Review: The Resonator from Indiginus
Don’t overlook this gem of a library because of the low price point. Indiginus has knocked it out of the park with the The Resonator, a beautifully sampled, extremely playable Dobro Houndog for kontakt.
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Review: The Resonator from Indiginus
Indiginus has knocked it out of the park with the introduction of The Resonator! A beautifully sampled Dobro Houndog that has that superb spider cone resonator sound with lots of extras in this library. Don’t look at the price point and move on – This one is a gem! Finally a true sampled resonator is available for composers and musicians that isn’t a sample pack of pre-played licks.
The Resonator sells for $59.00 from: Indiginus Instruments
Thoughts
I have long been a fan of the sounds of a resonator instrument; in fact I own two of them. The Resonator is a sampled Dobro Houndog – not the most expensive of the resonator lineage, but one that has a unique soul – the nasally sound of the spider cone resonator.
I immediately fell in love with the sound and playability of The Resonator. Indiginus has produced some really wonderful instruments in the past year or so and this one is no exception! Honestly, I spent so much time playing with this guitar after I bought it that I wasn’t sure I was going to get a review written at all. The Dobro is traditionally associated with Bluegrass music but I think you will find that the color and sonic possibilities of The Resonator can fit into almost any style of music as a lead voice or textural component.
I found the layout of the interface to be pretty clean and intuitive.
There are really three pages of the interface to interact with, plus the FX page if you choose to use the onboard selection supplied. I prefer to user premium plugins when recording but the FX are sufficient when playing to help convey the basic structure of your sound.
The first page gives you all of your solo mode controls and this is where the playability comes from.
There are nine articulations for hard and soft velocity with a nifty slider control to tweak your sound.
Auto vibrato adds that original quality to the solo notes and you can also engage the Harmony control to fatten the sound. Below Harmony you can select from a number of tunings.
I found the string and body controls a really nice touch. You can play Dobro tuning or select String Set 2 which will drop the tuning to standard guitar. The body resonance controls also give you three choices between Dobro and 2 different guitar bodies. Key changes are handled by a dial control. It’s pretty clean and simple but really effective and easy to play.
The Chords section is pretty straight forward. Chord changes are controlled by the Master Key rotary control when you enable the Link Chords function. You can also arpeggiate your playing by turning on the control and adjust the strum speed. I really like the Dynamic Strings control. It uses less strings if you play with lower velocity or add more strings if you play harder.
Power chords aren’t traditionally associated with the Dobro right? One of my favorite features is the Anvil control above which turns on Power Chords. You can play a really nice chugging rhythm with the feature. Remember, I said don’t just think about Bluegrass? I could find this useful in a number of different musical settings, after all, Bela Fleck went electric with the Banjo as a lead instrument in Jazz!
Other than the two main pages in the library, the other one you may really want to focus on is the additional settings for control of Grace Notes, Trills, Bends and for me one the most important – the Articulation Mixer which allows you to control the levels of all of your articulations on the main solo page.
I said earlier in this review that I have always been a fan of the sound of the resonator guitar. I found The Resonator to be simply brilliant. I honestly have to say that in developing my list of criticisms, I found it hard with this one. While it has only been available for about two weeks, this library no doubt will be one of my all-time favorites.
The playability is remarkable, the sound is amazing and the price is more than reasonable for a library of this extraordinary quality.
I am awarding The Resonator a Sample Library Review Top Pick! As with all of my reviews I will say that before making your purchase, please check out the official demos to make sure that this is the right tool for you.
Facts
The library comes in at just under 2 GB and requires a full NI Kontakt 5.5 license. NI Kontakt Player is not supported. It is sampled to include resonator string tuning along with a second set that drops the tuning to guitar along with three body resonance styles – resonator and two different guitars.
Solo mode includes nine articulations per velocity, velocity control, auto vibrato, harmony control and alternate tunings.
Chord mode includes strum control, an arpeggiator and a handy “anvil” control for including power chords for those rhythmic chugs. Chords can also be linked by key or modified on the fly with a handy drag and drop feature.
The Resonator also includes an Articulation Mixer, Timing Control for Trills, Bends and Grace Notes. Articulations may be controlled by clicking the desired type or using the assigned keyswitches. FX controls provide some basic effects like phaser, flanger, reverb and compression. You can also control the string noise.
The Resonator sells for $59.00 from: Indiginus Instruments
