GuitarMonics Kickstarter from Sound Designer, Rodney Gates

The Sound Architect speaks to renowned Sound Designer, Rodney Gates, regarding his new virtual instrument from his company SoundCues.

Hi Rodney and welcome back to The Sound Architect, thanks for speaking to us again.

Thank you, Sam. It’s great to be back.

Let’s start from the beginning, tell us about your new start-up company SoundCues, what made you decide to start up a new company?

Certainly! I’ve had the name SoundCues in my head since 2008 or so, thinking that one day it could be the name of the company I would form if I ever went solo as a sound design contractor in the video game industry. Since that day never came and I continue to work for game companies, I realized that going that route probably wasn’t going to materialize, due to the no-compete clauses most of us sign when joining a larger corporation.

Still, the name stuck. In the middle of 2012, when I was finishing up some music courses with Berklee School of Music, it dawned on me that I might be able to start this company and create virtual instruments; similar to the ones I was using in class. To me it seemed like the perfect blend of left and right brain processes and somewhat similar to video game sound design with all of its variation of sound and meticulous attention to detail. Towards the end of that year, I checked in with legal at Sony and received their blessing. So in early 2013, SoundCues, LLC was born and I started on the first instrument.

What is the concept of SoundCues?

SoundCues is all about the creation of unique sample-based virtual instrument products based on real-world instruments. As the hybrid name implies, many of the instruments we’ll release will consist of a “musical sound design” in their nature, whether that’s a unique way of how they are played and recorded, or repurposed through manipulation and synthesis.

We believe in producing high-resolution, clean, production-ready samples that sound great “out of the box” on first use in a composer’s DAW (digital audio workstation).

The kinds of instruments we will focus on won’t be the mega-expensive orchestral sample libraries that are already out there in droves, but more boutique-like VIs, a little different than other examples one might find on the market. There are a few companies out there that have inspired this approach: Sonic Couture and Embertone. They create cool, expressive virtual instruments that not only stand apart from the norm in the marketplace, but also offer unique new, playable sounds from familiar instruments that could never have been performed in any other way without sampling. SoundCues holds similar principles in this regard and we hope to join their unique niche in the marketplace.

Tell us about the first project for SoundCues?

The first product I’m bringing to market is called GuitarMonics. It is a comprehensive, all-harmonics collection of virtual instruments (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and electric bass). Typically, harmonics are thrown in as an effect patch in other larger guitar libraries, but I wanted to create a stand-alone harmonics sample library that was fun to play and sounded great.

Why did you decide to create GuitarMonics?

One day I was listening to U2’s Joshua Tree album and “Where The Streets Have No Name” came up. Listening to The Edge’s delay-driven guitar part laid over the synth in the intro struck a chord in me. I thought that part might sound really cool if it were played as all harmonic notes on the guitar instead of just regular guitar notes. This, of course, is not easy to do. If you play guitar, you know there are only a handful of really strong, open-string harmonics that exist at certain frets that ring out really well, which makes it difficult to play whatever notes you wish. From this idea, GuitarMonics was born. It became a mission for this first product to turn this concept into a reality without a lot of pitch-bending hood.

What key features mean that I should own a copy?

GuitarMonics will be one of the only comprehensive, all-harmonics virtual instruments on the market covering electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and electric bass guitar. The instruments have been (nearly) chromatically-sampled using several string re-tunings throughout the recording stage to cover a 4-octave range of crystal-clear, playable notes. With the combination of stereo, production-ready patches alongside mono, DI-recorded (direct input) versions for use with any guitar amplifier simulation software or hardware out there, it pretty much covers the entire range of possibilities that you would need for maximum usability.

Who is it mainly created for?

Like all future releases from SoundCues, it’s being created primarily for composers who works in film, television, or video games (which is pretty much most of them). But anyone writing any kind of music on their PCs or Macs could use this kind of library, quite frankly. 99% of these musicians use some kind of DAW and sequencing software (e.g. Logic, Cubase / Nuendo, Pro Tools, etc.) to construct some or all of their mockups and/or final music deliveries using virtual instrumentation.

What can we expect in the future from Sound Cues?

I have already acquired the next few instruments that I’ll be sampling next, and thinking of ways to record them, but they are staying under wraps for now. We are looking forward to sharing them with the world.