Scarbee Sample Libraries

A Special 2 Part Review by David Mondrup

Recent years has seen a rising interest for that 60's/70's sound. Especially those retro sounds of funk seem to be on the rise, including those of vintage keyboards such as the Fender Rhodes, Hohner Clavinet D6, Hammond B3 and Wurlitzer, and in the more esoteric, yet still very fashionable department, we find the various analogue synths, of course led by those carrying the moog brand. A quick look at what's currently available in the software instruments department should verify this easily; vintage keyboard emulations are big sellers - vintage roolz, even with a very current smart ass spelling like that...
In a couple of reviews we will deal with two of the high end products in this category; the Rhodes sample library E.V.P.73 and the brand new Wurlitzer library W.E.P., both coming from the sample library perfectionist, Thomas Hansen Skarbye af Scarbee Sample Libraries.

The scarbee sampled instruments are among those multisamples that weren't made in an afternoon with nothing better to do. In a recent hour long conversation on the phone, trying to talk Thomas Skarbye into supplying a copy of the R.S.P. and W.E.P. for this review (which wasn't really that hard), Thomas told me how he'd spent months and months putting together this product. A quote like "... after having sampled all notes in 8 velocities, I found that I just couldn't get the right response when playing softly on the deep keys, so I had to redo the thing, but this time with 12 velocity layers ... " ought to give an impression as to how little compromise has been made in this process. Thomas has put together a few pages telling the story about the work that was included in the task of building each of these instruments, as well as some historic background on the original keyboards, which makes for a fascinating read for anyone even slightly interested in the building and maintenance of instruments - take a look in the online help files: http://www.scarbee.com/rsp73/, and http://www.scarbee-users.dk/wep/

This is all part of an argument to build expectations for the Scarbee instruments - with that much time spent, the result must surely be great?? Well, as we all know, many hours in the studio doesn't do it alone. Talent is needed too; so let's dive in and check out if the result was worth Thomas' efforts.

You can read the W.E.P. review here, and the R.S.P.'73 review here.