Prominy Hummingbird – How to use ① Strum and arpeggio
Realistic acoustic guitar sounds
“Hummingbird” from Prominiy has real recorded guitar sounds,
with a variety of articulations available, with no shortcuts made to try to make the most realistic acoustic guitar sounds possible.
There may be those who think “does that make it harder to use?”
so we will take a look at some basics and expression techniques with this plugin.
For our first article, we will look at some basic guitar articulations; “strum” and “arpeggios.”
Prominy Hummingbird – Video access
Initial setup：KONTAKT settings
To achieve realistic sounds, Hummingbird utilizes a large amount memory space.
Because of this, in order to not overload memory use, lets open KONTAKT option settings.
- Open Options from KONTAKT’s menu, and select the “Memory” tab
- Check the “Instrumental preload buffer size” below
- Set “Override Instrument’s preload size” at 6.00KB or 12.00KB
Opening Hummingbird
This plugin is accessed through KONTAKT’s library, but there are a few types.
- With an 「L」：Sounds recorded with a large diaphragm mic
- With an 「S」：Sounds recorded with a small diaphragm mic
- With 「doubletrack」：2 recorded sounds, panned left and right (stereo only)
- With 「stereo」：2 recorded sounds set wide (stereo only)
- 「lite_version」：Low memory version that doesn’t use real sample chords
Key layout
When opening Hummingbird, a screen will come up like shown above.
To play actual sounds, lets open the keyboard and take a look.
E3〜C7 are the “normal keys,” and designates the root (bottom note) of the chords played.
Strum key placement is as shown below:
- C2,C#2: Strum down, up
- D2,D#2: 4〜6th string muted down, up
- F#2,G#2: 4〜6th string down, up
- A#2,C#3: 1〜3rd string down, up
Arpeggio key are played from the 6〜1st string from E2、G2、A2、B2、C2、D2.
Chord types/selection
In Hummingbird, you can use normal keys to choose the root of a chord,
and choose major/minor/7th chords separately.
Selecting chord types can be done from “Instrument” in the top left of the screen.
Using key switches, they can be changed from the black C-2〜E1 keys.
Checking/changing Instrument key switches
To check/change Instrument key switches, first select the Options tab, and select “inst select ksw” from the bottom right menu.
After this, each key switch setting will be shown.
They can be changed by selecting the ▶︎ mark, that shows up when hovering your mouse over the left of a key.
Sequencing
Lets try to actually sequence some sounds next.
For example, when inputting a “Cadd9” chord, it will look like below:
The upper note represents C in the normal key, and the bottom selects “add9.”
To make sure the key switch is active, place the MIDI note slightly before the normal key note.
If you sequence to the chord change timing like this, you should have no problems.
However, you may want to use open chords and barre chords.
This can be done as shown below:
Open chords can be selected from the upper center of the fret board screen, via the “prefer open/low” button.
This button is set to #21 in MIDI CC, so it can be changed during a song as well.
After selecting chords and open/close, we will look at strumming/arpeggios,
and add some rhythm.
By setting the velocity to strum/arpeggio keys,
you can create detailed nuances in playing.
In our next article, we will look into adding more detail and expression.
