Audio Ollie Bryce Jacobs 7 Octave Guitar [WAV KONTAKT]

Bryce’s dedication to film music led to the development of a guitar of his own design – a guitar that was based on the range and capabilities of a piano. Through the facilitation of transcribing existing piano music faithfully onto this guitar, the instrument became a new and exciting platform to write and perform any style of music, which encouraged more of the hybrid-orientated music. With his move to L.A., Bryce quickly attained a position at Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions where he was part of the writing and production of many hit films, video games and television shows. Through this time, he worked very closely with Grammy Nominated and Emmy Winning composer of “Game of Thrones” fame, Ramin Djawadi. This relationship led to working on projects such as Warner Brothers’ “Clash of the Titans”, MGM/UA’s “Red Dawn”, EA’s “Medal of Honor” and “Need for Speed” and Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” among many others. In addition to this, Bryce has also performed on the scores for “Rango”, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, “Puss in Boots”, “Savages” and “Rush”, which features the 7 Octave Guitar.

Quickly craft entire cues by layering up to 12 loops via key switch
Mangle your sound with powerful effects, timing, and reverse key triggers
Never go out of sync with continuous looping + loop legato mode

The guitar as we know it has asserted itself in the world as an incredibly versatile musical instrument that thanks to its innovative players over the years, has been extended a flexibility far beyond its standard constructions. I found I became very aware of some of the limitations though in my first year at university. I realized at this time so much piano and orchestral music was out of the guitars reach and any attempts to transcribe pieces of this nature had been heavily compromised. This also seems to be the reason why so many of the legendary composers had left the guitar out of their work, due to its inability to create the huge sonorous sounds of a piano or an orchestra. Unfortunately this producing a natural segregation of guitar repertoire to the rest of the world’s musical repertoire; a split between guitar music and music, with little common ground in between. The guitar obviously has matured slowly over its existence and only soared in the 20th century with the innovations in electronic technology and the contemporary music that explored it. Still I have felt a void though between guitar music and the rest of the musical world. I have designed a guitar that I feel begins the journey of closing the gap of these limitations.

I employed the talents of the exceptionally skilled and well respected Australian guitar maker Gerard Gilet to construct the instrument I designed. After lengthy discussions regarding the guitar he was not only supportive but also very excited about the new instrument. Colin Bloxom wired the electronics to my design and Frank Grabesa gave the prototype its final striking paint job. The financial side of such a construction was facilitated with a contribution from the Australian Arts Council’s Music Board. I currently use the guitar in a large variety of textural ways in my own compositional output. To see the guitar in action check out the Videos page.

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