I am new to GP and with me a few members of our community that can be found here: (Edit: link removed - the content is blocked by our ad blockers). Please let me explain where we come from.
In 2014 Christian Boileau started a forum for guitarists who play mainly instrumentals. He developed patches for tunes that could be used for home recording and live playing on a platform called VSTHost. The main purpose was music of The Shadows, Hank Marvin, The Spotnicks and other bands. The developer of the VSTHost platform is Hermann Seib an Austrian who originally developed this platform for keyboard players. This platform was already working on Windows ‘98 and still is on W11.
However, there is for quite a long time no maintenance possible anymore for VSTHost as we cannot get into contact with its maker. This made us decide to look for another platform that could do the same as VSTHost and hopefully even more. After thorough investigation Christian came up with Gig Performer.
To make this story not too long, he started converting his VSTHost patches to GP rack spaces so that at this moment we have 155 rack spaces divided over 3 Gig files. One empty Gig template, a Slave template gig (for use with GP Relayer) and three gig files related to Shadows, and other groups.
These rack spaces are build with freeware x64 plugins and they are available for free as our forum has always been for free.
The Gig files have incorporated audio player tracks and recording facilities.
I am the Christian Jan was talking about… As he said I developed some packages aimed at guitarists, but essentially for the instrumental music of the 60’s and 70’s. The challenge was to reproduce iconic sounds of bands like the Shadows & Hank Marvin for instance. As this was not really possible by using hardware approaches, even using vintage equipment (echo units, tube amps, etc…), so I decided to use VST technology instead. I will not enter into details concerning this long story, but it was based on VSTHost from Hermann Seib. Not to lose everything the day VSTHost will not work anymore for any reason (Microsoft probably…) I decided to port all this to a more modern and open product and after having tested several I found that Gig Performer was the ideal one. So I converted the many patches I had made over years to Gig Performer. Today over the 650 members of our forum some have already moved to G.P instead of VSTHost and I hope this migration will progressively increase.
So If some people here are interested by this ‘vintage’ music, they are welcome. This G.P vintage sounds package can be freely downloaded from our forum. You only need to be registered, which is also free of course. Seems that it is not possible to post the link to our forum here (I did not understand why) but if you are interested, we will find another way to share it.
I am sending all this only now because until yesterday, I was not able to access this community, being always rejected because my browser(s) were incompatible with Discourse host. After having ask for help from Deskew support they suggested me to used another browser (Thorium to name it) and Bingo ! It works with this one. Maybe it would be a good idea to inform people about this. However, many thanks to Deskew support people who are very reactive.
the package is 740 Mb… Quite big but this is because it includes for every rackspace the corresponding backing track and also the original recording. Without these audio files, the package size drops to 263 Mb. Package includes some installation/setup/how to documents, all the VST plugins used in rackspaces, all the individual rackspaces and the Gig files (3 main gigs with rackspaces and 2 empty templates).
As explained I did this G.P. package as a replacement of our old VSTHost based package. While some people are using It for live performances, it was rather aimed at home studio recording. This is why it includes things such as backing tracks.
Let me know if you want more information (but everything is explained in details on our vintage.sounds forum).
And yes I have been surprised by Deskew support people reactivity and competencies
Indeed, I realized that my figures were not good. Indeed when people install the G.P package, they already have all the VSTHost stuff installed, such as BTs for instance, but also the MeldaProduction free plugins bundle (600Mb itself)… So I am currently making 3 flavours of the package:
-Minimum for the members of our forum. It will only have the rackspaces, the gigs, the midi files, the plugins and some documentation.
-medium for new comers on our forum that do not want to install the VSTHost based packages. Same than the former one but with the Melda plugin bundle.
-Full version that is the medium above plus all the audio files (backing tracks, etc…).
Today on our forum, the version is the full but without the melda bundle. I will tell you the final real sizes as soon as I have completed the job. Our packages are distributed in form of self extracting (SFX) archives. This is because members of our forum are mainly seniors (60 to 80… ), therefore everything but geeks… So I must simplify their life at most.
But I have normal archives of course. Sizes of .rar files are 76Mb for minimum, 667 mB for medium, and 2400 Mb for full version.
make the package independent of any forums. Host it somewhere. Why do one need to register anywhere to download it?
add backing tracks as a separate download (I’m not sure about potential copyright concerns)
remove the Melda bundle. Everybody can download it. Also not sure about copyright concerns, do you have Melda’s permission to include their plugins in your bundle?
Well… It is on our forum simply because it has to be somewhere, and it dedicated to packages distribution and support. So publishing all that elsewere would be a duplication of efforts. Concerning copyrights and so on, our forum is private (hence registration) to limit all these problems at most.
Jan initial message was just aimed at mentioning that we have made rackspaces to reproduce the sounds of vintage bands, mainly the Shadows, should some people here be interested by that. Not to promote anything. Now, I am not sure that people here are interested by the music of the 60’s, as they are probably much youger than ourselves.
I also perfectly understand that you prefer avoid interdependancies with other forums. So do I But again it was not our objective.
I will think about your proposals, but it raises many issues as things are deeply intricated, for example backing tracks and midi files are registered in rackspaces (hence their location on disk) and loading a gig will result in numerous errors if these files are not there. And without these backing tracks the rackspace are of no use. Etc… Plus the others you mention.
So probably the best is to close this subject, that was born of the best intentions.
I hope this is allowed. At the top is our forum address.
Once you have registered, you will have access to our downloads for Gig Performer. Please read the documentation and ask the questions if you have them.
I validated your registration. You can now access all forum sections, of which package download, backing tracks download, documentation, and many other things.
To have some examples, listen to audio files hank12345 has published recently. It has all be done with Gig performer package
), therefore everything but geeks… So I must simplify their life at most.
But again it was not our objective.
