Dream Guitars by Dream Audio Tools Review
It can be fun to explore weird and wonderful sounds supplied with cinematic-themed libraries. There are many available, and today I’ll be focusing on a particular package designed for cinematic guitar sounds – Dream Guitars by Dream Audio Tools.
Dream Audio Tools offers a range of affordable and unique libraries of various kinds, and Dream Guitars is basically their flagship cinematic package. I’ll be covering Dreams Guitars 1 and 2 here – the first volume provides playable harmonics and tremolo for acoustic and electric guitar among other things, and the second volume focuses on the rhythmic notation that can be played like an arpeggiator.
Installation
The libraries can be downloaded and extracted to your folder of choice without registration, as the libraries are full Kontakt packages.
Sound
Dream Guitars 1 sounds exactly how you’d expect a cinematic library to sound – clear, silky and dreamy. The acoustic and electric harmonics are great to play and also work wonders when layered with other instruments. The slow tremolo is reminiscent of post-rock style sounds, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll be using it in a heartbeat.
The processed sound patches contain a great variety of useful content for various scores and are fun to play. There’s also a handful of reverse patches, if you crave the sound of time winding back. It’s all a well put together and top sounding package that contains just enough to cover plenty of applications, and at an affordable price.
Dream Guitars 2 delves into the rhythmic side of things – at first it’s easy to assume it’s just another bpm syncing loop and phrase-style collection with limited use, but I was swiftly proven wrong once I started testing each patch.
The wonderfully playable and emotive pulsing notes are simply infectious to play. As you move from note to note, the patches seem to play with you rather than for you, and it’s easy to become charmed and inspired by the library’s adventurous nature. If you have a soft spot for shimmering and pensive cinematic guitar pieces and genres like post-rock, this little package is a little goldmine.
User interface & Usability
The interface is simple enough, providing the usual delay, filter and reverb options, with some creative and unique convolutions to use with your guitar sounds. It’s all straightforward, everything loads quickly, and the focus is on the sound. That’s what I like in a library at the end of the day.
But what I like most in a library is when simply playing it results in a flurry of ideas and some completed songs – which this library certainly succeeded in achieving once I spent a bit of time with it. There’s nothing more a composer could really ask for truth be told.
Rating: Five out of five stars
On their own, Dream Guitars 1 and 2 aren’t the most all-encompassing collections of cinematic guitar sounds, so they wouldn’t quite get a top score – but together, Dream Guitars offers a wonderful world of natural sounds and imminently useable rhythmic pulses.
As a team, these packages are simply too good to pass up, and many hours can be lost in entrancement when the libraries inevitably begin to inspire you. I’ve already wasted many hours with Dream Guitars, and I loved every minute of it.
