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Let me start straight and tell you, I know nothing about making Indian (as in from India) music. By referring to it as Indian music I betray myself ("I know how to make American music"?). Anyway, I have a healthy appreciation for musical styles originating from the Indian subcontinent and surrounding regions and the possibility of including a little of that, ahem, flavor to my work is exciting. Not just dumping some samples of a tabla on a track, but actually having some reference and guidelines to work with; someone who actually knew how to play these things giving me pointers on how they could be used. Yes, now that's an idea; an idea had by the fine folks at SwarSystems.
SwarPlug is an integrated VST/AU sample based instrument. The full version ships with 49 instruments (or slightly less depending on whether you count multiple versions of the same instrument . . . I don't) which cover the percussive, the melodic, and the drone- ical, as well as vocal samples for emphasis. SwarPlug also ships with (and here's the key selling point for me) SwarLibrarian, a Java Runtime loop-browser/player, which is used to sift through the over 1,000 MIDI loops (organized by instrument, style, and time signature) that round out the SwarPlug package and really set it apart from its sample CD rivals.
Installation
The fact that I am creating a heading for Installation should alert you to the fact that there are problems here. I'm running a Mac G4 laptop, 10.4.2,...