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Simulating Guitar Techniques


Grayburg
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I don't have a way to record a guitar, and I can't play one. So, I want to learn some ways to simulate the quirks that make a guitar sound real.

Clip of what I've gotten to: Link

The 3 things I know how to do are the sliding attack, vibrato and the thing where the player ends a note with a really sharp slide to the very low end.

Sliding attack by doing a ~-200 cent pitch bend up to 0 in a short bit like a 16th step.

For vibrato, there's the event edit, and also the piano roll. I tried both. How big of a range is vibrato allowed to go? I only trilled between +50 ~ -50 cents. More than that sounded bad.

That last technique I'm not sure if I'm even simming it correctly. I can't tell if guitarists are sliding sharply downward, or if they're just gliding their hand above it, and then landing at the deep end. For that, I planted some notes a couple octaves below.

As for the chord players, I've seen even less vids of 'em.

I'm guessing it's a mix of muted and normal strums. I don't even know what muting a guitar means.

I'm tired of trying to get a better tone, so I'm just working on the "actual playing" part now.

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Yeah, and even if you get better samples you're probably not going to be satisfied - IMO it'd be easier to collab/hire a guitar player to record the part you want rather than to buy and mess with an insane library. (eg: http://www.prominy.com/)

I went through a phase where I really wanted realistic guitar tones - something that sounded like the chunkiness of Rammstein's rhythm guitars.

You can't really do that with samples, unfortunately. It's hard enough to do it with an actual guitar...

But, if you absolutely can't get an actual guitarist to play the eighth-note chugga chugga you want then, yeah, prominy lpc is what I recommend.

It's incredibly complex, and you'll need a decent amp sim, but it can sound pretty good if you put lots of time into it.

Good luck!

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Yeah, I've been playing around with emulating guitar techniques with sequencing as well. I think it has a lot more impact on sounding convincing rather than relying on higher quality samples (case in point: Tim Follin's SNES soundtracks). It's also fun just applying on synthesizers to make things sound more interesting.

I have a decent free guitar soundfont that has some built-in things like sliding down on release, or the sliding attack triggered by higher velocities.

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I'm a big fan of rock music myself and I often end up doing guitar influenced synth solos.

One thing to suggest is not to try and simulate the sound of the guitar exactly - I have tried it before and it sounds like a cheap fake...

You seem to be going the right way tho.

One thing I suggest to help you, is download a midi backing track of a song with guitar, and try to recreate the lead guitar parts via midi, with pitch bending, vibrato and guitar harmonics etc.

I did this with Joe Satriani's Always with Me Always with you and found it helped me alot with guitar like sequencing - here it is if your interested:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2085d2b85b577ae0b94117dade8fc2954bb6a402794b7007597b5d7f10aaff85

The sample doesn't sound particularly guitar like, but it has guitar characteristics in the sequencing which gives it that same feel as a electric guitar does. Don't try to get a synth sounding exactly like a guitar, thats too hard imo, just get some other guitarist to do it for you.

Seriously, pick a guitar track and try to get it as close to the original as possible sequencing wise. Fun and a great way to figure out how to do guitar sequencing, but if your not happy with 'guitar synth sounds' then ask a guitarist to do something for you.

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Oooooor.... you can wait for the new Impact Soundworks rhythm guitar library which will be like 1/8 the price. :)

http://zirconstudios.com/filedump/GuitarLibrary_Test_00.mp3

...that's very close. I've been wanting that groove library of yours, but I just don't have the funds as of yet.

One thing, though, is this the final library, or do you have more to add? The rhythm chunks around :20 and 1:37 seem a bit...robotic. Call me a stickler, I suppose, haha.

Anyway, you guys do good work, I'll definitely be checking it out.

Also, you can run a synth through an amp sim and get pretty close to a guitar lead sound. Try using an organ or a rhodes...

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Oooooor.... you can wait for the new Impact Soundworks rhythm guitar library which will be like 1/8 the price. :)

http://zirconstudios.com/filedump/GuitarLibrary_Test_00.mp3

While certainly markedly better than what is out there now, still gotta say it doesn't sound even close to the real thing. But I can see it substituting in a pinch :)

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...that's very close. I've been wanting that groove library of yours, but I just don't have the funds as of yet.

One thing, though, is this the final library, or do you have more to add? The rhythm chunks around :20 and 1:37 seem a bit...robotic. Call me a stickler, I suppose, haha.

Anyway, you guys do good work, I'll definitely be checking it out.

Also, you can run a synth through an amp sim and get pretty close to a guitar lead sound. Try using an organ or a rhodes...

That MP3 is an extremely early alpha. The final will be way better.

Neko: Interesting that you say that... I fooled quite a few guitarists with it. Saying it doesn't sound "even close" is ridiculous :P

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I'm a big fan of rock music myself and I often end up doing guitar influenced synth solos.

One thing to suggest is not to try and simulate the sound of the guitar exactly - I have tried it before and it sounds like a cheap fake...

You seem to be going the right way tho.

One thing I suggest to help you, is download a midi backing track of a song with guitar, and try to recreate the lead guitar parts via midi, with pitch bending, vibrato and guitar harmonics etc.

I did this with Joe Satriani's Always with Me Always with you and found it helped me alot with guitar like sequencing - here it is if your interested:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2085d2b85b577ae0b94117dade8fc2954bb6a402794b7007597b5d7f10aaff85

The sample doesn't sound particularly guitar like, but it has guitar characteristics in the sequencing which gives it that same feel as a electric guitar does. Don't try to get a synth sounding exactly like a guitar, thats too hard imo, just get some other guitarist to do it for you.

Seriously, pick a guitar track and try to get it as close to the original as possible sequencing wise. Fun and a great way to figure out how to do guitar sequencing, but if your not happy with 'guitar synth sounds' then ask a guitarist to do something for you.

This is good advice, thank you for this Will Rock. I think I'm inspired to take a first plunge into doing synth rock guitar.

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Also, you can run a synth through an amp sim and get pretty close to a guitar lead sound. Try using an organ or a rhodes...

I'm going to concur with this. A couple years ago we ran my cheap little Roland EM-25 through my brother's guitar pedal/FX switch and amp setup and you about couldn't tell the difference. Even on a piano setting, I was cutting mad Mega Man X leads, and on the Saw Wave - whoa...

The drawback is the lack of a real guitar feel, as stated before. It lacks the expression of a lead guitar simply because its not a lead guitar. I'm in the school of thought where you're just not going to get the real thing without the real thing. Its just nature in play.

Still, you can get cheat and, like everyone's saying, you can at least fake it well enough so that people aren't turning your material off because its too fake. As long as you're music's awesome and rockin', no one's going to care if your guitar is real or not.

Additionally, you should check out the Mega Man X soundtracks (X1-X3), X-Men Mutant Apocalypse and, to a lesser extent, the Spiderman and X-Men (SNES) soundtracks for some good examples of how a fake guitar synth can at least be awesome enough to pull music together well. You can find those on www.zophar.net in the Music/SPC section - they provide SPC players too.

Does that help at all?

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That MP3 is an extremely early alpha. The final will be way better.

Neko: Interesting that you say that... I fooled quite a few guitarists with it. Saying it doesn't sound "even close" is ridiculous :P

I could tell the difference on a few occasions, but I understand its very early too. I need a good guitar plugin more than I need good drums or a sitar, so I'm definitely going to be watching for news and developments on it.

Is it another Kontakt plugin or will it be a stand-alone VST?

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That MP3 is an extremely early alpha. The final will be way better.

Neko: Interesting that you say that... I fooled quite a few guitarists with it. Saying it doesn't sound "even close" is ridiculous :P

No it's not. I don't see how anyone could have been fooled unless they were a tone deaf dork who has only been playing for 6 months.

Now, I can see it EASILY fooling non-guitarists, and people who don't know anything about the instrument easily. And in the end that's the goal, iddnit?

Maybe it's the production, because the rhythm guitar seems dead centered (a huge no-no in guitar mixing). But still, it felt very brittle and... digital.

But like I said, still a marked improvement over what's out there now, and I can see it working just fine for people who know how to manipulate it properly.

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The library is clean so you can use whatever tone you want. It's also available as both mono and double-tracked so again, it can be used however you want. Personally I like the tone that the demo creator used - it sounds a lot like the ones you use - but anyway, if you don't like that, it has no bearing on the quality of the library itself. Sixto has been recording it and his actual guitar and recording setup is pretty amazing, so the source material really can't get any better.

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No it's not. I don't see how anyone could have been fooled unless they were a tone deaf dork who has only been playing for 6 months.

I've been playing for 21 years and it sounds pretty damn good through my laptop speakers (my soundcard is at work, so I'll give it another listen when I get there tonight). And the last time I commented on zircon's guitar attempts I was flaming him, so that should tell you something. :)

EDIT: sounds pretty good through computer speakers and a good soundcard as well. I suspect I would pick up a lot more with headphones, but the only thing that really stood out was at the end where a real guitarist would use alternating pick strokes, and zircon's version sounded like it was all downpicking.

-steve

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Humm i have try many things too, i have to say that no one sound good as a true elecrtik guitar but there is good alternative,

Prominy like said before,

Ministry of rock,

them sound kinda real,

Prominy have more articulation than ministry of rock, they sound very different then

you must check with the demo the one you like the most.

And not real but sound good, hardware designed to make VGM music afterall

The Yamaha MU 2000 EX and the Roland Sound Canvas 8850,

Somebody will certainly disagree because they sound not so real, but for me they sound good, and it's like we got only guitar there to sound good^^.

Especialy the Yamaha MU 2000 EX for the guitars

check on youtube for S.S.H : or his site http://www.ssh.ne.jp/

and Dark Phoenix they use de Yamaha MU 2000 EX, you can see how sounds the guitars here,

There is the best solution to get guitar without any playing guitar skill.

if i miss anything, i will be glad to know^^

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Getting better and more varied samples will invariably make things better, but if you don't want to invest in that, getting more plain (but not cheesy) samples and sequencing them better will give you nice results.

Here are two songs I did a couple years back. I wanted electric guitar, but I only owned/played acoustic. Very simple sample, no velocity switching or down/up picking--just a pluck. It's going through the basic Logic Express guitar amp plugin (not Guitar amp pro) with a little chorus and reverb.

Link (guitar starts at 2:52)

Link (guitar starts at 1:22)

One good thing to learn is knowing when to let certain strings bleed together. It adds a nice crunch in the distortion. Also, most electric guitarists use a vibrato that ascends in pitch and returns to the original note--it doesn't alternate above and below the note.

However, if you want a more realistic clean tone lead or just rhythm in general, getting better samples is really the best way to go.

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