NI’s Picked Acoustic puts a session player in your DAW

Native Instruments expands its acoustic guitar virtual instrument roster Picked Acoustic. The new offering comprises two new Kontakt instruments. The first is a rhythm instrument with 194 picking and strumming patterns that can be changed in real-time with keyswitches. The second is designed for playing melodies.

Picked Acoustic allows you to select patterns from a variety of picked rhythms, arpeggios and strums played in a range of styles. With options to include vibrato, hammer-ons, pull-offs, harmonics and tremolo, Native Instruments want this instrument to sound like a genuine performance. You can even add slides, fret noise and tweak the guitar’s tuning accuracy. The 1973 Martin 00-21 is the star of the show with this instrument and has been recorded with three stereo mic set-ups.

The Condenser (AB) mic setup uses two condenser mics, aiming to provide a natural, modern-sounding stereo image. Dynamic (MS) setup is designed to recall rock and roll sounds of the 70s, using a vintage dynamic mic. This is enhanced with a tube condenser mic, with figure-of-eight mode enabled for adjustable stereo width. Ribbon (Blumlein) is a setup mode with two ribbon mics in an effort to create a warm, vintage sound.

To give your sound a bit of polish, NI has also included an effect section so you can add delay, plate reverb, chorus, compression, tape saturation and more.

You can check out a walkthrough of Picked Acoustic below.

Native Instruments’ Picked Acoustic is available now for Kontakt at $99, or is included in their Komplete collection. Find out more at native-instruments.com