The Sound Of Passion
Highly expressive, detailed and authentic sounding virtual instruments
We produce stuff that we need ourselves in our daily music production - this way our hearts are involved in every product we release. We aim to create high quality products for the demanding musician, producer or composer and are proud that we can support these fantastic artists with our tools.
THOMAS HANSEN SKARBYE
PRODUCER
When I was a boy, I wanted to be a great Magician – I wanted to amaze the audience and leave them wondering, "how did he do that?" Years later, I am still very fond of "illusions" in any media. I watch almost every movie that raises the bar of Special Effects and I share true interest in computer and console games with my sons – for the same reason. These days my magic wand and top hat are the SCARBEE Virtual Instruments.I have played in various funk bands as a bassist during my younger years, but started soon to compose music for TV documentaries and aimed for a career as a film composer. After composing, producing music on more than 150 commercials for TV and Cinema (even working with Oscar winning director Bille August), I began to create Sample Libraries and Virtual Instruments as I wanted better sounds to use for my productions. These products are used by top artists around the world on albums and live. Due to "Tunnel Carpal Syndrome" (weak wrists) I invented an artificial way of playing bass using software in 1998 and released the SCARBEE J-Slap & J-Fingered in 2000. It was released in 2009 by Native Instruments under the name SCARBEE JAY-BASS.
Originally planning a fretless bass release – I instead decided to take a break from the basses and do some "easy" vintage keyboard sounds to use in my productions. Ironically it took me 5 years to complete the SCARBEE VINTAGE KEYBOARDS - including SCARBEE MARK 1, SCARBEE A-200, SCARBEE CLAVINET AND PIANET and the SCARBEE VINTAGE KEYBOARD FX (now continued by Overloud) plugin! Not exactly an easy job as I expected, but this is me in a nutshell – I go into something, dig deeper and deeper and slowly revealing the secrets and soul of the instrument and can not stop until the job is done.
In 2007 I finished the iconic SCARBEE MM-BASS with guidance from Nile Rodgers and Richard Hilton who played with Bernard Edwards until his death in 1996. I will be forever grateful to these guys! This was the first bass using advance scripting – and this is where I started my co-work with script wizard Nils Liberg. The SCARBEE PRE-BASS project started in late 2007 with the first sound recordings and this warm, woody, fat and dirty bass was released by Native Instruments in 2009. In 2008 I worked on the successful piano plugin ALICIA'S KEYS together with Alicia Keys, engineer Ann Mincielli and Nils Liberg. The piano was released in 2010.
In 2011 we released SCARBEE FUNK GUITARIST – the biggest project ever with more than 120.000 samples and a huge interface based on a super advanced scripting and data sheets. Guitarist Søren Reiff was called in as the perfect match for the project.
I began the RICKENBACKER® BASS project in 2011 and it took almost 2 years to complete. Since this was my first picked bass I had to start over many times until I had found the right way to record it – the addition of 1000 string scrapes made a huge difference together with the extra velocities of sustains, mutes, slides, grace notes etc.
The SCARBEE CLASSIC EP-88S started in 2012 and the most of the year was spend on trying to develop a robot to record - this failed and in 2013 we spend much time recording in the new city studio - but due to extreme electro magnetic noise in the studio area we had to abandon the new studio - and throw out all the recorded stuff as it was not possible to fix properly. We then had to return to my old studio and decided to rebuild it. Through 2014-2016 we worked on several prototypes until we could make the final version.In 2011 we released SCARBEE FUNK GUITARIST – the biggest project ever with more than 120.000 samples and a huge interface based on a super advanced scripting and data sheets. Guitarist Søren Reiff was called in as the perfect match for the project.
I began the RICKENBACKER® BASS project in 2011 and it took almost 2 years to complete. Since this was my first picked bass I had to start over many times until I had found the right way to record it – the addition of 1000 string scrapes made a huge difference together with the extra velocities of sustains, mutes, slides, grace notes etc.