The story
A few years back I went birthday shopping in London’s Denmark Street for a nice high-end ukulele, and was immediately sold on this beautiful Kala ASOV-S model. With its solid spruce top and ovangkol wood back and sides, the instrument produces a sweet, warm and rich sound, especially when the strings are individually plucked; an average ukulele, whilst great for strumming chords tends to produce very inconsistent results from note to note, with buzzes and intonation issues.
MG Sweet Uke captures the beauty of this ukulele in a fingerpicking style, using a single condenser microphone – my trusty Neumann TLM-193. The main notes consist of 3x round robins with 3 velocity layers. There are slurs (2x round robins, both hammer-ons and pull-offs) which are played when a previous note is held and overlapped. There is also some realism-enhancing scripting under the hood.
I am delighted to offer this instrument to the Pianobook community. Being a proud Pianobook Artist I am also planning to release a commercial version soon, with more detailed scripting, and in-depth features such as multiple mics and chord / strumming options.
NOTE: I extended the instrument note range of the ukulele down an octave, stretching the lowest (C3) note downwards, as I thought it sounded more than good enough!
MG Sweet Uke - Introduction
Reviews for MG Sweet Uke
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Fantastic!
I usually forget to leave reviews for things online, but this one I simply can't ignore. The sound quality and character is just so lovely and pure. I could not recommend this more.
Smoothest Uke you'll ever hear
This little uke is incredibly well made, with extreme attention to detail, including hammer-ons/pull-offs, round robins, and amazing dynamics! The instrument sounds crystal clear in the entire 3 octave range that it is available in, and all of that is packed in a very minimal and well made GUI, that could have the "active" knob indication a little thicker. Other than that, it's just great, and it comes in the very small size of just a little over 100MB!
As LoFo comments on, a small thing that might become a little frustrating to deal with is how quiet the hammers/pulls sound, though I am sure that this is the true nature of the instrument, since the strings are so short that they don't get to vibrate that much, resulting in a very quiet hammer/pull.
True to its Title
What You Get
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Sampled UkelelePlucked: 15 notes (C3-D3-E3-F3-G3-A3-B3-
C4-D4-E4-F4-G4-A4-B4-C5)
3 vel layers, 3 RRs eachHammer-Ons: 14 notes, 1 vel layer, 2 RRs each
Pull-Offs: 14 notes, 1 vel layer, 2 RRs each
Releases: 15 notes, 1 vel layer, 2 RRs eachTotal Samples = 221
What I Liked
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- Clear/beautiful sound of the main pluck articulation.
- Pull-offs are also very nice.
- Consistent sampling among the var.ious notes, vel layers, & round-robins.
- Simple/straightforward GUI, with volume, stereo width, reverb controls.What I Would Wish For
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- The hammers-on are super-quiet, almost as much of a 'choke' as a 'hammer-on'.
(Example: C4 to D4!)
Would love for them to be a bit louder/more prominent. I suppose the quietness
might be because they are hammer-ons on a ukelele, whose strings don't resonate
as loudly/long as a guitar.Overall, a beautiful instrument. Looking forward to seeing what Mike brings us in a
Pianobook Artist version.
