Can anyone help me get a good strumming sound?

[deadby100cuts]

For some reason I absolutely cannot seem to get a good sound from just strummed power chords. It doesn't seem to matter if I use the prerecorded power chords or write them in myself. I get a very fake sound. I know its something on my end cause Ive seen the other stuff people on here have managed to do. For the life of me though I can't figure it out.

https://soundcloud.com/somethingorother ... wer-chords

Especially around 6 seconds in

[warfighter67]

The specific strumming pattern you are using is generally played with downstrokes only. There is a keyswitch for it and it's in the manual that I can't be bothered to look at, but it's in the same directory you installed Shreddage to.

[deadby100cuts]

Ive never seen someone play a pattern like this downstroke only. That said I already tried that, it sounded even worse :/

[warfighter67]

Give me a minute while I load my project and try to get something similar to sound good. One thing I notice (and this may only be because you wanted to do a quick demo) is that there is no multi-tracking of the guitar. A rhythm guitar passage like the one you have is going to sound kind of bad when it's not multi-tracked.

[warfighter67]

Here is what I came up with. I layered on bass and drums over time to notice how the perceived sound of Shreddage is in relation to other instruments.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/106 ... getest.wav

[deadby100cuts]

Are you using the power chord samples or are you just writing out the power chords as individual notes?

Also what are you using for your guitar tone and are you using separate amp simulation on the multitrack?

When you say "multitrack" are you talking about 2 takes, one 70ish left the other 70ish right (maybe with different amp sims on them?) or are you talking about something else?

[warfighter67]

Are you using the power chord samples or are you just writing out the power chords as individual notes?

Also what are you using for your guitar tone and are you using separate amp simulation on the multitrack?

When you say "multitrack" are you talking about 2 takes, one 70ish left the other 70ish right (maybe with different amp sims on them?) or are you talking about something else?

I am using Amplitube 3. It has tons of amps but I don't specifically remember which one. I use separate amps on each track and they are panned hard left and right (100 on both) with another set being panned 50/50 as Shreddage 2 supports quad tracking.

I am using the powerchord samples for this demo.

[warfighter67]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOxKv23OcuQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03fbxV8X-As

These videos should help you with double/quad tracking in Shreddage 2

[deadby100cuts]

and now I'm also getting phasing. WHY AM I GETTING PHASING. Ive got 2 tracks up playing the same thing. One is set to guitar one, one guitar 2. Ive got them going through different eq's, different effects, different amp sims, They arn't even going through the same head. They are going through completely different heads/cabinets each. But the only way to get rid of the phasing is to pan them 100 Left/Right.

I starting writting his before seeing your next comment. But Ive seen those videos. I'll rewatch them in case I'm forgetting something but I don't think I am (though obviously I'm not doing SOMETHING right).

I did another test. Here I just have the ONE chord I programmed its 3 different ways in one track. Each section should be obvious when looking at the waveform in soundcloud.

First section= I used the power chord samples and double tracked them. I'm using guitar rig and some free plugins for the head, however I'm using IR's in lecab 2 for cabinets. They are panned hard left and hard right (100%).

Second section= Same thing, same settings, same panning, except I used single note samples and wrote out the 3 note power chords.

Third section= section 2+ drums/bass.

---------

I feel like section 2 sounded better than section one, even with the drums and bass I still hear a "fakeness" (for lack of a better way to word it) to the chords. Its like I hear it as "du DU du DU du DU du DU" and the "DU"'s are louder.

https://soundcloud.com/somethingorother ... problem-v2

[deadby100cuts]

to clarify real quick. Ive got 2 different heads, each going to 2 different cabinets. So Ive got a total of 4 guitar "sounds" going on.

[deadby100cuts]

Ok I did a quick mockup so you could understand what I'm doing better.

this picture (which is way to big to be healthy) is all the settings I'm using for the various tracks.

http://i.imgur.com/xLJA7ub.png

I did quad tracking with it (as shown above). This is what it sounds like.

https://soundcloud.com/somethingorother ... e-bad-full

and when I was messing around I somehow made the problem worse, so this is a better example of what I don't want.

https://soundcloud.com/somethingorother ... xample-bad

[warfighter67]

Okay all of your examples sound actually pretty good. The only reason they sound 'bad' is because one side is louder than the other. Lower the volume of the louder side until both sides sound about the same volume. You can do this by ear or by watching the meters, but I prefer by ear.

[Synthoridity]

To be honest...those examples do sound extremely fake when compared to a real guitar. It just sounds like a few samples being repeated over and over instead of an actual string being strummed. The same thing happens when programming tremolo picking by sequencing a series of notes: A mechanical sounding repetitive loop. Fortunately, Shreddage has a tremolo picking articulation which sounds realistic and eliminates the fakeness. Unfortunately however, I don't think Shreddage has something like a realistic strumming engine (the tremolo picking articulation is generally only used for fast alternate picking).

[soundoutsource]

See if these patterns sound better, there 3 variations, using different techniques.

Chord Repeat Pattern.mp3

Here is the midi. Shreddage2 with Thrash Note enabled.

Chords Pattern.MID