 Click for larger image  Click for larger image Click here to listen to the Sounds Of The 70s demo (mp3)
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Out now! SOUNDS OF THE 70s
A plug-in Virtual Sound Module powered by a Custom High-Performance Native Instruments Audio Engine (VST 2.0, DXi, ASIO, AU, RTAS, Mac & PC)
We are excited to announce SOUNDS OF THE 70s, one of our best releases ever, which is sure to become an absolute must-have production tool. A unique new Virtual Sound Module powered by the Native Instruments INTAKT interface, featuring a huge and uniquely inspiring sound library, which captures the TRUE essence of the 1970s! This Virtual Sound Module is the ultimate Seventies production tool for 21st century groovers! It delivers the undiluted heart of soul, disco, funk, and punk: recreated, sampled, and reborn. The great golden age of the dancefloor recreated! Step back in time to the disco explosion, with the SOUNDS OF THE 70s Virtual Sounds Module. What do the 70s mean to you? Glitterballs, strobe lights, dry ice, mirrors, roller discos, the World Disco Dancing Championships, the hustle, the bump, the freak, cocktails, platform boots, flares, bell bottoms, tank tops, velvet suits, spandex, hot pants, medallions on hairy chests, afros & perms, John Travolta & 'Saturday Night Fever', Little Michael & The Jacksons, James Brown, disco divas, boogie. This was the great era, when the 12 inch, the remix and the DJ were born, the genesis of beat mixing. The horns, the strings, the raw disco power! Now the musical essence and irresistible dancefloor vibes of this great era can live on even more strongly in the music of today with a new generation, thanks to SOUNDS OF THE 70s, this stunning production tool featuring construction kits, grooves, hits and instruments, written and produced by Mike Wilkie and Matthew Corbett for Zero-G. All the rhythm material has further been lovingly sliced and diced to form an awesomely flexible production powerhouse based on the Native Instruments INTAKT plug-in engine.
"This collection is extremely convincing, both musically and in terms of production... Sounds Of The '70s does a good job of reproducing the characteristic sounds of its chosen era, and will appeal to anybody who needs quick, easy access to a convincingly retro sound palette. And, of course, Intakt's ability to deconstruct and deform these same sounds may endear it to producers of hip-hop, drum and bass, or related dance styles."
SOUND ON SOUND MAGAZINE (UK)
"Infectious, 70s samples, lovingly mastered to vinyl before being digitised... not full of the clichés you might expect, featuring many respectable and usable samples, all recorded in the most authentic way possible... All the material is original and after a while you find yourself gyrating like Travolta and pointing skywards, your eyes glazing over and a dancefloor-filling house remix thudding away in your head... A very usable collection of 70s sounds that benefits from meticulous attention to detail in production".
COMPUTER MUSIC MAGAZINE (UK)
"...The 70's were a rich time for pop music... Capturing the variety of this rich musical stew in a sample library is nearly impossible, but Zero-G does an admirable job... The Intakt sample engine also bring a tremendous amount of power to the end user. Sound of the 70's retains the rich array of tools from the full version of Intakt, which lets you massively mangle the provided samples. Users that already have the full Intakt or Kontakt samplers can also load the patches and sampes from the Sounds of the 70's DVD, offering additional flexibility... All this technology would be irrelevant without great samples: Zero-G provides 1.4 gigs of original samples that faithfully capture the grooves and feel of seventies tracks... The quality of the samples is excellent... They cover a lot of territory, and should be great for dance, soundtrack work, hip-hop, and any other place where a little retro sound is wanted... Because the samples are already looped and sliced as needed, it's very easy to get started... In addition to the construction kits, Zero-G ices the cake with B3 organ, bass, drum, Rhodes, synth, guitar, trumpet and Wurlitzer samples and riffs... Conclusion: Zero-G successfully recreates the Sounds of the 70's with their latest sample library. The library is massive, with 1.4 gigs of source material, and gives you plenty of options for customizing the samples, courtesy of Native Instrument's Intakt engine... Most importantly, the samples capture both the feel and sound of classic 70's tracks. The library should provide inspiration for many types of music... Gives you that authentic 70's sound, without the costs or legal hassles of sampling old vinyl... Perfect for musicians working in dance and hip-hop genres, but should also be useful for anyone that wants to inject a bit of 70's groove into their tracks... Great samples and construction kits capture the feel of classic tracks. Zero-G has done all the work of looping and beat slicing the samples. Intakt is flexible and powerful for customizing the samples.."
SYNTHTOPIA.COM WEBSITE
"Few and far between are contemporary sample libraries that capture the true essence of the disco sound - and none that I've come across quite as well as Sounds Of The 70s... This package is a dynamite production tool of super high quality seventies revival - ranging from soul, disco, funk to punk - accurately and honestly capturing an era where the 12-inch, the remix and the DJ were born... I can't stress enough that this library is the real deal.. The playing and styling is top-drawer throughout, and the drum loops are some of the best and most original I've heard. Perfect for adding the organics of vintage dance into today's electronic tracks."
REMIX MAGAZINE, USA
The awesome flexibility of the custom high-performance NATIVE INSTRUMENTS interface will soon have you customizing, shaping and manipulating the 70s vibes to suit your own requirements. In the rhythm department of this monster library, there are many hundreds of loops and all are presented either in sliced format (via the NI INTAKT Beat Machine) or via the Time Machine, so they will automatically sync to your songs, and you can apply sound-shaping to each slice if you wish!
About the ZERO-G "SOUNDS OF THE 70s" sample library - an introduction by the creators, Mike Wilkie and Matthew Corbett:
"What makes funky music sound as if it genuinely came from the spaced out 70's? We listened endlessly to crackly vinyl in the studio, listened to those who've tried to recreate the flavour since, picked up our instruments and threw the rule books away. First though, to faithfully recreate the sounds of the seventies we equipped ourselves with two pairs of loon pants (purple and mauve), brown glitter encrusted platform boots with 5 inch heels, cheese cloth shirts and genuine Afghans. We also had an Afro hairdo, and then, and only then, did we feel ready to proceed on our sonic journey!
Recording technology circa 1973 was of course rudimentary by today's standards and the attention to precision playing was much more 'relaxed'. The music flowed through an attitude rather than a set of criteria. The timing was most definitely out but the vibe was definitely in. Check out some really old vinyl, listen to the players, there are gaps big enough to park lorries in but somehow it's all part of a brilliant sound picture.
Vocals that would be auto tuned or corrected were left to dissonance, percussion that would be now be audio quantised retained its loose swing. Electric pianos that are now endlessly mimicked by Japanese developers were the genuine article with malfunctioning pick ups and noisy amps. Drop one on your foot whilst setting up on stage and you'd be out of action for weeks! Guitar processors that now convey pristine clarity through digital convertors then hissed and crackled adding yet more filth into the mix. Pedals had names like 'Electric Mistress' evoking the possibility of an exciting night if you impressed the girl in the front row!
Valve amps and compressors added warmth (and noise) through analogue desks which looked like something out of Jules Verne, to 2 inch tape machines the size of milk floats, the end result being bounced onto another tape thing before being mastered onto vinyl.
But that was then and this is now, and in the new century we can look back at an iconic period in sound production that will echo through the decades, maybe even through centuries to come. A sound picture where the producer's initiative and creativity would make a real difference, and could create a genuine new sound. Many of those artists never made it far into the eighties and when Solid State Logic and Digital arrived in about 1981, times had changed for ever.
In 2004, there isn't a 70's artist who hasn't been sampled, not just the Icons, but even Chas and Dave, playing as respected musos in '75 on a Labi Siffre song, have turned up on an Eminem track! Almost every modern producer has 'borrowed' from old records, some legally, and some have ended up in court with royalties being re-directed to the original copyright holder.
We already had original guitars and basses from the 70's and before, and soon managed to borrow a Fender Rhodes and a Wurlitzer EP as well as a Hammond with a massive Leslie cabinet with something like a propeller in it. We enlisted the help of a seventies keys man and a horn player to complete the picture and set to work creating the loops.
We decided to give every loop two distinct sections that could be used within the same production and then recorded all of the breakdowns so the user could add and remove parts at will.
We decided too, to adopt 'extreme panning' on many loops to add that 'stereo panned to both ends of our galaxy' feel and also from time to time mixed loops 'lumpy and bumpy' in an attempt to avoid any allegiance to modern technology.
Many synths like our ancient Crumar, which we used a lot, were amped instead of feeding direct and guitars were awash with spidery tones and liberal use of an old Cry Baby. We used a Gibson Les Paul standard (circa 1977) for almost all of the guitars and, surprisingly, most of the bass was undertaken on an old Aria Pro, after rejecting more sumptuous instruments, it just seemed to evoke the era more precisely, we played it through an old Selmer bass amp. Although most of the loops produced were in the funky vein we decided to tip our hat to a few other genres from the 70s: Glam, punk, prog and proto electronica.
In making these loops for you we went back to the drawing board, attempting to unlearn years of clean production skills and started to gather everything we'd need to take the sound back to the 70s. It was a bit like flying an old aircraft, a bit heavy, marginally uncontrollable, but at the end of the day a graceful and rewarding experience.
After all the initial work was finished we decided the only way to retain the funk was to have everything mastered onto vinyl through 70s valve compressors and EQs. We found a mastering suite deep in South London that ticked all the boxes and got everything transferred to a large stack of laquers, and then back into digital, it sounds….like the seventies!
So we're off now on a couple of Raleigh Choppers, munching on our Curly Wurlies to see and Earth Wind and Fire tribute band….we hope you enjoy our seventies experience, we were lovin' it!"
- Mike Wilkie and Matthew Corbett
The Software Interface:
The whole of this remarkable library is presented within a stunning state-of-the-art plug-in interface by NATIVE INSTRUMENTS which is a version of their INTAKT sampler, which was specifically designed for rhythmic loop playback, manipulation, and mayhem.
The convenient one-screen interface features tremendous sound shaping abilities without disrupting the creative flow, including a first-class multimode filter, an envelope follower, two LFOs, effects, and more. The loops have been set up so that they can be automatically synced to tempo, either via the Beat Machine or the Time Machine.
The Beat Machine has loops divided into their individual hits or notes (slices) which means they can be played at a wide range of tempos without change in pitch. It also allows the user to give each hit or note individual settings for pitch, playback direction, pitch envelope, amp envelope, distortion, delay, and more; a MIDI file of each loop can be easily exported so that groove, accent, and feel can be manipulated in any host sequencer.
The Time Machine time-stretches or compresses loops in real time. Not only can you sync, stretch, and pitch the loops, but also filter, effect and modulate them as well!
A powerful sound-shaping filter, flexible envelopes, syncable LFOs, and distortion, syncable delay, and lo-fi effects can inject even more energy and individuality into the loops, as well as into the synths, pads, textures and everything else in this absolutely authentic and inspiring sound library. Since the software interface is a version of NI's superb INTAKT engine, working with it is fast, easy, and sounds great!
FEATURES:
Library Content:
- Huge library of world-class, totally original but totally authentic 70s-style instrument and percussion performances, arranged in construction kits together with their broken-out grooves and tool kits.
- Over 1.4 Gigabytes of samples.
FOR A FULL LIST OF ALL CONTENTS PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK AT ABOVE LEFT (to view the PDF file)
Features of NI INTAKT User Interface:
- Access to individual hits (slices) within loops,
- Easy and intuitive user interface,
- User interface is a version of Native Instruments' INTAKT, based on KONTAKT, the world's finest software sampling engine,
- Loops use one or more of the three sampler-modes: Beat Machine with ISE (Individual Slice Edit), Time Machine and standard Sampler mode,
- Easy synchronization of loops to MIDI tempo,
- MIDI file export permits groove, accent, and feel manipulation in any host sequencer,
- Integrated effects: Group filter including low-pass, high-pass, band-reject or band-pass modes, global filter, lo-fi, distortion, syncable delay,
- Modulation section provides AHDSR envelope, two individual syncable LFOs, envelope follower and a DBD pitch envelope,
- Total Recall
- Sound Library can also be loaded into other Native Instruments samplers including INTAKT and KONTAKT (version 1.5 or later), for even greater flexibility and more options for working with the material.
Supported Interfaces:
- VST® 2.0, DXi, ASIO, Audio Units, Core Audio, RTAS, Mac OSX & PC
Recommended Retail Price
- $199.95 US Dollars (169 Euros / £114.95 pounds sterling)
Minimum Requirements
- Windows XP, Pentium III/ Athlon 400 MHz, 256 MB RAM
- Mac OS 10.2.6 or higher, G3 500 MHz, 256 MB RAM
Recommended System
- Windows XP, Pentium III/ Athlon 700 MHz, 512 MB
- Mac OS 10.2.6 or higher, G4 733, 512 MB.
MAC INTEL USERS PLEASE NOTE:
The Sounds Of The 70s Kompakt-powered plugin version is not immediately compatible with Mac Intel-based computers. However, Mac Intel users can still access the sound library in full - SEE LINK ABOVE RIGHT in "Related Info" box for solutions with Mac Intel.
All product specifications are subject to change without notice.
Catalog (SKU) number: ZG-305
Availability: OUT NOW! Click on the flag for your country to access your local Zero-G distributor, contact them and order your copy now!!
LATEST NEWS: You can now purchase the sample library from this product (without the plugin NI software) as a series of DOWNLOAD PACKS in WAV/KONTAKT format. Click HERE for more info.
| AVAILABLE VERSIONS: |
DOWNLOADABLE Version
 WAV format, with Kontakt/Intakt instrument patches
To buy, go to DOWNLOAD AREA (click link above)
DOWNLOAD Version is split into 8 Download Packs, at 29.99 USD each
| | Virtual Sound Module (Plug-in)
Powered by NATIVE INSTRUMENTS INTAKT interface
Mac OSX & PC, VST 2.0, DXi, RTAS, ASIO, DirectSound, Audio Units, Core Audio
| | $29.99 USD (approx £16 GBP / approx 23 Euro) for EACH of 8 Download Packs | | $199.95 US dollars (169 Euros / £114.95 pounds sterling) |
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