Julie's Scats Collection
There's something about well placed female vocal riffing in electronic music that just gets me. Jazz scats like the new collection of sounds featuring Canadian chanteuse, Julie Hamelin, work quite well for building on top of a solid dance beat or dropping in neatly into a hip-hop riff. With some careful arranging, you might even be able to piece together a backing vocal for a pop melody. 341 voice samples weighing in at 27.8MB deliver a solid dose of vocal goodness perfect for adding to tracks that need a little something extra to make them work. Sample the tracks with a massive rar file containing free sounds from the collection or take a listen to the audio tracks constructed on the site. The demo sounds give you a very accurate impression of the potential value of the entire vocal collection. For $19.99, this is an excellent collection of vocal stabs compatible with any app capable of supporting soundfont, NUSofting DK+ and FXpansion DR-008, Vsampler 3 or Wusikstation.
M-Audio Drum and Bass Rig
Get big drum and bass guitar sounds in one combined virtual rack. M-Audio makes the Drum and Bass Rig compatible with most of the recording environments on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms, with four separate modules for creating the perfect digital rhythm section. RD-5 Real Drums, EB-6 Electric Bass, LC-7 Loop Creator and BL-8 Bassline all work to create the rhythms you need to compose backing tracks or build a solid dance track from the beats up. While the app is optimized for use with the M-Audio keyboard line, it should work with any MIDI instrument configuration. Individual modules have their own effects racks in addition to a master effects rack for the entire application. Compatible with virtually any VST 2.0 interface. [Windows XP/Mac OS X 10.3 MSRP$129.95]
M-Audio Black Box
Guitar modeling is something of a voodoo science. After all do you really get the sound of a Marshall Stack by plugging this in instead of using that Pignose practice amp in the corner? Is this going to turn that Sears catalog special into the sounds of the legendary rock masters? While a wide combination of amp rigs might be out of reach for most musicians, the purest in mean screams out to make the madness stop. I've heard several other digital modeling tools do a capable job of replicating specific microphones, so there must be something to this technique.
Jamstix
Jamstix is a virtual drummer with a pretty suite feature set. Dumping the drummer in favor of a computer generated alternative has a long tradition, but this one takes it a step further and attempts to play along with other instruments. The big advantage is no dropped sticks during gigs and one less body to consume the food buyout.
