Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock Review by Roger Hooper

Ministry of Rock

The Setup

Ministry of Rock comes with 3 installation DVDs. My computer is an Intel Mac Pro 2.66 Ghz quad core with 5 gigs of RAM; Leopard is the OS. Installation is simple: click on the installer, it only allows the choice of the main drive for the location of the PLAY engine. Once this installs, you then pick the location of the PLAY library. I already have another PLAY instrument, East West Quantum Leap Gypsy, so the installer recognized the presence of the PLAY engine, and went on to the library install phase. I put the MOR (as I will refer to this instrument hereafter) library in the Play Libraries folder I had established when installing Gypsy earlier this year. This takes a little while. I didn’t pay strict attention to the time involved, but it was somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes. After the installation, you open the Authorization Wizard, an app that is part of the install. The PLAY libraries require an iLok key; they don’t come with it. The iLok is pretty inexpensive; you can get one here.

Authorization is easy: open the Wizard, create an account with East West (or type in your existing user name and password if you already have one), type in the code that came with the program, click on “authorize”, and the process finishes. This method obviously requires you to be online. If your music computer is not hooked to the internet, go online with your internet machine, insert the iLok into an available USB port, and run the installer from the DVDs, but only select the Authorization Wizard. The license gets installed on your iLok, not the internet computer, so when you’re done, you can use the iLok with your music computer. I have Pro Tools M-Powered, which requires an iLok, so I was good to go. I couldn’t test MOR with Pro Tools, as Leopard support with PT or my M-Powered interface, the M-Audio Firewire 410, isn’t happening yet. I used Apple Logic Studio 8 and Ableton Live 6.0.10 and a MOTU 828mkII audio interface for this review.

Playtime

At the heart of MOR is the East West PLAY Advanced Sample Engine. It is a 64-bit virtual instrument (also will work in 32-bit mode) capable of working as a plug-in for both Mac and PC, or in standalone mode. The instrument streams from disk, or you can load the whole sample into RAM. I chose to stream from disk. The library should be loaded on a separate hard drive than that of the computer’s OS. MOR’s library is 20 gigabytes; I have Quantum Leap Gypsy as well, and it is 12 gigs, so disk space can get eaten up pretty quickly as you add new PLAY titles to your system. You can load many sounds into one instrument, assigning different MIDI channels to each, and assigning each sound to a different pair of outputs. In your DAW, you can route the PLAY output pairs to separate audio channels (see Fig. 1 below, routing bass, drums and guitar in Ableton Live). This is something I couldn’t do in Logic 8, which I will discuss later. However, it may be the easiest to just use multiple instances of PLAY rather than all that programming. According to the Installation and Setup Guide I received with MOR, “using multiple instances in a host will provide better performance than using multiple instruments in an instance.” Speaking of the Setup Guide, it is the only documentation I received in the box. Two PDF manuals are installed on your HD: one for PLAY, one for the specific instrument library installed.

Fig. 1 MOR in Ableton Live; routing PLAY output pairs to individual audio tracks

The minimum requirements for Mac is a G4 1 GHz or faster with 1 gig of RAM and OS 10.4. For PC it is a P4 2.5 GHz or faster with 1 gig or RAM, Windows XP SP 2 or Vista. A core duo system is recommended for both platforms. Of course, the sound card makes a big difference in your perception of the sound. My interface, the MOTU 828mkII, is excellent sounding; no quirky driver issues.

This instrument has a beautiful GUI, which changes as you access sounds from the different PLAY libraries you may have on your machine. That’s a nice touch; it helps you to remember what library the sound is coming from, especially as you get groggy working into the wee hours! Is it the big gold one, or the red one?

PLAY instruments have 2 views: Player and Browser.

Fig. 2 MOR Player View

Fig. 3 GYPSY Player View

Player View

The GUI is very straightforward. There are 4 regions in the Player View. They have a 3-D look, so it’s easy to navigate. In the top region on the upper left you have “Main Menu”, which has the basic stuff: about, check for updates, open, recent (nice to have when you go through a bunch of sounds, you’re tired, and you’re thinking, “I think I like the sound I used 3 times ago…or was it 6 times?”), and save. Then there is current instrument: you can select stream from disk, delete, or advanced properties, wherein you can change the number of voices available and alter the tuning. There is a settings button, which brings up the audio and MIDI menus, stream from disk settings, and other. Other allows you to pick a way to retrigger the round robin feature, either by MIDI note, or by controller. Round robin eliminates the “machine gun” effect that occurs when the same sample is triggered over and over in a repetitive ostinato part. MOR gives you a number of samples that are articulated differently, so when repeating a note, you get a more realistic performance. Sometimes, though, you want the first note of a phrase to be the very sample you first called up, so you can either hit the Round Robin button in the Player View, or send a message via MIDI, based on the setting in “other”.

In the same region, you have a pan knob, a box on the upper right showing the current instrument, and in the middle, a feature unique to PLAY, the channel source. In MOR, the channel source enables you to choose stereo, mono (sum), mono from left, mono from right. What is happening here is that each of the guitars and basses were recorded playing through 2 different amplifiers. For instance, the Les Paul Standard was recorded through a Budda amp (with a clean sound) on the left, and a Marshall stack on the right. It defaults to the Marshall setting, but you can pan it to the Budda side for adding your own plug-in amp modeler in your sequencer’s channel strip. There is also a stereo double knob, with an on button and left and right buttons. This allows the spreading of the two sounds in the stereo image.

In the middle of the top region is the MOR emblem, which looks like a 3-D image, kind of retro, like a crazy guitar amp speaker with reflective glass in the middle (well, that’s my perception, anyway!). A level meter is on each side, and the pan meter is on top. The pan meter with its red light reminds me of the Cylons on the old Battlestar Galactica series; “by your command…”

The second region, which looks like a recessed panel, has the meat and potatoes of the programming goodies. On the left side there is a simple delay, an analog-style filter (it sounds like a nice warm analog synth filter) with a graphic interface, and a convolution reverb. There are 29 choice reverbs here, emulating plates, large halls, etc. The only control you have here is on and level. The verbs are gorgeous, and go from small room to huge cavern; there’s some nice plates, too. They will take some CPU power depending on your machine. I did a sequence in Logic Studio with 9 instances of PLAY and 1 Kontakt 2 instrument with a sound from Symphonic Choirs, with all of the PLAY sounds using convolution reverbs; no problems. I normally use Logic’s Space Designer, but the effects in PLAY sound amazing; no replacing necessary. I did use a little bit of Logic’s Tape Delay and the Guitar Amp Pro on one sound. The delay time, feedback, and return level can be automated in your sequencer. Only the return level of the reverb can be automated.

On the right hand side of the second region, you have ADT, which stands for Artificial Double Tracking. That was invented back in the 60’s at Abby Road Studio, during the heyday of the Beatles. ADT is a tape-like track doubler effect; very analog sounding, and gives you control over the delay time, the depth, the speed, and the level of the “second part”. Below ADT is an envelope generator: attack, hold, decay, sustain and release, with (like the filter) a graphic interface. You want to creep the attack in like a guitarist with his/her hand on the volume knob? Do it here with the attack control, or you can automate the volume in your DAW.

In the middle of this region are solo and mute buttons, as well as a master volume. The solo and mute buttons will apply only when using multiple sounds in one instance.

The 3rd region has control settings on the bottom left side: MIDI channel for each instrument, transposition, sensitivity (values closer to 100 give you greater dynamic changes without large amounts of velocity applied - control, baby!), velocity minimum, velocity maximum. Suppose there is an articulation in one of the sounds that triggers with high velocity, and you don’t want it to? Lower the “Vel. Max” setting and you can take care of it.

Below this is the info control strip: CPU usage, disk streaming rate, memory used by the samples, and voice number. In the middle of this region is the output selector (they’re in pairs) and MIDI port selection. The MIDI port selector is active in the standalone mode, not in the plug-in mode. For the plug-in mode, that task is handled by your DAW. In my case, I have 6 MIDI keyboards, a Unitor 8mkII, and a MOTU 828mkII (it has a MIDI port) showing up. The menu allows the selection of these controllers individually, or all. You can assign sounds and use up to 16 MIDI channels for each MIDI port in one instance.

On the right hand side is a menu of the articulations of the loaded sounds. This is very useful, in that you can see all the samples used, and turn them off if they aren’t needed, saving memory. You can also adjust their volume. In the case of the drums, when you load one kit, the articulations of all kits are listed. You can have one kit loaded, and swap samples from other kits. Snare from the Ludwig kit, kick from the Black kit, crash from the Ayotte kit; pretty cool!

The 4th region of the Player View is the keyboard.

The Browser View

The Browser View is laid out simply:

Fig. 4 MOR Browser View

In the Browser View, the upper left pane shows the drives that are on your computer. Below that is the Favorites pane, which will contain all your PLAY libraries, and custom folders for your most used patches. You can create as many folders as you like. To store patches in the custom folders, click and drag on the desired preset and drop it on the custom folder icon.

When you select MOR, the second pane from the left shows the MOR Instruments and MOR Samples folders. Select the instruments folder, then in the next pane over the instrument types are revealed: basses, drums, guitars. Next pane over you pick your instrument: say you select guitars, then you will see a list of instruments to the right, in this case an Ibanez electric, Gibson acoustic, a couple of Les Pauls, etc. When you make the choice of one of those instruments, then you are given the instrument sub-types. So, select guitars, then “7 String Ibanez KRA DIR”. The following menu of sub-types will unfold: “7 Str. Iban. Lead Elements.ewi” (the first lead articulation sampled for the Ibanez guitar is provided; .ewi is the extension for East West Instrument. You can load further articulations after this in the articulations menu on the Player View). Next is “7 Str. Iban. Lead Master.ewi” (a lead patch with keyswitches, highlighted in blue on the keyboard region below, triggering all of the various articulations), “7 Str. Iban. PC Elements.ewi (the same principle as the lead Elements patch, but with power chords), and “7 Str. Iban.PC Master.ewi” (you get the idea). With the two buttons below (and right above the top of the keyboard), you can add sounds from the browser, or replace them. You can also double click on the instrument choice, and those options will be offered.

Crunch Time

Well, what does it sound like, and how is performing with it? Rock and roll…When I first listened to the demos on East West’s site, I thought, “does this come with loops; certainly that stuff wasn’t played note for note on a keyboard?” No loops here. Loop libraries are great to have, especially when trying to replicate something like guitar. Like hardware synthesizers, though, you tend to gravitate towards certain patches (or in this case, loops), and the clients, after awhile, want to hear something else. In MOR, all the instruments are triggered from the keyboard. Key switching allows different articulations to happen; upstrokes, down strokes, legato, staccato, different chord types, etc. Legato is used to great effect here, helping to make some of the runs with the basses and guitars very fluid. Using the sustain pedal is helpful when employing legato using the Gibson acoustic guitar. Another cool thing is the use of round robin samples, eliminating the dreaded “machine gun effect”. I heartily recommend practicing with MOR. Practice yields great rewards with a great instrument. Listen to the demos, view the online video tutorials. Study those demos; they are a wealth of stylistic goodness, and will be helpful in mastering the use of MOR.

The basses are a rich collection of 5 instruments: a Fender 5 String Jazz bass, a P-bass, a Kubicki bass (I started in music retail selling strings, picks and pickups in the mid-80s; lots of metal bands used these), a Musicman bass (this one I found useful in a wide variety of styles), and a Specter bass (another metal band favorite; this is mammoth sounding). These instruments were recorded though an Ashdown rig on one side, and an Ampeg SVT on the other. I’ve read in many trade mags about recording sessions where multiple monster amp rigs were mic’d simultaneously; now, finally, there is a virtual instrument that gives you the same experience (with the basses and guitars). You can have a stereo mix of the two (and vary the amounts of each), or a mono mix from one amp or the other. The basses give you all the string noise and rich harmonics you would expect from instruments of that caliber. They will inspire you when you start working with them.

The drum kits are an Ayotte kit (“Ayotte Drums - Handmade by Drummers for Drummers”; this is from Ayotte’s web site), a Black kit (the kit used on Metallica’s “Black” album was sampled), a Ludwig (old faithful; useful for all styles), and an Octaplus (a Ludwig kit from the 70’s with 9 toms). They have varying amounts of room ambience (the Ayotte having the smallest room, the 2 Ludwigs the biggest). The basic stuff is here: kicks, snares, hats, ride and crash cymbals, toms. The drums are alive; they respond well to dynamics, and have lots of presence. You can whisper, you can explode. They are suitable for any style, just not heavy rock. But, this is Ministry of Rock: these drums are the definitive rock drums, no doubt about it.

The round robin effect works well; here is a sample of repeating cymbals:

MP3 Clip: Round robin effect on cymbals

The guitars are alternately beautiful, big and crunchy. The 7 String Ibanez guitar, according to the manual, “is the ultimate death metal guitar”. Sounds like it probably is, but each user I’m sure will have an opinion about that. Turn it up, it’ll tear yer head off! There are lots of cool scrapes and distorted goodies triggered using the key switching in the Master Lead instrument. The Ibanez was recorded through a Krank brand amp. The other side was recorded clean. A Krank amp…guitarists have really cool boutique amps!

The sole acoustic guitar is a Gibson J-160. It is here for strumming; no picking or lead playing. For chords, you get a choice of major, minor, dominant 7, sus 4, 9th (sounds more like a 2 chord to me, but why be picky), Maj. 7 and Minor 7. When applying the mod wheel, the strum goes from fast to slow. The legato mode kicks in very well here; use the sustain pedal; you’ll sound like a virtuoso. If you are looking for a 6 chord, or an E7#9 chord, you’re out of luck; but hey, this is rock and roll! This guitar is full, and you are offered a good variety of strums, some very fast (the manual calls them pitchless – am I sounding like a keyboard player?), so you should be able to create any type of rhythm part necessary, and it will be rockin’.

A nice addition to MOR would be more in the acoustic realm, maybe even a couple of additional other brands; certainly the ability to play individual notes. I own Quantum Leap Gypsy, so that need is more than amply fulfilled, both with steel string and classical guitars. This is an MOR review, but here is a plug for Gypsy: I bought it this summer to score a documentary on missionary work in Mexico and Bolivia. The producer (whom I’ve worked for quite a bit) wanted an organic score that would fit the region, not the typical electronic-sounding score I had done for her last several pieces. Gypsy was amazing; not only the guitars (4 types), but also solo violins that are stunning, and the accordions (yes, these will bring out the squeeze box lover in you) really made the score come alive. There are percussion instruments that didn’t get used on that outing; they are excellent nonetheless. I hired a “real” guitar player for a couple of cues (he was fabulous). The sounds in Gypsy worked so well that a few people in the production end of things asked me from time to time, “Is this the cue that has the real guitar?” Each time it was Gypsy.

BACK TO MOR’s GUITARS: the Les Paul Deluxe was recorded using a Marshall stack and a Bogner stack. The Les Paul Standard was recorded through a Budda amp with a clean setting (you can use your own plug-ins in your DAW for this one) and a Marshall Stack. These sound quite different; the Deluxe has more articulations/key switches, and has lots of cool metal effects. Perhaps the Standard is geared to a more mainstream rock sound. Let the user judge; you can’t go wrong with either. Both have a nice big, in your face sound.

The Strat PRS Mono Fender is like a Swiss Army Knife of distortion guitar: lots of scrapes, dive bombs, sounds suitable for repetitious rhythm playing (I’m not sayin’ repetitious leads are the only thing a guitarist does when not doing leads…) and chunky chord voicings for thrash, punk, ska (these were fun to play with), and garage. It is great seeing samples of a Paul Reed Smith guitar in this library. I mentioned earlier that I worked in a music store in the 80's; I got to see the rise of that brand in the retail scene. PRS guitars are works of art. Back to the Strat sounds…no clean, or chorused strat. There is a rock chords preset that is less distorted, more crunchy; I’m talking about that glassy, slightly chorused sound. But, this is MOR: Ministry of Rock, not “Middle of the Road”, so no adult contemporary sounds. Just teasing… sort of. In any case, it would still be nice to have one Strat of that ilk. But, the need for clean can be had with the Telecaster VOX BOG. This guitar was recorded through a Bogner am and a Vox amp, both using clean channels. The Tele preset is awash with reverb and chorus. You can turn the effects down or off, by clicking with the mouse or automation. It sounds beautiful; play with the pitch wheel a little (I mean just a little), and it sounds absolutely ethereal. Use the mod wheel on the guitars to close the filter; pretty cool effect, nice tone colors to play with.

I mentioned earlier about creating a tune in Logic with 9 instances of MOR. I used the Telecaster, Les Paul Standard, Les Paul Deluxe, the Gibson acoustic, Strat Rock Chords, “Strat Punk Hm Chugs n Scrms”, Musicman Bass, and the Ludwig Drum Set. Here’s the result:

MP3 Clip: MOR RH Demo MP3

What’s Not to Like/ How about service?

Nothing, really, just little nit-picky things. I’d like to see more acoustic guitars, maybe that one clean strat. At present, the knobs can’t be controlled by hardware controllers. I emailed East West, and got a reply the next day stating that “If it isn't already a feature request on our tracker, I'll make sure it gets in there.” Cool! Its great to see a company care about their customers’ requests. Many of the parameters can be automated in your DAW. On the plus side, the sounds are all amazing; they inspire you to want to play. I know that I am wanting to listen to more guitar excerpts to learn how to use this better. You will grow with this instrument; keep listening and studying other players, and apply what you hear to your writing and performance practice. Listen and learn…always a good thing. The sounds are good, basic rock staples that you can use time and time again to create your art.

The audio quality of the sounds is so good you may not feel the need to do much of anything plug-in wise to the tracks. I score video for a living, and have scored a few trailers for EA Games’ Battlefield 2; these sounds are just what the doctor ordered for heavy metal battle music. Just like the Symphonic Orchestra and Symphonic Choirs, MOR is great for trailer/film applications, as well as pop recording; it has that big, lush sound that works well with film.

East West has been very responsive since I began this review process. I emailed three separate times, and got a response for each within a day’s time; excellent! I also installed Logic 8 last week, which is a major overhaul of Logic Pro, so I had a little learning curve there. I had a question about difficulty in setting up a multi-output instrument with MOR in Logic 8, something I could do in Logic Pro 7 and Ableton Live 6. East West responded quickly, noting that they were “still addressing multi-outs on that (Logic 8) program”. Thank you for the honesty! I have no doubt that will be fixed. For now, I use multiple instances in Logic (actually, that’s probably what I’ll do anyway). My CPU can handle it well. So, good customer service goes a long way in making a manufacturer’s goods appealing to the buyer. East West has it; they have a lot of resources online (lots of FAQs, videos, a forum, etc.). Their support department rocks.

Inspiration Time

I love it when an instrument inspires me to write. This is what they are supposed to do, no? Ministry of Rock, from the moment you open the program (its gorgeous to look at; I know, I’m a software geek), does that. It gives you the tools to craft musical, organic sounding phrases, with gorgeous replications of some classic fretted instruments and killer drums. Rock and Roll can be majestic, and this instrument delivers that in spades. If you are doing any type of rock production, you need to consider Ministry of Rock. It goes to 11!