Checking Out: Joshua Bell Violin by Embertone
Within minutes of playing, I was in love with Joshua Bell Violin. Embertone has raised the bar for solo virtual instruments for Kontakt as this library delivers hyper-realistic performances instantly yet has extensive controls for deep programming and sonic sculpting.
Jump to the Demos of Joshua Bell Violin
Jump to the Videos of Joshua Bell Violin
Checking Out: Joshua Bell Violin by Embertone
Joshua Bell Violin’s front panel contains the ‘Performance Indicator” which shows how the instrument is intelligently responding to your performance, displaying articulations, transitions and dynamics that are being triggered.
Embertone has teamed up with Grammy® Winning Virtuoso Joshua Bell for their latest release, Joshua Bell Violin. After 2 years in development and anticipation, the new Kontakt player instrument is now out and is Embertone most ambitious release to date.
The development team’s plan was to not only to push the Kontakt engines boundaries by super deep-sampling a priceless Stradivarius violin played by the virtuoso Joshua Bell himself but to deliver a super-intuitive instrument with hyper-realistic playback and controls for complete programmability.
For the recording sessions, Embertone captured Bell performing on his 1713 ‘Huberman’ Stradivari in Avatar Studios in New York. The ‘Huberman’ Stradivari, which has a thrilling history of theft and intrigue was purchased by Bell for over $4 million dollars and has become an integral part of Bell’s sound. All this comes into play when you consider the connection between violin and violinist as Bell so eloquently puts it, “it becomes almost like your soul mate.” says Bell, adding, “Some people compare it to getting married.”
The Joshua Bell Violin Articulations page displays the range of available articulations for playback ranging from the usual suspects to contoured sample sets, Ricochet, and Harmonics.
The library features nearly 20,000 individual samples and a staggering 12 true legato/transition styles. Although the advance features, dozens of keyswitches and preset controls can all get a bit complex, Embertone has designed the instrument to feel simple and easy to get amazing authentic performances by simply playing the instrument in real time on the keyboard.
Joshua Bell Violin Character Panel contains 6character EQ settings with it’s ‘Tone’ sections and 8 convolution IR (Reverb) options as ‘Space’ selections.
The Tone controls offer subtle yet important variants in the timbre via 6 different modeling EQs. Playing through the selection, I found the Tones to be aptly named with each one changing the instrument just slightly. These subtle difference add up and add yet another layer of realism to playback.
The Joshua Bell Violin Intuition panel allows access to the advanced humanization and randomization controls which add another layer of realism to playback.
In the first minutes of playing the instrument, I literally was in love with this Joshua Bell Violin. Embertone has delivered a phenomenal library that raises the bar for solo virtual instruments and excels in playability, programmability and of course timbre.
In the checking out video above, I play freely on the keyboard to share some of the different performance settings, character options and included IRs. As you can hear, it is so easy to get an expressive and beautiful performance out of this library and I will be seeking out more excuses to write for solo Violin because of it.
As with all of our reviews and posts, I encourage you to check out the official demos and videos below to make sure this instrument is right for you and your workflow.
Joshua Bell Violin sells for $199 from Embertone
Facts
Joshua Bell Violin is a Virtual Violin instrument for Kontakt. It is a NKS Kontakt Player Instrument compatible with both the FREE Kontakt Player 5.6.8 or Full Kontakt 5.4. or higher.
Joshua Bell Violin sells for $199 from Embertone
Demos of Joshua Bell Violin by Embertone
Benjamin Botkin Demo mentioned in the video above.
