The page the user first sees is called Perform, which features a virtual fretboard with six strings and 24 frets, plus controls for affecting the way notes are distributed across those strings and frets. IBZ is remarkable for having a huge number of controls which are spread over several menu pages. Relative to that product, the IBZ version offers a thinner, brighter and more aggressive sound, and also benefits from a redesigned interface. The products predecessor, called simply Shreddage 2, is described as having a full and dark tone and was created using an unspecified American guitar. So far, there are versions of Shreddage for drums, bass and guitar, but this review is of the latest incarnation, which has been built using the sound of a classic Ibanez guitar and is aimed at hard rock and heavy-metal exponents.
This is one of the most straightforward instruments to get your head around and even if you don’t know one end of an axe (that’s a guitar, by the way) from another, you should be rocking in no time.Shreddage might sound like a Heston Blumenthal recipe involving Shredded Wheat and cabbage, but it’s actually a Kontakt-based sample engine from Impact Soundworks. Other standout titles include Applied Acoustics Strum GS-2 ($99) which models both electric and acoustic or, for out-and-out rock, there’s UJAM Instruments’ Virtual Guitarist IRON (£129). There’s an even wider choice of titles to offer you a virtual electric guitarist – indeed both NI and Orange Tree offer electric versions of those we covered above. It does, as they say, ‘change your perception of what is possible for MIDI-based guitar simulation’.
Orange Tree Samples has also done the hard work of sampling the real thing over several acoustic and electric Kontakt instruments, a standout acoustic being Evolution Steel Strings ($179) which features a Martin D-16R steel string with everything playable. This Kontakt instrument is what they call an ‘always-on-call, professional session guitarist’, so you can play chords, articulations or just about anything else which has been heavily sampled from a dreadnought acoustic. For your acoustic-guitar player, you could do a lot worse than Native Instruments’ Session Guitarist Strummed Acoustic (£89).
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