Has anyone tried Latin World

[IvanP]

Hi, has anyone tried the new "latin world" or can point me to a review? I may need some latin sounds, specially rythms and instruments but I would like to know how good it is covering them and how useful the playable instruments are.

Thks in advance,

Iván

[welldone]

Greetings

Here's my personal experience with Latin World: You get quite an amount of construction-kits for different styles (Samba, Salsa, Baion etc.). For the musical elements (guitar, bass, horns) there are different chord progressions available per style and for each progression there is a small variety of different licks / patterns available. You also get a selection of solos for the guitar and the horns parts plus some piano-midifiles (but no audiofiles with piano!).

With the available selection of elements it's quite easy to crank out authentic-sounding pieces in no time. I have used Latin World for a theatre-production and the results were not distinguishable when compared to the "real" recordings used in the show. There's also enough material to keep things interesting for quite a while. The elements can also easily be used for "crossover-styles" (latin house, downbeat etc.)

What you don't get with Latin World - apart from a few usable drum-kits and percussion-kits-are playable instruments like a multisampled quitar. If you want more variety in your playing you have to take pieces out of the pre-recorded licks and solo-lines. When you do this with the horn-lines you get great results with not to much of fiddling.

The only thing I found a bit annoying is that some of the otherwise great drums- and percussion-loops didn't seem to be looped correctly, initially (maybe there's also an error on my part involved, but I'm quite sure that there are some "bad" loops). But it's nothing that couldn't be corrected by resetting the loop-ends yourself.

All in all I would recommend the library.

I hope this is useful to you. If you have more detailled questions, feel free to ask.

Best wishes,
welldone

[IvanP]

Thks well

Best,

Iván

[lgonz]

does the loops tempo change when you change the tempo in your sequencer just like stormdrum does?

thanks,


Luis

[welldone]

Yes, it's the same as with Stormdrum - LW is also based on the Intakt engine.

welldone

[Claves]

welldone, if I may Ivan.
i am looking @ LW also. I read the description over @ Best Service, here @ EW ,and its about the same copied and posted description. I even emailed BS. no yet answer yet.
I am a latin percussionist, so my main concern and deciding factor is more on the other melodic instruments e.g. bass, piano horns & "drum kit" and not the hand percussion.
Now my understanding is that the other instruments (as above) have loops in 4 keys (which ones?) with about 6 progressions each per style? Could you expand on this? It appears that I could be stuck since its loops. Otherwise manipulating via slicing the loops wihtin Intakt? Now this is where I think Intakt would be a major role in maipulation. Sadly I am not too familiar with Intakt, though I am trying the demo at this time. How is Intakt's UI algo as ar as manipulating the BPM's of the original loop vs. synching up with the sequencer? I have heard comparisons with Styllus RMX vs. Intakt and is was not pretty so to speak.
Currently using DP 4.5 as my main sequencer-if that matters..
How much material is involved-percussion vs. melodic instruments?
Sorry for the numerous questions, but would really appreciate your opinion. It will make a big decision somewhat easier, since you seem to know the dealio


Regards,
Claves

[welldone]

well, here we go:
Let's take Salsa as an example: If you choose Salsa Am 100BPM you get all chord progressions beginning with an Am-chord. The progressions for Salsa are as follows:

Variation 1: Am D7 Am D7 Am D7 Am D7
Variation 2: Am G F E7
Variation 3: Am/Dm/E7/Dm Am/Dm/E7/Dm Am/Dm/E7/Dm Am/Dm/E7/Dm
Variation 4: Am B7/A C/A D/A Am B7/A C/D/E/F/G
and 2 more variations

For each variation in the chord progression you get at least 2 bass-lines, 2 guitar-parts and 3 to 5 horn-parts (plus midi-files for piano-parts; but I haven't checked these out, yet).

For Salsa there are progressions beginning with Am (example above), C7, G7 and Em7, and each progression has variations like the one described above. Plus there are also different instrument-lines at 80 BMP, 100 and 120 (different samples without any timestretching). As you can easily see, that's quite some material.

There's also another organisation-system, which gives you e.g. all guitar-lines for a certain style (like Salsa) at a certain BPM, mapped out on the keyboard. For the styles I checked there were at least more than forty different guitar-lines (e.g. Salsa at 100 BPM).

As an addition there's also a big bunch of different solo-lines for guitar and different horns.

If you want to create your own lines, you can map out the slices of a sampled line on the keyboard, using Intakt's beat-machine mode. You can then play your own lines with the slices. Or you can export a midi-file to your host and do the rearranging there. The results might not always be ideal as you chop up flowing lines that were initially played live, but sometimes the results are really usable.

About the time-stretching: As you get variations in different BPMs you are not forced to time-stretch the beats very hard.

I hope this makes things a little clearer for you - it's not that easy to describe

I'll try to send you the .pdf with a list of all the chord-progressions via e-mail. I hope this is okay.

Best wishes,
welldone

[IvanP]

Well, that says it all

Yeah the library is surprisingly BIG! Probably the best latin library available right now. There is a lot of work behind and well done... probably my problems are due to a bad Dvd, not from the original masters, but we'll see.

I tried the piano "tumbaos" they are pretty nice too and have a great vibe.

There is also some ambiance recorded, people on the street talking and saying things... it's actually very funny. I might think that the person who did those recordings didn't understand a word of spanish, since some phrases recorded are really NONSENSE speaking and surreal...though maybe they were just having some good laughs

Overall It's a very versatile and complete library

[Claves]

welldone,
Thank you for the information. Good to see the dominant chords!! Though I would have loved to see some progressions in Bb, alot of Mambo is in that key I should be able to finagle it with some apropo changes. i 'm guessing that the piiano MIDi files would help in using the 7th, 9th. and 13th voicings.
You described if very well!! Thank you for the PDF.
Good to hear they are in mutliple BPM's, stretching shouldn't be too bad.

cheers

Claves

[Claves]

Forgot to add, what kinda of buffer settings are you using? The Intakt demo has a big latency @ 512.