Although most sample-based virtual instruments are essentially ‘static’, requiring you to play or program the MIDI notes that trigger them yourself, some feature integrated playback engines that can take care of that side of things for you, making it possible to summon convincing individual instrument performances that would otherwise be out of reach, and even facilitating the simulation of a complete band entirely in software.
Here, then, is our pick of virtual musicians across four fundamental instrumental categories: drums, bass, guitar and keys.
The Drummer
As far as we’re concerned, the very top of the software drumming tree is unassailably occupied by Toontrack’s stellar Superior Drummer 3 and FXpansion’s venerable-but-still-viable BFD3, both of which give you more than everything you need to build and mix the drum kits of your dreams, and sequence utterly convincing performances using their vast libraries of live-recorded MIDI grooves as starting points. Both are also very well supported with expansion packs, providing a rich diversity of add-on kits for your phantom sticksman should you need to go beyond those that ship with the base packages.
Superior and BFD let you get deep into the minutiae of drum design and pattern programming, but if you just want to call up a great sounding groove and quickly adapt it to the feel of your track with minimal input, you have plenty of less complicated options. Superior’s little sibling, EZdrummer 3, became considerably more powerful with its last full version update but still qualifies as thoroughly intuitive and to-the-point if you need it to be, while XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums 2 employs a nifty knob-driven interface to make adjusting its onboard MIDI grooves prior to export a cinch. And then there’s UJAM’s Virtual Drummer 2 series of plugins, each one presenting a particular stylistic angle (Phat, Heavy, Deep, etc) and enabling wholly convincing beats to be effortlessly put together by keyswitching between grooves and fills, and manipulating a handful of timing controls. Oh, and if you’re a Logic Pro user, you’ve already got the surprisingly effective Drummer Track built right in to your DAW of choice, which might be all you need.
Also worth mentioning is IK Multimedia’s MODO Drum, which uses physical modelling to generate its drum and cymbal sounds, and features around 1400 MIDI grooves. The caveat here, for the purposes of this round-up, is that those grooves can’t be edited in the plugin at all – you have to drag them out to your DAW to make any changes.
The Bassist
Moving on to the low end, Toontrack add to their own virtual rhythm section with EZbass, the electric and – via the Acoustic EBX and Upright EBX expansions – acoustic bass partner to EZdrummer. Striking just the right balance of simplicity and depth, this is the one to go for if you demand total control of your basslines and the articulations used to play them (backed up by a sizeable library of preset patterns), but don’t want to be overwhelmed with extensive tone shaping parameters. You can even drag other instrumental clips in (MIDI or audio) and have EZbass come up with a b-line for you!
If you’re not afraid to really get your bass programming hands dirty, Ample Sound’s roster of electric and acoustic VIs all sound phenomenal and offer a wealth of compositional and processing options. And at the other end of the scale, UJAM’s five Virtual Bassists take the same approach as the company’s Drummers, making realistic bassline creation a straightforward, fun and inspirational affair.
Lastly, IK again just about squeeze their way into the field with MODO Bass 2, which, like its percussive partner, does a stunning job of simulating a variety of real basses through physical modelling, but doesn’t let you tweak its included patterns within the plugin.
The Guitarist
Simulating the subtleties and nuances of a real life guitarist and their real life guitar is no small undertaking, but Native Instruments have absolutely nailed it with the Session Guitarist range. Currently comprising eight multisampled acoustic and electric guitars, each of these beautiful Kontakt Player libraries houses hundreds of preset chords, strums, riffs and arpeggios that follow MIDI chord input and can be edited in terms of articulations, voicing, timing and more. Amp simulation and effects are in place, too, and it all adds up to an incredibly effective and flexible system for the conjuration of amazing rhythm guitar tracks.
As with the bassists above, our first entrant is flanked on the complexity spectrum by more and less complex alternatives from Ample Sound and UJAM. Ample’s extensive collection of axes covers a panoply of instrumental bases and provides a formidable arsenal of sequencing tools with which to program strums and riffs in exquisite detail; and UJAM’s four Virtual Guitarists once again deliver the goods every time, with their keyswitching chords and phrases, and macro-driven tone shaping – it literally doesn’t get any easier.
The Keyboardist
There are, of course, countless superb virtual pianos and other keyboard instruments on the market, but – surprisingly – hardly any of them are capable of playing themselves, so to speak. In fact, we can only come up with two, and it won’t shock you to learn that they come from Toontrack and UJAM.
Toontrack’s EZkeys has developed into a substantial series over the last few years, taking in acoustic and electric pianos, synths, the Mellotron, a pipe organ and more. The interface looks pretty archaic in comparison to the much newer EZdrummer 3 and EZbass, and sound-shaping is largely preset-driven rather than manually governed, but the circle-of-fifths-based Chord Selector works a treat when it comes to bending the central MIDI clips to your harmonic will on the Song Track, and the sounds are fantastic across the board.
No doubt the first of numerous Virtual Pianists to come, UJAM’s Virtual Pianist Vogue generates authentic grand piano rhythm parts and “simple but appealing solo passages” through the pitched one-note triggering of 180 phrases and 150 fills across 30 styles. There’s a good degree of tonal shaping and processing to be exploited in the Character presets, and Finisher and Ambience effects, and the piano itself – “a legendary Austrian large concert grand” – sounds magnificent.
What software instruments do you reach for when you need to fake a the sound of real-world musicians doing their thing? Let us know in the comments.