Review: “Just The Bundle” by VIProducer

ViProducer has released a new plugin called “Just the bundle” made by Joachim Garraud – with over 25 years in the music industry has made quite a name for himself has worked with some of the most influential artists in the world including David Bowie, Beyoncé, The Eurhythmics, Moby and many more. All the while molding the direction of modern-day electronic music in his extensive work with Bob Sinclar, David Guetta, and Jean-Michel Jarre and getting nominated for the best remix Grammy along the way.

That’s quite the resume and that’s not even going into all of his residencies and performances all over the globe. Mr. Garraud has been a key player in shaping the music scene as we know it today so let’s see what he was able to do with the Plugin/tutorial platform that ViProducer provides in their plugin range.

Plugins

So, “Just the bundle” is a four-part plugin Just The Beat, Just The Bass, Just The After Beat, and Just The Hi-Hat and each of these plugins are loaded with Mr. Garraud’s own delicately crafted samples.

Just The Bass is just as the name suggests all about the bass-filled with 72 different samples of Mr. Garraud’s favorite bass sounds all of which sound really nice and ready to go straight into your songs.

Just The Beat is all about the kick drum and is filled with 72 different kinds of kick drums to choose from Ranging from sharp and punchy to big and booming.

Just The After Beat is as Mr. Garraud puts it in one of the tutorial videos, the second most important piece in the beat of your song the clap and the snare and is filled with 72 different claps and snares.

Just The Hi-Hat is filled with 72 naturally sounding closed and open hi-hats and some beautifully sounding cymbals.

With controls for Release, Tune, Filter, Drive/Bitrate, Repeat and Reverb on the vertical faders and a Decay, Pump, Compressor, and Stereo knob it would seem that the “Just The Bundle” plugins are a little too simple but when you think about it you don’t really need much else when the samples that are being used are good from the beginning.

Controls

The release control adjust how long the sample is allowed to be played on for and has the same purpose across all of the plugins letting you either hear the full sample or a shortened version this can turn a big boomy kick into a short and punchy one.

The tune control is important because as we all know all of our elements must be in tune with the rest of our track or else it sounds like crap basically. The tune slider has a range of -12 to +12 semitones so two octaves to tune to. This ‘fader’ can be used to draw in automation for the basses so that you don’t have a static bass-line if you were to use only one sample for instance.

The Filter fader is set to a LP4 filter with quite a high resonance allowing you to accentuate certain frequencies you like however you can change this to a different one if you so choose to in the edit page of UVI’s Falcon or UVI’s Workstation.

The Drive/Bitrate fader is the only control to change between some of the plugins in just the beat and just the bass, for instance, it is a Drive fader and in Just the hi-hat and Just the after the beat, it turns to a bitrate control fader.

The Repeat fader allows you to create well repeats of the sample you are working with easily creating drum rolls or fills. These go from 1/8 all the way to 1/64 dotted so you can create them trap hat rolls with ease.

The Reverb fader with the decay knob adds some nice reverb to anything that might need it like the hats or claps and snares but this works nicely as well on a kick or bass for a booming intro or drops or something like that.

The Pump knob is Just the bundles onboard side-chaining effect which when used instantly gives that pumping effect to especially your basslines and hats and cymbals and such.

The Comp knob allows you to add a bit of compression to your kicks and basses when needed.

The Stereo knob lets you adjust how your sample is played in the stereo field so you can make your hats nice and wide and keep the things that need to be in the middle right down the middle.

The tutorials that have been provided by Mr. Garraud are about his process of making the track “just the beat bro” and although they are in French they are provided with subtitles so that’s nice for all the non-French speakers. The explanations and motivations for the decisions he has made for the track are quite extensive and he gives some nice reasoning for why he uses a certain technique and is not limited to the plugins from the bundle.

Conclusion

All in all, Just the bundle is a nice addition to the product lineup of the ViProducer and the samples that come with it sound really nice. The interface might seem too simple but it has just enough to let you do what you need and keeps it sounding good.

Pros:

• Easy to use with a simple and straightforward design.
• Great samples
• Tutorials are very informative.

Cons:

• In the subtitles for the tutorials it seems like some sentences were missed out. Judging by the way they were said they were probably nothing more than little quips and small observations but my French is quite limited so I couldn’t say. For all I know they could have been gems. Hope it gets fixed.

More Details: VIProducer Just The Bundle