Audiomodern

Whether it’s moodily swelling, emotively
plucking or chordally washing into our ears,
cinematic guitar is a mainstay across the
modern soundtracking world. Though this
playing style is also prevalent in ambient music,
it’s really in the generation of score-ready
textures for working composers that
Audiomodern pitch Opacity II – a highly
manipulable guitar sample player, loaded up
with some exquisitely well-recorded axe work.
Comprising 14 sessions delicately performed
by Washington-based Terre Grande guitarist
Justin Hodges, Opacity II’s recording quality is
the irst thing that hits us after loading up the
software within Kontakt. Sumptuous arpeggios,
gloomy swells and echo-sodden notes abound
as we cycle through these preset Sessions. Each
of the 14 tempo and key-deined Sessions
contains four groups of looped performances,
comprising elements such as Chords, Phrases,
Sequences and Melodic Textures. Each of these
groups have 12 diferent recordings of diferent
approaches to these sound types that all gel
together harmonically. This variation can be
further increased by dragging across the
individual sounds from other Sessions, too.
You’ll note that this is Opacity ‘II’ and follows
on from the inaugural version which was only
released in 2019, therefore there aren’t major
changes to the sound palette in v2, aside from a
few additional Sessions and an amazingly
efective Reverse mode that can transform the
feel of your parts instantly. Two of the biggest
boons with this sequel are the ability to alter
your cabinet, selecting between the tonal
characteristics of 11 diferent cab options,
modelled after some of the big hitters from the
amp world. You can further ine-tune their Size,
Air, Balance, Distance and Wetness, as well as a
slower or faster rotation, which can bring all
kinds of interesting efects to the table.
The other big addition is a brand new,
performance mode. Performance mode lets us
harness four hugely diferent individual guitar
tones (the ones which make up each group) in
playable, modiiable form across your controller
keyboard. This can be a cool way to create and
save your own individual patches, should you
not actually be a guitarist yourself, or ind
yourself smitten with these pre-designed tones.
With a range of ways to explore this software,
we opt to load up Session 05 which corresponds
nicely with the tempo of a project we’re
currently working with. Carving out a few chord
shapes near the centre of our keyboard triggers
a spectrum of textured patterns, interacting in
ways that make our hairs stand on end.
Though changing between the groups is
smooth, mis-ingering results in a tonally
ofputting chime sound. It’s certainly
recommended that you get to grips with the
keyboard layout for your Session, and how
certain sounds within slot well together, before
recording anything. Though the tone of all these
sounds is immaculate, further efects can be
applied on a per-group basis. We can apply more
or less Delay, Chorus, Stutter, Filter and Reverb
space to any of the pre-designed patches, or
ones we craft ourselves in performance mode.
Opacity II certainly provides hard beneit to
the non-guitarist sound designer, granting
customisable control over the numerous facets
of a peerless player’s sound, though simply
harnessing the preset Sessions and Groups may
be enough to ill that space. Guitarists shouldn’t
write this of either – Opacity 2 provides a way to
re-think your typical approach to writing for the
instrument, while making us wish we could
wrench the same emotion from our axes.
Web audiomodern.com
Audiomodern
Opacity II £88.99
Craving expressive guitar textures, but lacking the nouse to conjure
them? This suite presents a six-string universe ready to explore…
Verdict
For Simple and intuitive way to
incorporate pro-level guitar texture
Performance mode allows more
individual expression
Amp sims and efects
Against Some minor slowdown when
Session switching
Building on an already versatile, crystal
clear-sounding toolkit, Opacity II perfects
the cinematic guitar engine concept
9 / 1 0
Alternatively
Heavyocity Scoring Guitars 2
£85
If you want to get even more hands
on with guitar textures, this suite
may be a more appealing prospect
Rob Papen Rhythm Guitar
132 » 9/10 » £80
This more groove-based package
also comes with an onboard synth
to take sounds in edgier directions
Throughout our experiments with Opacity 2,
we kept running into a heavily delayed, palm-
muted, plucked sound that of course, put us
in mind of a certain beanie-hat-toting Irish rif
merchant. We also stumbled upon the exact
tone of Slowdive’s Sugar for the Pill and other
familiarly delay-sodden fare. These examples
proved that beyond soundtracking, Opacity 2
could be put to work in Indie-land, if you
needed some subtler harmonic elements
particularly. There’s much to explore here
and Opacity’s potential certainly extends
beyond its intended target audience. Often
when experimenting with Reverse mode,
certain phrases take on a completely
diferent, dream-like, quality – when treated
with further efect processing, who knows
where these possibilities may lead.
The edge is ne
74 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021
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