May the funk be with you!!
Today checking out the brand new funk guitar library from NI and Scarbee
It’s called Scarbee Funk Guitarist…enough with the intro, let’s check it out!
So what is Scarbee Funk Guitarist?
It’s like they stuffed a session funk guitar player into 8gb of compressed audio goodness!
It’s not a multi sampled guitar library that represents a funk guitar but leaves you do induce the funkiness.
Oh no…
this comes with it’s own case of certified, funkdafied guitar grooves and chords.
Yeah, so it’s focused on funk guitar chords matched with popular funk guitar rhythms. All customizable and playable in real time.
Quick Specs
- content: 14 gb (8gb compressed)
- format: kontakt 4 and kontakt 4 player
- price: $119
How does it sound?
It sounds really good, has a great funk guitar sound that’s ready to go!
Most guitar libraries are made for rock or acoustic, but nothing really dedicated to funk in my opinion. And funk lends itself well to all types of music from electronic to hip hop to rnb and pop.
The guitar itself has a really good tone to it, and the built in fx are actually usable so you can tweak you sound quick easily.
But where the real sound and feel comes in, is with the grooves, there are tons of grooves, chords, fills, breaks, and all sorts of other riffs and playing styles within each preset. Everything from smooth chords to lively upbeat riffs and hooks.
Plus the fact that you can change the grooves with the groove editor to make them your own is really cool.
What’s the bottom line?
This is a fun instrument, the interface is DOPE and you know I love a good kontakt interface. I like the fact that there is built in preset browsing, you can even save your own user presets right in the instrument interface.
I also like that you can load the whole library so you don’t have to reload on each preset, you can just move through them quickly.
The fx inside are very usable as well.
I give this library 4 out of 5 subs, really fun, sounds good, and the interface is great.
The one thing that I feel would put this over the top, is if they included a playable multisample of the actual funk guitar that is featured in the library.
So we could mix the riffs and grooves with our own playing. Sometimes you just need a really good sounding funk guitar but not so much the riffs.
But this is something that can easily be added in an update I would think. If not, something to remember for next time.
Even still, this is a dope library, it’s fun to play and gives you some realistic results.
Go on over to NI and checkout their demos: Scarbee Funk Guitarist
yo! Joe” thank you so much for finding this, I spend the weekend
choppin and slicin all the old funk masters licks from James Brown
guitars to Curtis Mayfield to Philly sound, to Motown, woh” talk about
exhausted, but that how much passion I have for
that sound, workin on and old skool concept EP, you
just saved me lol!!!
@dp, word man! Glad to help, you know I gotta try and stay on top of things man!
@saintjoe, fo sho” my nizzle”
@dp, lol word.
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Not bad for $119 saint….Does it has a tempo control? Im like you saint that I would like to have the funk instrument multi sampled and playable also. But check this I’ve told native instruments that if they could get some samples from bobby womack or bootsy collins and do what they did with rufus it would be the one to buy.
@DJ Jambone, word man, it automatically syncs to the host tempo 🙂 Yeah a playable guitar included would have made it complete in my opinion, maybe they will give it to us in an update 🙂
hey st joe this is something i long been waiting for ni is unbelievable with this one can you use it with maschine some kind of way?
@tony, yeah you can load it up in Maschine, since it runs in Kontakt or Kontakt player, so if you have this you can just use the free kontakt player to run it if you don’t have the full version
That’s pretty cool,editing the Midi notes was sweet. It’s too bad the George Duke thing can’t do that but i guess George woulda had to play all the riffs in all keys. Hey wait maybe he can for an update lol. Ya but a great idea for no guitar players for sure huh?
@thomasgreco, yeah, I bet even some guitar players could use it, it’s all about what you need, some play rock guitar or acoustic but not funk, so it would still help. Yeah editing the grooves is nice too!
@saintjoe, Good point, I know alot of guitar players and most of them ain’t the funkiest lol !! Great at other stuff but not so funky.
@thomasgreco, yeah lol, it’s all good!
I picked this up last night. I’m still messing around with it but like what it can do. Scarbee reps some of the best sounding instruments libs and I would have expected nothing less from this library.
@Madbull Studios, no doubt in my mind you would have this one man lol, I thought about you soon as I heard about it!
“I LUV FUNK MUSIC” I JUST NEVER COULD PLAY IT,BUT I’M A GET IT ONE DAY THOUGH… RIGHT ON JOE
@MK AKA DA DADDY OF DA LOU, no doubt fam, thanks for the response
Hey whats up man sounds good I also have question for you kontakt or IK synth bundle let me know
@Mehdo, word thanks for watching, I’m not a huge fan of the current IK interface but I like their sounds in miroslav, sampletron, and samplemoog, but to me Kontakt is more wide open because of it’s third party support.
so if you just compare them out the box, I would prefer some of the sounds from the IK bundle over the kontakt factory library, but as a whole I go with kontakt because it’s pretty much the standard and everyone develops sounds for it.
And again,i’m really not a fan of the IK interfaces I think they need an update bad.
also, if you’re looking to buy kontakt I wouldn’t buy it by itself, as much as it costs I would just go for komplete, it’s a better deal than buying kontakt alone and it’s only like 100 more bucks or so lol. So if you compare komplete to IK Bundle komplete is way better
tight..
@sky, thanks for checking it out!
Great review. Said it all. This is a good program. I love it !
JJ
@JJHCW, cool man, thanks for the reply!
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Hi, What a pure stroke of luck that i found this URL as i sit here w. the wife watching the C.M.Awards–for, I tho I am Old School R-N-R, I’m Funckadelic too !!!! My —question to you & your readers-can this program LINK or rather SYNC to my Korg I-30 workstation ??? It’s a 1998 KOrg w/ auto-accompinament (a mere 3 + drums & perc) yet she sounds full & all that But, she just can’t cut the funk enough for my needs. One more thing, she’s a P.I.F. (that’s PAID IN FULL) SO I’m making due w/what little talent the LORD A gave me & a colection of EMU Proteus, Roland & a YamahaMU128 modules for good luck. I’m hoping it won’t take this Old Rock War-Horse months of manual reading to add SOUL to my arrangements. That’s the word I was looking for b-4-My Korg is an ARRANGER. i NEED MORE..am i expecting too much ? Thank you for your time. Regards, Don. You all r invited to see & hear me at donscaptvideo on YouTube. Thank you, Don
@Donnie Taylor, if you can hook your keyboard up to your computer to send midi to it, it will work. You’ll need a way to record it at some point, but yes, if your keyboard can connect to your computer via midi or usb/midi interface you can use it
saintjoe, 1st, thanks 4 taking the time to post me. 2)I can NOT get to load & play cleanly inside of Konstact. It got so bad last Friday nite–I just gave up. I UNinstalled the (motherProgram) Konstat, tried to delete it inside of ‘regedit’-tried to reinstall and all I get is a big box telling me I already have the program K-5 INSTALLed.
hELL, Joe, I even deleted it using WINDOW’S VISTA control panel , delete programs. so here i sit w a FUNKY GIUTARIST and he might as well have no strings & no energy. I have 8GB ram & a quard-4 2.4GHz Intel CPU. I think it’s VISTA 64 that is the issue ????????/
I’d appreciate your help…thanks again, Don. PS i’m going to retry another install.
@Donnie taylor, what do you mean you can’t get it to play cleanly? What happens?
@saintjoe, Ok, last Fri-I loaded the player ‘Konstat” onto my laptop Fwhich only has 1.5MB ram. I got crappy, clicking sound out of the guitar(funky)by playing the pc keyboard. At least I got SOME SOUND.
Yesterday, after posting you, I installed the player onto my 8GB ram desktop. I got NO sound and lots of frustration. I think the issue is the sound drivers-there is no ANZIO driver inside this Knostat. I tried DLing the Komplete anzio driver to no avail. I have a Reaktek Sound card builtin to the Intel motherboard. Years ago, I saved & saved & spent about $300+ for the Creative SC that had everything I needed-MiDi In/Out Ports & the works & more. It NEVER WOrKED with my Vista64. I truly think this should b a no-brainer -then again, at 61, my brain suffers from frequent information Overload. Suggestions please ?? Thanks, Don (10AM WED)
@DonnieTaylor, hey bro, download asio4all and install that on your computer. Then, inside of the kontakt options, for audio, choose asio for all and set it to use your realtek for output. The built in drivers are not really made for music so they choke up.