Metal guitar sound help

[alfredofreak]

After messing around in FL Studio tonight and doing a bit of research, I tried and failed to make a certain guitar sound. Sure, I managed to get a *decent* guitar sound via Sytrus and Hardcore, but nothing quite like what I'm aiming to emulate.

Crush 40 has a darker sound than usual in Shadow the Hedgehog and as a result, their guitar sound is more bad-ass than usual. Specifically, the final boss music has a unique guitar sound that I would love to be able to replicate. If it is possible to emulate this with VSTs alone, how do I do it? If not, what guitars do I need to get my hands on?

As a second question / last resort, what about a

guitar sound? Same questions.

[Tensei]

You will never achieve that kind of sound with synthesis. Sampled stuff like Shreddage or Prominy LPC can get you a lot closer. The 'unique' guitar sound is just caused by downtuning.

[Nabeel Ansari]

People really need to stop saying "VST"'s, because they're not being clear about whether they're talking about synths or samplers.

Can you get it done with a VST? Yes, two. One is called Kontakt (a sampler, not a synth), which you have to buy to get access to buy Shreddage. The other is an amp sim of your choice. I recommend downloading the TH2 Overloud demo. Good stuff. Shreddage includes low Bb tuning, and Shreddage X (the lovely $20 expansion that's bigger than the original) has Ab tuning. That's all of the low dark metal tuning you need right there. Of course if you can't afford Kontakt, zircon is working on bringing Shreddage to DirectWave.

Can you get it done with a synthesizer? If you feel like spending years fine tuning your replication of a human playing rhythm guitar, sure. (in other words, don't do it. Especially not with something like sytrus and hardcore. Sytrus is pretty powerful but it's not meant for physical modeling. Hardcore sucks hardcore.)

[Frederic Petitpas]

[........]

[alfredofreak]

You will never achieve that kind of sound with synthesis. Sampled stuff like Shreddage or Prominy LPC can get you a lot closer. The 'unique' guitar sound is just caused by downtuning.

I can't quite afford those at the moment, but I'll keep 'em in mind for future reference. As for the 'unique' guitar sound, I thought it was pitched way down but my crappy imitation was throwing me off.

People really need to stop saying "VST"'s, because they're not being clear about whether they're talking about synths or samplers.

Intentional at the time of posting, although the notion of a sampler had slipped my mind entirely.

Can you get it done with a VST? Yes, two. One is called Kontakt (a sampler, not a synth), which you have to buy to get access to buy Shreddage. The other is an amp sim of your choice. I recommend downloading the TH2 Overloud demo. Good stuff. Shreddage includes low Bb tuning, and Shreddage X (the lovely $20 expansion that's bigger than the original) has Ab tuning. That's all of the low dark metal tuning you need right there. Of course if you can't afford Kontakt, zircon is working on bringing Shreddage to DirectWave.

Can you get it done with a synthesizer? If you feel like spending years fine tuning your replication of a human playing rhythm guitar, sure. (in other words, don't do it. Especially not with something like sytrus and hardcore. Sytrus is pretty powerful but it's not meant for physical modeling. Hardcore sucks hardcore.)

Good to know. I'll make a point to avoid Hardcore once I find a better amp sim. First in line is Guitar Rig 4 Player.

Or you could buy or borrow a real guitar... if you are not good at it, you can at least sample the notes/chords and fix it that way.

One time I recorded a couple of riffs and organised them as different midi keys, it's a good way to build a song structure on the fly.

I might do that at some point, but not now given my current hardware config.

Thanks for the info, guys. For the time being, I'll make due with Kore Player, Kontact Player, and whatever free stuff I can find at the mega thread I forgot about.

EDIT: Ah shit, I forgot about this one, too.

[Legion303]

You aren't going to get convincing metal guitar sounds like that for some things, but if you do simple, slow power chords it's easy:

http://neutronstar.org/music/laptop145_2.mp3

The "guitar" that comes in at 0:17 is default FL Keys. It's trivial to make simple rhythms sound decent if you have the right effects. On the other hand, this is only a stand-in for me to work on arrangement until I'm ready to record my real guitar. So like you're always going to see on these types of threads, there is NO SUBSTITUTE for getting a guitar and learning to play it.

[warfighter67]

I have found that Shreddage and any decent amp sim (Gsuite's (or whatever that free amp package is) J9000) sounds 99% like a real guitar.

example: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10679993/WIP%27s/AcousticSad7-1-11.mp3 (1:08 is when the electric guitar starts)

[LIonGraphiK]

I would personally go to the collab section and just 'hire' a guitarist. Why? Because, they usually have the good VST's for their amps and the sounds they produce are just incredible. You don't need to try and emulate a guitar if you have a guitarist willing to play for you- just make sure you have some sheet music/guitar tabs for them.

[Nabeel Ansari]

You don't even need to hire them, a lot of people will do it for free.