Dont care about details then jump over to Urs at www.u-he.com
My 6 months exploration of Zebra2 Softsynth ends today with the release of Zebra Oldskool Soundset Volume 1+2. The Volume 1 which was released in July has merged with Volume 2 into one single entity called Zebra Oldskool Volume 1+2.
Let me put it this way, if was to be stranded on an island with 1 instrument, it would be Zebra2 from Urs Heckmann. I have managed to make this softsynth come up with just about anything worth using for music and sound production. Pads, Leads, Bass, Keys, Synths, Drums & Percussion, FX, SFX and pretty good emulations of acoustic instruments.
My first encounter with Urs and his ideas was 4-5 years ago when i learned about Zoyd. I thought, damn this guy is on to something but Zoyd was not for my platform. Then a bit later i learned that Urs had begun a new project named Zebra. When Zebra was announced for Windows PC i was glued to the news from Urs for a long time. Time went by and i forgot about Zebra and moved on to other things. Then about 2 years later the Zebra popped on the scene. At that time i was commited elsewhere so i didnt pay much attention to it but i bought it, played a bit with it and then put it away because i had other stuff to do.
My work on another platform ended and i started to look for a new project. Then out of the blue Howard Scarr dumps in on the Zebra and shows some controlled versions of Zebra, by control i mean classical sound synthesis. He showed he could tame the Zebra into an instrument you can actually play. So i gave it a go, my first goal was to see if Zebra could sound nice and warm and thus this little famous MP3 " Zebra Jazzy " showed its way to the public.
Well after the creation of Zebra Jazzy i thought i better go deeper and see what this synth is really about. After creating 17-18 patches i realized that the synth engine was ideal for just about any kind of sound design. 2 Months (July 2007) later the Zebra Oldskool Volume 1 was released. I had made a promise to put out the soundset just before summer, well i delivered but i wasnt finished. There was still much to be explored so during the summer i decided to make a follow up to Volume 1. This particular summer was VERY wet so i had no problems with staying indoors commited to sound design. The purpose with Volume 2 was to turn Zebra into a workstation with all needed instruments for putting down a basic track. The first challenge was to come up with drums, after a few weeks i had the basic recipe for making drums on Zebra and thus this MP3 " Zebra Drums " hit the public. This was later refined into " Zebra Drums & Percussion ".
Once drums & percussion passed the exam it was time for some fun like in this example " Zebra Boogie Down " and this " Zebra Kool " , now while these demos are more like oldschool disco there is tons of other demos ranging from ambient to rock and new age to minimalism over at " KVR Zebra Oldskool thread " .
I could go on and on with praise about Zebra, if its not in your arsenal of VSTs you are going to miss the train. The train i talk about is the train that reclaim its throne at sound making, synthesis and NOT some 50 GB synth sample library where you never get full control anyway.
I dont think i been this excited since i got my first real synth Yamaha CS-30 in year Gods knows when.
Take the full step, learn synthesis and you will be rewarded with the ultimative sound, the sound of you!
Thats it, over and out!
/Michael
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