The triggers are set from C4 to C5.

• C4 is the strum down,
• C#4 is the strum down muted,
• D4 is the strum up,
• D#4 is the strum up muted,
• E4, F4, G4, A4, B4 and C5 (the white keys) are for the 6 different strings,
• F#4 triggers the chord but shifted from the Chord Slide value,
• G#4 stops the chord and play a hand mute sample,
• A#4 stops the chord and plays slide down samples,

A small chord panel displays the chord currently being played and the selected octave range. Immediately beneath this panel is access to a voicing menu that contains all of the possible voicings of that chord on a guitar, and each chord can be selected for each octave.

In this panel, the chord currently being played can also be edited; click on the edit button, then change the chord and hit apply to override that chord voicing, or press insert to add that chord to the list of available vicings for that chord.

You can even export and load a chord configuration using the export and load buttons. The chord configuration will also contain the information present in the chord builder if you used it.

The Chord Mode can be set in two positions,

• The Guitar mode that separates the notes selection from the triggers. So pressing a chord with the left hand with only make the soft sounds that your left hand would make on a real guitar and you need to trigger the chords or the single strings with the right hand.
• The Piano mode will trigger the chords as soon as you press a chord, the upstrokes and downstrokes are automatic depending on the position in the current bar. Repeating a chord can be done by releasing and replaying any of the notes contained in the chord. It can be more intuitive, but does not allow for as much detail and realism when you play the chords.

The UP/DOWN Trigger controls if the automatic strum up and down is engaged. If set to manual, C4 is the strum down and D4 is the strum up. If set to Auto, C4 acts as a strum up or down depending on the position in the current bar.

The Let Ring controls wether the chord stops when you release your right hand. This can be handy for fast/complex chord progressions.

The Mixed Mode is as its name implies a mix of the solo mode and the chord mode. If you play chords a regular melody with one note at a time or two as a legato, it will play single notes or hammers and slides as selected in the solo mode If you play 3 notes or more or play two notes simultaneously, the chord mode is engaged and it will strum that chord just like in the piano mode.

The Accent, Strum Speed and Strum Center are all linked to the chord simulation. We extracted the data from hundreds of real guitar strums and allow you to control these parameters.

• Accent controls how hard it is to trigger all of the 6 strings with velocity, the min strum number defines the minimum number of strings that are played in a strum at the lowest velocity.
• Strum Speed controls the oversall time needed to strum all 6 strings.
• Strum Center is basically your right hand vertical position over the strings, if it is at the top (position 1), then you will hear more of the first and second string and if you are at the bottom (position 6), you will hear more of the last two strings.

The Clean Play controls how dirty and precise you want the playing to be, if set at 6, the engine will always use clean samples, but if at 1, it will mostly use samples of "not pressed well" notes.

The Chord Hammers is probably whatmakes the library the most realistic. It allows you to go from one chord to another and play the hammer ons and pull offs between them. We used it a lot in the finger picking demo.

The Capo simulates a real capo, you can choose to make it transpose the chords or not, transposing can be useful if you want to play chords high on the neck.

The Transpose is related to the Capo function. And it will decide if the Capo actually transposes the chord or not. For example an E chord with the Capo at fret one will sound like an F chord without the transpose function, if you enable it, the E chord will stay an E chord, but the engine will look for an alternate position to play it starting from the capo.

The Auto Voicing feature enables the different guitar chord positions depending on the octave in which it is played. You can disable it if you play on a small controller or just want to play the first position.

You can assign 13 different patterns of your choice to 13 different notes. Clicking on one of the keys on the interface will launch the pattern, triggering another one will stop the first one and start the new one. You can also trigger the patterns from the keyboard using the notes from C4 to C5. By default releasing the keys will stop the pattern. The velocity at which you press the key will determine the velocity of the whole pattern.

The Parameters can change a few aspects of the current pattern.

• Let Ring determines if the "off" events contained in the pattern will be played or not,
• Length controls the length of the pattern, it can be anything from 1 to the length of the pattern and can be adapted the metrics of your song (even odd numbers),
• Speed you can play the pattern at different speeds, half or double speed for example,
• Link makes the let ring, length and speed values of the patterns global for all patterns or only for the selected pattern. If it is on, then changing the let ring will affect all of the patterns, and when it is off, only the currently selected one,
• Average Vel is the center velocity or the pattern, it starts at the velocity of the trigger you played, but can also be modulated over time using a midi controller. By default, we use the modulation wheel to control it,
• Deviation is the difference between the lowest and the highest velocity of the MIDI events composing the pattern, it can also be modulated in real time,
• Shuffle adds groove to the pattern, we created a complex algorithm to allow for shuffle without quantizing, so you keep the realism and are still able to add some groove,
• Latch determines if releasing a key will stop the pattern or not, when turned on, pressing a key will launch the pattern and you will need to press it again to stop it,
• Bar Sync will sync your playing to the bars, meaning that whenever you play a key, the pattern will not start until the next bar starts, this is useful only when working in a sequencer,

The Pattern Maker is an improved step sequencer made especially for guitar strumming. Each fret represents a quarter note and you can either add a whole chord or just a single string (if the link icon is unselected). If multiple events are in the same step, they will be strummed following our strum engine parameters.

You can control a few aspects of the pattern you create.

• The velocity of each event can be changed by selecting an event and dragging the mouse over it, if you set the velocity to 0, the event will be removed,
• The up and down arrows at the top control the way you strum the chord (up or down),
• You can mute a string completely by clicking on the speaker icon at the left of the sequencer,
• You can play a muted chord by pressing the mute button on each step, The Stop buttons allow you to release a chord at the end of each step,
• The Strum Speed controls the speed of the strumming of the pattern,
• The Shuffle and Humanize knobs are general parameters and control the same thing as the ones present on the patterns panel,

You can create as many pattern pages as you want, giving you access to many variations by just pressing one key. Of course you can copy the content of one page to another, reset a page or the whole pattern. You can also import the factory presets and modify them as you want, save your patterns, reload them and preview or add them to the pattern list. Once you click the "Add to pattern" button, the pattern you created will appear at the bottom of the patterns list in the pattern panel.

The song builder is available in chord mode or in patterns mode.

You can use set all chords using the first menu, it will put the same chord on all of the 12 notes.

The song presets are a set of predefined songs with the right chord progressions, you can change the root if needed and the progression is detailed under song info.

The mode presets is a list of most music modes and their corresponding chord progressions, you can change the root of needed.

You can now change the type of each chord along with its root. So it makes it easy to play songs that have different chords for the same root note.

When selecting one of the presets, some keys will appear in red and the corresponding chord will be a "5th". This means that there is no "valid" chord for this note in the selected song or scale. You can of course set each chord manually by clicking on them and selecting its kind, even starting from a preset.

The legato mode controls which sample will be triggered when you play legato notes on your keyboard, for example press C2 and then C#2 without depressing C2.

• Hammer , hammer on and pull-off samples will be triggered.
• Slide will trigger slide up and slide down samples.
• Legato will trigger regular sustain samples but will still stop the first played note.
• Off deactivates the legato function.

The legato distance controls the interval in which the legato function is active.

The slide speed is active only when the Slide legato mode is selected and controls the speed of the slide.

The string selection enables the automatic string and fret selection or constrains the hand to the first position or the position of your choice.

Here is a list of the keyswitches.

• F0 will enable the Palm mutes when you press it and disable it when it is depressed. You can also toggle between palm and regular notes by pressing F#5.
• F#0 enabled the Slide legato mode.
• G0 enabled the simple legato legato mode.
• G#0 completely disables the legato mode.
• A0 plays fret noises.
• A#0 plays a right hand hit on the strings.
• B0 to D1 play the percussions sounds.
• D#1 enables the harmonics (flageolets) sounds, if you press it and play, it will trigger only harmonics and release them when you release the D#1 note.

The Preferences panel / Microphones mixing panel can be opened by clicking at the bottom of the interface, in there you have access to all of the different parameters of the library.

The Release Vol controls the volume of the release samples,

The Auto Fret noise vol controls the volume of the automatically generated fret noises, they happen when the left hand moves in solo mode and when you change chord in the chord mode,

The Pre Notes Vol controls the volume of the soft noises your left hand makes when selecting a chord in chord/Guitar mode,

The Dynamics controls the volume of the lowest velocity,

The Velocity Curve controls the volume response of the library to velocity,

The Midi Sensitivity is some kind of a midi remapper, and it controls how hard you need to press a key for it to trigger a certain velocity,

The Reverb Amount and Room size are two simple controls for the UVI SparkVerb, and you can tweak it a little more using the FX section in UVI Workstation.

You can choose which playing style (picking or finger picking) will be used for every trigger mode.

The Palm Length controls how long the palm mutes last,

The EQ is a simple 3 band EQ,

You can load / unload / enable / disable / and change the volume of each microphone perspective.

You can also set the whole output as mono or stereo.

The MIDI guitar mode allows you to play the Sunbird using a midi guitar controller, all you need to do is select the 6 midi channels. You maybe have to use the set patch as omni to allow the plugin to respond to all midi channels.