Hello there. So, I've been playing around with Virtual Instruments. Why? Well, certainly, it's a bit of a departure from how I normally might work, but I've been quite keen to get a hold of some good acoustic piano and strings/orchestral/ensemble sounds for a while now.

I have been using a really cheap general midi box for a little while. It's OK. No way of shaping sounds. The sounds are fine if you seriously mangle them with effects.

I had looked at some older rompler units like the Roland JV series stuff. But again, the sound wasn't great. Probably fine for when it was released, but not so much now.

I had not given much consideration to a full workstation because, as desirable those things are, even the cheapest decent ones are rather expensive.

I had some free Ableton Lite on my laptop so I started poking around again.

Spitfire Audios have released a series of Virtual Instruments called LABS. These, so far, have been right up my alley. A great mix of acoustic and natural with a certain eeriness in the background. Warped but clean. Instruments recorded not just for their sounds, but their quirks as well. I've been amazed.

And best of all? They are free. Go have a look. It's great stuff.

This brief piece is a simple refrain played with the Soft Piano. I ran this through the DigiTech Obscura delay pedal set to tape with a heavy degradation. The background is the Strings 2. Both sounds have a decent whack of Valhalla Room Reverb.

The footage was just some random stuff I took with my phone on a recent walk through some fields. With everything going on in the world right now, the area was very empty and quiet. I felt like there wasn't anyone around for miles. It was pleasant, but a little lonely all the same.

Any questions or comments? Please go ahead below. I'm usually very responsive and I love to talk about this stuff.

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Cheers.