Mystic Rhythm by Ohm Lab
We are very happy to take another ModeAudio sample collection for a test drive. This time, we take a look at the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection and let you know what we think!
ModeAudio continues to garner a lot of well-deserved props from around the music production world, and with good reason. We have reviewed some of their products here in the past and have always truly enjoyed every minute of it! Today we are going to take a slightly different approach to our review process and take a look specifically at processing these sounds and sharing our thoughts on how they hold up. We figure you can judge for yourself, the quality of the samples as we will share a clean audio example of each sound we touch and then some processed with effects so you can hear the changes first-hand.
These guys do great work with capturing the sounds, preserving the original integrity and dynamic range and they also do some pretty fine work with creating demo tracks to showcase their work. This is exactly why we decided to go another direction and dive right into the types of processing you yourself may apply in your own projects. We did, however, leave a few things off limits. We have applied absolutely no EQ or compression to any of the sounds from the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection in our examples (all changes to frequency are accomplished through amp modeling, etc). And we have only applied effects in a serial fashion (directly on the track), so there are no parallel processing tricks at work here.
One more thing we stayed away from in our testing was sampler manipulation. That said, we found it incredibly refreshing that the team at ModeAudio took the time to put together detailed and step-by-step instructions for loading up these sounds into whatever sampler your pack was produced for (they offer versions of this collection for Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Reason Refill or tradition .wav format).
Alright, on to the review!
All chatter about demos and processing aside, the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection is pretty darn impressive. We especially loved the inclusion of the audio tail samples and the project files. Every sample in the collection is available in either a clean or processed version, including the audio tails. In fact, the audio tails have bonus processed versions to use! And there are a total of 20 project files to look through to get a good idea of how the people who made this collection went about processing the same samples.*
*We went with the Logic Pro version of the Mystic Rhythm Electric Guitar collection. Although the Reason and Ableton version also contain 20 project files, the .wav pack obviously does not.We took a run at dozens of the samples in the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection, but only a small handful of those will be shared here. There are at least four variations on each theme/set in the pack. This makes it very easy to create cohesive music! Each set is basically broken into riffs, leads and chords, with some stabs and palm mutes tossed in for good measure. So you can probably imagine how easy it makes using them in your own projects.
Okay, now let's chat about the stuff that stood out the most. Attention to detail is obviously a shared mantra amongst the team members at ModeAudio. It's truly amazing how clean and pure a sample can sound, only to be delightfully surprised to find all of those hidden characteristics that make a sound come to life hidden just under the surface waiting to be heard. A perfect example of this would be the Deep Forest samples. In the short clip below you will hear the clean sample on its own, then with simple distortion and delay applied (notice the clarity and precision even between echoes) and then a version with distortion and amp modeling applied, meant to bring out the noises and human elements that occur in a real guitar performance. Each of the sets in the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection has the same potential.
[Listen to the demo files in the original review here]Check out the beautiful warmth and rounded appeal of the clean Ripple sample at the beginning of the next demo track. It transforms so easily into a hypnotic and lush ambient riff. And it's hard to believe that it's even the same sample when we run it through a dirty gate set-up!
[Listen to the demo files in the original review here]
Stargazer is a straight-forward clean electric guitar set. But with a touch of drive, delay and reverb it becomes rather anthemic. And watch out for unexpected, and awesome, curves when you begin to take this one in a more experimental direction. (We found all of the samples in the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection to be quite fun when taken into those experimental realms!)
[Listen to the demo files in the original review here]
Lastly, the Unhinge set straddles jazz, boogie and rock so perfectly that we had to include it. The clean version is so simple and pure, you can't help but be drawn to it. Some classic jazz chorus processing and it becomes both dreamy and assertive at once. And the power grind distortion in the final example is indicative of just how flexible the samples in the Mystic Rhythm - Electric Guitar Loops collection really are.
[Listen to the demo files in the original review here]All-in-all, we give this sample pack some big thumbs up and can say that it's like having a studio guitarist in the room with you. Mind you, this is not a sampled instrument, but rather a collection of loop samples. Still, the time they took to ensure the highest quality and usability for each sample in the collection is very apparent. One more thing to consider before you leave today–Remember that none of these sounds had EQ or compression applied. And we didn't even touch the processed sounds in the collection, nor did we use any of the tails. Just imagine the range of possibilities and what you can do with your full arsenal of audio tools at your disposal!