annoyance, not so if you are working with the host sequencer. This same scenario can be applied to chaining Patterns, a simple and crucial function that most beat sequencers do offer. Again, in host mode, it is not relevant, but in stand alone mode it is a little annoying.
Finally, as a sound designer, I do get rather anal about the quality of samples offered for vstis. Whereas Guru has an abundance of samples to use, offering a huge archive of loops, hits etc, and most are very good quality, I was left wanting when I analysed certain samples. Little care had gone into editing the samples.
Many of the samples provided were imbalanced, showing a bias towards one channel of the stereo field, were not normalized or gained to a uniform level, and finally, were not tailed off as you would expect with drum samples. However, these are minor complaints when you take the product as a whole into account.
Is Guru a breath of fresh air? I certainly think so. Sure, the purists will say that is has no physical pads to hit, much like the hardware beat boxes. But this is not what it’s meant to be. It is an attempt at providing you with a thoroughly thought out and quality in mind product that will address your drum slicing, editing and sequencing needs. It certainly achieves that.
The functionality of this vsti, the interface of this vsti and the sheer quality of it’s tools are simply superlative. But most of all, it makes you want to play with it.
Eddie Bazil (Zukan)
Samplecraze
FEATURES OVERVIEW
Advanced Step Sequencer - 128 steps, 16 channels, 24 memories per engine, full graphical automation, MIDI remote control, independent tempo multipliers, real-time and step recording with undo
Automated sample slicing, classification and pad mapping (kick, snare, hat, percussion) with manual slice-tuning capability
Can load audio loops (WAV/AIFF/REX), MIDI loops, single-hits, complete kits, pattern banks..
8 Engines, each comprising:
- 16 MIDI-triggered Sample Pads
- Powerful step-sequencer with up to 128 steps
- 24 MIDI-triggered Patterns
- Three Aux effects units
- Master effects unit
Intuitive mixer view offering a convenient overview of all 8 engines
Flexible groove/shuffle control for patterns – take the groove of one MIDI file and apply it in real-time to another
Comprehensive Pad Editor offering individual control of the following for each pad:
- Gain, pan, coarse/fine tune
- Resonant filter blend between LP/BP/HP
- 3 Aux sends and an Insert effect slot
- Start/end point adjust
- Amp/FX envelope
- 8 velocity cross-fade layers
- Cut groups (choke groups)
Includes library of over 2GB of professional sample content, featuring material by Yellow Tools, Wizoo, Gearshift and others.
Eight stereo outputs, flexible routing.
Built in midi mapping allows you to quickly setup GURU to work with your hardware groove box / drum triggers."
Stand-alone application, ReWire device, and VST, DXi, AudioUnit, RTAS plug-in formats, available for Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X.
* (Such as Akai MPC/MPD series, Alternate Mode DrumKat, Korg MicroKontrol, M-Audio Trigger Finger etc.)
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