Swar Systems, the vanguard in Indian music software, has just released a new sequencer primarily designed for both modern and traditional music from the Indian subcontinent.
Swar Studio includes both Indian and Western virtual instruments to allow users to recreate their favorite film song from past or present days (or their own compositions) without the need of any additional tool and for a fraction of the cost of a full-fledged home studio.
Swar Studio in a glance:
- Fully featured, cost-effective DAW (Digital Audio Workstation)
- Audio tracks for recording or dragging audio loops
- Instrument tracks for recording from keyboard or dragging MIDI loops
- 36 in-built virtual instruments
- Library panel with hundreds of included MIDI loops
- VST and Audio Unit effects
- Piano Roll editor for MIDI loops
- Link to external tools
- Quantization
- Drag loops directly from SwarShala or Swar Librarian
- Export to audio or MIDI files
- Windows and Mac OS X
- Free updates
Built-in virtual instruments:
Accordion, Bansuri, Bass, Bells, Brass Section, Brightness, Cello, Chimta, Choir Aahs, Clean Guitar, Dhol, Dholak, Drums, Duff, Duggis, Electric Bass, Electric Guitar, Ghatam, Guitar, Gunghroo, Harmonium, Manjeera, Piano, Santoor, Sarod, Saxophone, Sitar, Slap Bass, Strings Ensemble, Tabla, Tambourines, Tanpura, Trumpet, Tumbi, Vibraphone, Violin.
Retail price: $69. More at www.swarsystems.com
There is a huge need for some really good Indian instruments to be available to composers. Unfortunately, after listening to the demos on the Swar Systems site, I don't think they've got it. The percussion instruments and strings are quite nice, but the sitars and drones in these samples sound quite thin, expressionless and artificial.