Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock virtual instrument review

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Let’s be honest here…

Most musicians, no matter what style of music you play or create, have a little bit of rock in them.

Maybe it’s the idea of letting it all go on stage, or maybe it’s that lead guitar solo we all wish we could play, whatever it is, rock’s influence is pretty evident, no matter how subtle it may be.

But what if you’re like me and you’re not a rock musician?  How do you get a convincing guitar riff without hiring a guitarist?  Maybe you just want to add some rock drum elements to your electronic composition.

You could be in love with the signature bass sounds you hear in many classic rock tunes.

Whatever your reason, from adding a little bit of rock flavor to producing full on rock anthems, Quantum Leap aims to provide you the toolkit for your next sonic masterpiece.

Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock

What exactly IS Ministry of Rock or MOR as it’s often referred to?  Well I will tell you what it is NOT.

It’s NOT another collection of rock guitar loops and riffs, it’s NOT another dvd full of rock style drum loops and fills, and it’s NOT a library full of basslines “in the style of” _______ (insert popular rock group).

No, this is an actual instrument…that means it’s something you can play.

It’s made up of high quality samples of the very same drums, bass, and guitar setups that you would hear on your favorite records and films.

MOR aims to be your one stop toolbox when it’s time to rock out in the virtual domain.

Quick Specs

  • Content: 20gb of rock drums, bass, and guitars
  • Format: PLAY instrument (both 32 and 64 bit compatible)
  • Price: $355

How does Ministry of Rock sound?

If I had to choose one word to describe this instrument, it would be REAL.

Seriously, I had heard about Quantum Leap products, but never had an opportunity to check them out for myself.  Sure they had demo songs online, but you know, those aren’t always an accurate representation of a product.

The sounds in this library have me totally convinced that they actually shipped a microscopic rock band (some poor band that was reduced to nano sized slashers by an advanced algorithm only known to east west, quantum leap, and NASA) on the dual layers of the dvds that somehow get transplanted permanently onto my hard drive during the install.

From there, this microscopic rock band is ready and willing to play anything my creative mind can conjure up.

Everything is recorded with the same mic and amp techniques that are used to record platinum and gold selling rock bands.

I won’t even pretend to know what all the amps, drum kits, basses, and guitars are….I just know they sound good.  For the musicians that know, you’ll definitely recognize some of these names:

Drumkits include the Octaplus, Ayotte, Ludwig, and Gretch.  Basses include a custom Fender P-Bass, Fender 5 string, Specter, Kubiki and a Musicman. The guitars are a Fender Telecaster, Fender Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul Standard and Deluxe, Ibanez Univers 7, and a PRS.

Like I said…I know of a few of these, but I’m not a guitarist, bassist, or a drummer…so all that matters is they sound great!

The guitars can be loud and distorted, or have a little clean and elctric tone.  None of the guitar notes are looped, and they will scream and whine their way out to the end of the note if you hold it out to the end.

The distorted guitars are mean, and the drums have an “air” about them that just screams ROCK OUT and beat me!   These sounds are seriously fun to play, no doubt about it. I spent an hour just going through and jamming with the various sounds in this instrument. Each one is expressive, and thanks the the PLAY engine, reacts to how I play, letting me express myself with real rock instruments…something I thought I’d never be able to do.  They way they respond to velocity, chords, and legato keep things very interesting.

It also helps that everything was recorded in East West Studio 2, a studio very famous for it’s years of producing hit recordings, specifically in the genre of rock!

So what do I really think about Ministry of Rock?

I think this is an amazing product and you really have to play it to appreciate it.  I’ve listened to the demos online over and over, and while they definitely show the quality of the library, the ease of which you can play the instruments is superb.

Not to mention they don’t take very long to load at all, I was expecting long wait times when loading sounds but that’s not the case. Most sounds loaded for me in less than 10 seconds, with the drum kits usually taking the longest.

The authenticity of this instrument as an all around rock library is unmatched. The drums, bass, and guitars all fit together perfectly.   The ability to tweak the amp settings, eq, and everything else about the sounds via the easy interface is another plus.  Just messing with the amp setups yields very different results within the same instrument.

This is without question a 5 out of 5 subs.  The realism, and I can’t say this enough, it’s just simply incredible.  The way you can actually play the sounds and not just “playback” samples is a testament to the hard work and detail that went into both the sampling and programing of this instrument.

If you haven’t heard the demos please go check them out.  And if you’re looking for a great collection of real guitars, drums, and bass that were recorded specifically for making the next hit rock record, there’s  no other complete option around in my opinion.

Great job, I’m definitely looking forward to checking out more instruments from Quantum Leap and East West.

let me know what you think, leave a comment below.

16 Comments

  1. saint joe wat it is! im feeling the interface on that,the sounds are very realistic…i just got the symphonic orchestra & these products dont sound cheesy lol! but keep bringing in that important imformation to us needy producers lol!

    Reply
    • yeah fam! if you got symphonic orchestra, then the interface is pretty much the same…what’s dope though, is that everything opens in one interface..BUT, if you load a sound from the orchestra, the front panel looks like the orchestra instrument…

      if you load something from ministry of rock..it looks like that one, sick!

      Reply
    • @ maconeproductions: Protip with orchestra type packs;- try and stick the whole thing through just a smidgeon of reverb to put it in a room and slightly ‘blur’ the decay. It can make even cheap ass collections sound really damn realistic.

      Reply
  2. Those bass’s are phat as hell. I wonder how it stacks up to broomstick.

    I think with guitar , you have to kind of think a bit like a guitarist to really get the best effect.

    Couple of examples;- For authentic guitar effects, its better to use a clean sound and then put the whole thing through something like an NI guitar rig (or amplitube if you prefer), rather than individual distorted(or reverbed whatever) notes. The reason for that is, guitar distortion is always summed, which brings out interesting interactions between notes, and you’ll hear that most in chords.

    Another important one is how guitars do chords vs keyboards. Guitarists often have a formula thats something like 1-5-8-10-12-15 , as opposed to the usual keyboard 1-3-5. You play that 1-5-8-10-12-15 and just trigger them slightly sequentially as opposed to just mashing the notes at once, and you’ll have a pretty authentic strummed chord. The faster you trigger (but not all at once in a single stab) the faster the strumming sounds.

    For a *real* cool effect, find a finger slide sample and when you change registers , trigger it. It’ll sound like the guitarists fingers shooting up the neck to the next chord position.

    Its a bit like sequencing realistic drums. Drummers only ever have 2 hands and 2 feet (one of which is probably just holding down the hi-hat lid) so if you write stuff for 3 hands, it just wont sound quite right to an attentive ear.

    $335 hey? might have to save up for this one!

    Reply
    • I hear ya bro, it’s definitely better to think in terms of the real instrument being played. But I was truly blown away when I hit these guitars man lol..they just sounded good to me, I hadn’t come across playable guitar samples this authentic before….a person could rock out pretty easily, especially if you know guitar style chords.

      The basses are good too, I really enjoyed every part of this instrument, it’s just fun to play.

      Reply
  3. I have SILK and its crazy. Super realistic. I use it to make my own “samples” to chop up. Some of the patches like the huge persian orchestra (which is craaaazy) might make a weak system hiccup when loading. I was thinking about this or Gypsy for guitars.

    Reply
  4. What up Joe. That app is not bad but of course it can’t match a real guitarist or bass player. I play the guitar & bass so I pretty much just used this for the rock style drums. The drums are sweet. I do use some of the guitar & bass sound effects to overlay with what I do play sometimes. But don’t get it twisted because the sounds in this app are very usable but they don’t offer things like pull-offs, hammer-ons, notes slides (like sliding from octaves), different effects achieved through the use of stomp boxes etc. like a real guitarist can use.

    All in all I think the drums included are worth having also you should check out Fab Four. The drums & instruments on that give you the sounds of yesteryear that the Beatles used. Really tight sounding if you are into that.

    I’m not sure if East West still offers this but when I brought these they had a special “Buy one get one free”. I brought the Fab Four application and got Ministry of Rock for free.

    If you are looking for some really really nice drums for rock type tracks you should check out FXpansion BFD2. That is the bomb!!! Highly customizable.

    Peace

    Reply
    • I agree man lol, that’s why I said of course real musicians always know what’s missing. I don’t play guitar or bass lol, so I couldn’t have noticed a lot of what you did. I agree the drums are nice. Fab Four is awesome lol, I’ll be doing a review on that as well…and BFD…yeah…craziness man…they had something at namm that’s going to shake things up quite a bit!

      thanks for the input as always yo! I really appreciate it.

      Reply
  5. yo joe this is one for the ages this a great piece all sounds are to good to be true i,ve been looking for some nice guitar sounds the basses are nice too i own a spector bass and this sounds just like it so what i,m i going to do now play my real spector or play this one….hm lets see ……… okay i,ll try both …….sike i,ll play the real one great review joe keep it comin thanks

    Reply
    • Thanks man! Yeah…folks that can actually play an instrument, they’d use something like this out of convenience I guess…but nothing beats a real instrument if you know how to play it.

      good samples come close tho 🙂

      thanks for the response.

      Reply
  6. Nice, review, man, and great product. I am a rock guy – a guitarist – and those sounded great. Everything sounded good, I was especially impressed with the bass sounds. They were huge.

    I noticed your one comment about people who actually play the instruments. I play guitar, so I would do most of my own guitar playing – but recording industrial stuff, I still think it would be cool layering live guitar with the digital stuff programmed in there with it.

    Btw, it is pronounced “eye-banez” so you got it.

    Thanks for the info, great article and great video review as well.

    Reply
    • thanks for the input Cody, that helps a lot. I’m glad I pronounced something right!

      I was really impressed with the sounds man, they have a “real” quality to them that I just don’t get all the time.

      Reply

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