Hello everybody!

Things are evolving each day at Audio Modeling, so we are not still able to provide dates "written in the stone".
This is currently our - very rough - roadmap for the next year:

• November 3rd, 2018 - Soundmit (Turin): demo of Camelot candidate release
• December 12th, 2018: first release of Camelot
• January 2019 - NAMM Show (Los Angeles): demo of SWAM Brass prototype and SWAM for iOS
• Spring 2019: SWAM v3, SWAM Brass and SWAM for iOS
• Summer 2019: more modules for Camelot
• End of 2019: SWAM Ensembles

Please share your thoughts!

Thank you for being open about your development and future plans. I am most excited about SWAM Brass and SWAM Ensembles - here's hoping everything stays on track and releases as planned!

Great stuff! I look forward to the new products.

I'm sure you have your own plans, but I figured I'd put in some feature requests all the same.

I would love for the SWAM Saxophones to be enhanced with some additional effects beyond growl and flutter. Real life saxophones are full of squeaks and scratches and other subtle harmonic distortions. It would greatly increase the realism of these instruments to include those "imperfections" - with options for both automatic/randomized triggering or by deliberate controller/keyswitch manipulation.

For the benefit of keyboard players, more articulations would be welcome too. Again, either deliberately triggered by keyswitches or controllers, or with the option of automatic articulation with configurable randomization (as an example, consider the "sex knob" of Embertone's "Sensual Sax" instrument).

Thanks for your suggestion @jlunman!

As for "squeaks", they are already there, and you can calibrate the squeak vs overblow both through the Options page, if the Overblow button on the main GUI is active, and through the momentary overblow key-switch velocity.

I guess he wants to control these things "on the fly" rather then in the GUI, either with midi programming or when live playing.

In fact this supposedly is possible via midi CCs and/or via DAW parameters ( "automation" ), both of which can be derived from live playing controls in an appropriately versatile DAW (such as Reaper).

-Michael

Actually I had endless conversations with Stefano about some more automated expressions and articulation database: compared to the sample library that should be incredibly better, because it shouldn't be recorded, but generated in real time by humanization algorithms, always different and modelled to real sound shapes etc.

Stefano always says it's not his own phylosophy, but he can listen to the users... ok here we are, let's tell your wishes...

With an MPE keyboard or Midi data stream (e.g. a Seaboard) it could be possible to detect certain "gestures" - as well by the "playing finger", as by a nearby finger of the same hand, as (worse: same might be busy with something else) by the left hand - and translate them to certain physically modeled sound behavior. I learned in another tread here that trills are not easily doable with a seaboard when assigning pressure to expression; maybe some dedicated gesture detection magic might help.

-Michael

@mschnell what I said is that thrills are hard to achieve without practicing. The Seaboard is a totally new instrument, is not a piano. Just practice with the right gesture and you can achieve almost everything in the right way.

Best!

Thanks for the advice !

Regarding trills / legato with the seaboard (and only a single instance of e.g. the Flute):

I understand that the potential difficulties you describe are introduced by routing the keyboard's channel pressure to the sound engine's expression, which is obviously perfectly sensible when using the Roli. Now obviously the next pressed key (while the previous is still held) will send a new pressure message (on a new channel) and hence the expression will involuntarily jump up or down.

In fact, right now, I am just doing a Reaper Midi processing script (JSFX) to be used when having the Seaboard control a traditional polyphonic instrument. Here I will average the three continuous per-key controllers (Pitch-Bend, Pressure, and Slide) for all currently running notes and send this value as the single possible value for all the sound produced by the sound engine.

I could implement a mode that prevents sending the pressure (and pitch bend, and slide) for the second note in a legato (overlapping Notes) situation. This supposedly would allow for the player managing legato and trills as easily as with a hard (i.e. non MPE) keyboard.

Happily I use a VST host infrastructure that allows me to easily do such scripts.

If it in fact works, I'll publish the script here (and for Reaper users via ReaPack).

-Michael

@mschnell Please see my comment here: https://community.audiomodeling.com/index.php?u=/topic/26/swam-and-roli-seabord

January 2019 - NAMM Show (Los Angeles): demo of SWAM Brass prototype

Will there be a crossgrade off for Sample Modeling Trumpet etc ?

(Sample Modeling also seems to work a complete overhaul of their technology to be release "very soon". Maybe they too are targeting NAMM with a new kind of solo brass instruments. )

-Michael

Will there be a crossgrade off for Sample Modeling Trumpet etc ?

No, of course. Samplemodeling Brass have nothing to do with us.
SM Sax Brothers were developed by Stefano Lucato with the use of the samples alignment by Tommasini. SWAM Saxophones are their natural evolution. That's why we offer an upgrade path from Sax Brothers to Saxophones. But SM Brass are a completely different story.

(Sample Modeling also seems to work a complete overhaul of their technology to be release "very soon". Maybe they too are targeting NAMM with a new kind of solo brass instruments. )

We wish them all the good luck they deserve.

Samplemodeling Brass have nothing to do with us.

This is exactly what is called "crossgrade" instead of "upgrade".
-Michael

I suppose Michael is referring to a crossgrade offer that some companies use to attract new customers from competing products. For example, Steinberg offers a crossgrade on some products (Cubase 10 is 40% off if you already own another DAW like Pro Tools, Ableton Live, FL Studio, etc.) But from what I've seen it's a fairly uncommon practice in the virtual instrument world.

Regarding brass, are there any updates on SWAM Brass development?

Thanks for your commitment to these instruments!

Tom

Such "crossgrade" is not a good practice, in our opinion.

As for SWAM Brass: they are under development. The engine is sounding so good! But the engine is just the 20% of the whole product... there is a wide refactoring under the hood. If you are going to NAMM Show you can hear a preview ;-)

Best!

NAMM is a bit far from Germany

-Michael

Such "crossgrade" is not a good practice, in our opinion.

I'm not sure.

As you might know, the Kontakt based Trumpet by Sample Modeling features a confirmed bug that hits when playing it with a Breath controller (but not when playing it with a Wind Controller, or when doing Midi orchestral work).

Now Sample Modeling obviously works on a new sample processing engine (they do provide an impressive demo video with strings).

They likely will provide brass instruments in that technology some day soon.

They hopefully will offer a nice upgrade path for those hit by that bug.

But changing to an Audio Modeling product might be a good option, as well - if the price difference is not too steep.

-Michael

As for SWAM Brass: they are under development. The engine is sounding so good! But the engine is just the 20% of the whole product... there is a wide refactoring under the hood. If you are going to NAMM Show you can hear a preview ;-)

That's great news! I can't wait to hear the first public demo. Sadly I cannot make it to NAMM as I live in Chicago, but I wish you all the best at the show. I have a friend who works for Shure who may be there... I'll ask him to stop in for me.

NAMM is a bit far from Germany

You can always take a train, right? A train, then a boat, then another train, and a month off of work. Or I guess fly - I think plane tickets round trip from Germany can be had for 350-400 euro depending on where you are.