The story
Stardrive was an accidental creation from an experiment using a gentlemen’s grooming accessory as an EBow on my Yamaha Pacifica guitar. I nearly changed the battery in the accessory until I realised the struggling motor provided some nice ‘vintage’ imperfections and tuning instability, like a very old stardrive (some imagination required here).
The base sample was recorded through a mix of the neck/middle Alnico5 single coil pickups which reduced noise and provided some nice harmonics. After numerous attempts trying out various pre-amps, I settled on my Boss GT001 using the SLR connection to leverage the nice pre-amp lurking behind it, I normally use this for my electro-acoustic.
I resampled the processed waveform at 3rd intervals to give the instrument some breathing space. The surprise was how different it sounds several octaves either side of the root (D#3), it’s like a multi-instrument using keyboard splits. You have classic stardrive drone at the C1 end and some nice 80s strings at the C5 end, very usable to my ears.
Finally, I must give credit to Sven Hastedt for the gratis video I used for my YouTube track, he makes stellar stuff, check him out.
Stardrive
Interface
Reviews for Stardrive
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Out of this world
This is a great sound. Beautiful, other worldly textures here that are organic and choral in nature. This would fit beautifully behind some other instruments or as in the demo video create an ambience all on its own.
Really nice work.
The definition of ethereal!
This is a very simple, yet very efficient ambient machine, with a name that does a great job of describing what it is about. It has this sci-fi~ish ambience that gets more intense as you go, and with the included settings in the nicely designed interface you can customize it a little more to your needs. I especially like the lows with automating the rotator as I go!
Four Star GUI
The sound that this instrument makes might be an aquired taste at first but the great thing about the GUI provided, is that it facilitates quick adjustments that allow one to reach the desired result. The provided filters along with the reverb delay effects make it very easy to alter the patch until it fits right into your track. Really good design and well thought out. This is why I would say this is a four star GUI. I wasn't sure I liked the sound but altering the filter I achieved a very usable pad in the higher ranges.
