Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars
While the wonders of modern sample‑based virtual instruments never cease to amaze me, there are some sounds — and, therefore, some musical styles — that are difficult to recreate in an authentic fashion without real players playing real instruments. Old‑school Delta blues is one such style and, even if your guitar chops are up to snuff, this is still a difficult style to fully master. However, if you do find yourself needing to recreate a sonically genuine slice of Delta‑style blues in double‑quick time, you could always take a dip into Ueberschall’s latest title for their Elastik plug‑in front‑end.
As with the many of the other genre‑based libraries within the Elastik range, Delta Blues comes in a construction kit format. In this case, you get 10 full, loop‑based, construction kits (there is nearly 6GB of sample data in total), each with three different main musical sections plus suitable sections for creating an intro and outro. Full song‑length arrangements with plenty of musical variations are therefore easy to create. Original tempos span the 45‑65 bpm range but this is easy to adjust within Elastik.
Within each kit you get a combination of acoustic guitar, resonator guitar, electric bass and drum loops. For the guitars and bass, both miked and DI’d versions of each loop are provided for maximum flexibility. However, the miked versions sound great straight out of the box and, while they sound very authentic to the style, they are delivered to Ueberschall’s usual high standards. Interestingly, each kit also includes some noise loops; if you want to mix in some instant ‘retro’, you can very quickly get an old‑school audio vibe going. The drums are supplied as both pre‑mixed stereo loops and as separate loops for kick, snare, hi‑hat, toms, ride, room and overheads, so you can create your own drum mix as required.
You might need to add your own John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters‑style vocals but, for everything else, Delta Blues is a great place to start.
I’ve always found Elastik to be a powerful tool for working with Ueberschall’s loop content. The various pitch and tempo manipulation tools make it very easy to mix and match elements of different construction kits or to get Ueberschall’s content to work within an existing project in your DAW. And, if you want to use your DAW plug‑ins for additional processing of the Delta Blues content, then Elastik supports multiple outputs to your host’s virtual mixing environment.
Summary
Ueberschall have done an excellent job of capturing the sound and vibe of old‑school blues in Delta Blues. Loop‑based music production might not be the first approach you think of with this style of music (although Moby showed the fun to be had back in the late ’90s) but, with the right loop content, it can certainly work. Yes, you might need to add your own John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters‑style vocals but, for everything else, Delta Blues is a great place to start.
€99
$99