Spectrasonics Bizarre Guitar

I've been making music for about ten years with synths and samplers and the occasional guitar, bass, or singer. I usually make electronica for lack of a better word that's ranged from hard trance to ambient to trip hop with various forays into classical and jazz.

I have a combination of two hardware samplers (a Roland S-760 and a Yamaha A3000) and software (Emagic EXS24), though I generally use EXS24 for Bizarre Guitar. I've had this library since 2002.

In terms of listening equipment, I typically do a lot of composing and sound designing on headphones, but always mix on my monitors.

This is one of the most creative and inspiring libraries ever made in my opinion, possibly because so many of the source sounds were played by a guitarist (before they were shredded, shuffled, and glued back together again by the sound designer).

The ambient bed soundscapes in particular are alternatively soaring and sinister, with washes of heavily effected overtones that never quite dominate, but have a distinctly musical character often missing in similar libraries. Many of these sounds have a moody, almost despondent tone that immediately spark composition ideas, while others are brighter, though their character is quite a bit different than some of the sounds on Spectrasonics' Atmospheres software synth.

Many of these sounds were clearly designed for tv/film soundtrack work on a tight budget, and go above and beyond the quality of most similar libraries. I don't have much use for the guitar licks, which are not processed to my taste (they're a little tinny, and sound too much like the thin and reedy guitar sounds on a synth workstation), but the vast majority of the soundscape-type sounds are remarkably unique and vibrant. However, their uniqueness probably limits their market potential a bit - it's hard to imagine these sounds being used in any context outside of electronic music or soundtrack work.

Unfortunately I've noticed that there's a real lack of high-end detail in most of these sounds--it's as if they were patched through a lowpass filter to attentuate the high frequencies. Maybe that's a side effect of all of the processing that was required to create them, but still I would expect better results considering the sound designer's obvious talent and enthusiasm.

A related (and perhaps secondary) criticism I have is the apparent overuse of enhancer and exciter effects on some samples, which were presumably added after distortion effects were applied. There is a certain digital-like harshness (a shrill quality) that these effects impose that, unpleasant sound aside, makes it a little more difficult to fit the offending sounds into a mix.

But these are minor complaints and don't at all subtract from the result, which is simply a CD-ROM loaded with fascinating sounds.

There are three versions of this library - a Roland CD-ROM, an Akai CD-ROM, and an audio CD version. The two CD-ROMs (each of which sell for roughly $185US) include the audio CD version (~$95US) to make it easier to demo sounds.

There is some material on the CD-ROM that's not included on the audio CD version, but not very much. The only key omission IMO on the audio CD consists of a very nice 32MB stereo bowed guitar multisample. Otherwise, the audio version is the better value in this case (most of the time it's well worth the extra money for Spectrasonics' CD-ROM versions).

Strongly recommended if you make any sort of electronic music or do soundtrack work. If not, it's still worth listening to the demos for a chance to hear what can be done with a guitar.