Current Ample Sound Guitar Wishlist/Suggestions

[Jie Chen[Ample Sound]]

Hi, to keep the ringing of the previous chord, you can switch chord with low velocity. Like you said, this will only keep particular notes which don't change from chord to chord.

[skote]

Thanks for the feedback. I tried your suggestion and while it's closer, I still don't think it did what I was describing. It sounded like all the notes were sustained, not just the ones that were consistent from chord to chord.

For example, after switching from a D chord to a G chord, I definitely still heard an F# on the E string, even though the F# should have been muted.

I don't want it to sound like I have a piano pedal pressed down, with all the notes sustaining, I only want the ones that don't change from chord to chord to continue ringing.

Please let me know if there's a way to accomplish this, or if it's a feature that's in the works for a software update. Thanks!

[Jie Chen[Ample Sound]]

Is your ample guitar the lastest version 1.7? If so, we will take a look at it. There may be something we missed.

[skote]

I did a short test switching from a D to an Em chord. There are no notes shared between these two chords, so all notes should be muted when switching chords. The chord change MIDI notes are set to velocity of 20.



This resulted in a mushy wash of all notes from both chords continuing to ring out.
http://www.onehat.com/files/AGM/mushy.wav

When I raised the velocity to 120, all the notes stopped from one chord to the next.
http://www.onehat.com/files/AGM/choppy.wav

So I conclude from this that it's either all or nothing. It doesn't selectively decide which to continue ringing based changed notes.

And yes, I'm using version 1.7.0.

[Greg Houston]

Thanks for taking the time to present this issue so well skote. Catching and fixing subtle issues like this that perhaps only actual guitarists might catch will help make the Ample Sound guitars better for all of us. Once this is fixed I'd love to hear your feedback on how natural you feel the ring out volume of shared notes at different velocities sounds to you, e.g., did the devs choose good values or would you suggest any adjustments.

Cheers.

[skote]

You know what would be great, is if the chord changes could have several options, based on MIDI velocity:
Option 1: Mute all notes from previous strum (as in current high-velocity setting)
Option 2: Let all previous notes continue to ring out (as in current low-velocity setting)
Option 3: Mute notes that changed from previous chord, keep others ringing (my original suggestion)

This option simulates putting your fingers down on the strings for a new chord, but not pressing hard enough to let the string continue vibrating. It's like dampening them with your fingers.

Option 4: Shift notes that changed to the new pitch, and keep them ringing, but don't re-trigger them from the beginning as if they were strummed again.

This last option would simulate a vibrating string where the finger position changed. On a real guitar, if I pluck a string while fingering the third fret, and then press down on the fourth fret, the string will keep vibrating but will now sound a slightly higher note. I'm not talking about a hard hammer-on, where there's a new attack to the note, but rather just a change of the pitch.

In my thinking, you could start playback of the new pitch's sample at the same time index the previous pitch's sample left off. So, for example, if your samples are 12 seconds long and you change the pitch 2 seconds into the sample, then start playback of the new pitch's sample at the 2 second mark.

Maybe there's more to it than this in making it sound natural (crossfades, smooth pitch shifting, or slight fret noise, etc), but I think it would be doable.

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One other thing I noticed is that shifting the chord doesn't actually change anything until the next strum. Currently, I think these MIDI notes merely select which notes will trigger next when strummed. But I think it would be better—and more in line with actual guitar playing—if the chord changes had the above options and worked instantly. So the MIDI notes starting around C2 would simulate the natural behavior of the guitarist's left hand movements (changing chords) and the MIDI notes starting around C4 would simulate the behavior of the guitarist's right hand (strumming).

Programming would feel very natural to me this way.

Maybe I'm crazy, but there's a subtlety I think I'm missing and I think it may be the space in-between chord changes and strums.

[skote]

I will say, however, that this is by far the best guitar VI out there that I'm aware of. The quality is so high that I no longer record my actual guitars. I can program the VI to sound so good that it easily beats what I'm able to do in my small studio with mics and real guitars!

[Greg Houston]

One other thing I noticed is that shifting the chord doesn't actually change anything until the next strum. Currently, I think these MIDI notes merely select which notes will trigger next when strummed. But I think it would be better—and more in line with actual guitar playing—if the chord changes had the above options and worked instantly.

A lot of the keyswitches work this way as well which is really problematic when you create/edit 1-4 looped measures at a time. The beginning of the loop won't have the correct keyswitches (since they are in the previous measure) and the end of the loop will trigger keyswitches meant for the next measure not in the loop. This tends to cause those looped measures to play all out of whack making the whole writing process much more of a pain than it needs to be.

[Jie Chen[Ample Sound]]

Thanks for your detailed report and thoughtful suggestions. Our idea is that high-velocity should do option 1, while low-velocity should do option 3 (will fix this soon). For option 4, if you write an E0 before chord switch, the chord will be switched with slide, although not perfect.