How to play a guitar VST with a keyboard?

[lmv]

I'll bet this question has been asked here a few hundred times, but the search tool is awful, so bear with me:

Can someone here recommend some good resources (sites, Youtube, whatever) that could help me learn how to play a guitar VST on a MIDI keyboard?

I am using freeware plugins such as DSK or Spicy Guitar, nothing fancy, but I think those (and others) sound great. It's just my (lack of) technique that sucks and causes the result to sound like a lot of things except guitars.

Any ideas?

Note that I can't play an actual guitar, and I really have no idea how important that is. Very? Not at all? What do you think?

TIA

[Musical Gym]

It isn't easy to make a freeware guitar sound like a guitarist in my experience. DAW(s) like FL Studio have strum feature(s), but you probably are much better off purchasing a good vst that is designed to emulate guitar using a keyboard.
If you own Kontakt, check out Indiginus (very inexpensive), Orangetree Samples, or Ilya Efimov.
AmpleSound, MusicLab, and Applied Acoustics Systems are also very good.

[pekbro]

I'm always impressed by Strum from AAS at how guitar-like it is.
Haven't really tried much else, as I just use a guitar for guitar parts.
I think it definitely helps to know how to play one or the other.
Most guitarists can no doubt naturally play the keyboard even if they
don't know the chords and vice versa.

Check out strum, save up for it, its worth it. No doubt the Kontakt
stuff as well.

-Cheers

[lmv]

Thanks, but I am really looking for techniques rather than ready-made solutions. I can't afford the ready-made solutions and, well, I could find them myself. Finding the techniques seems to be a lot more difficult.

[Jason Washburn]

You may want to download and try the FREE Ample Guitar Martin LITE (AGML):

http://www.amplesound.net/en/download.asp




There's also a FREE bass called Ample Bass Precision LITE (ABPL) if you're looking for a bass.

[pekbro]

I don't know what kind of techniques you think you're going to find out there.
It would all depend on the plugin you're using. You can play notes or chords
on a keyboard, possibly simulate a bend or slide with the mod wheel
or pedals if available. Thats pretty much it. Things like hammer-ons and
pull-offs are only going to be available as a function of a plugin.

I would think so anyway.

-Cheers

[donkey tugger]

I think you need to narrow down what type of guitar playing you're after first (strumming? lead? picking? etc) as the techniques are of course very different for each.

[mistmist]

Get a good rom player and play it like piano cuz midi notes and moves and feel of midi piano would work for guitar. if it doesnt then shorten length x2.

[funky lime]

I think it will depend heavily on the samples used. In this case, if you're not willing to spring for something solid like Orange Tree (and others, of course), you may have to accept that there's only going to be so much you can do, especially if you are set on just recording stuff in live via keyboard. A lot of the realistic-sounding guitar parts tend to have a fair bit of MIDI edits, including switching to different articulations and adding variation to stuff like velocity, vibrato, and whatever else.

Vibrato can be really important for realism in lead stuff. Also, articulations and envelopes come into play. Some notes will end more quickly than others, and some will ring out a bit more. The release envelope will vary slightly even between strings. Think about the part that is being played, and how the guitarist's hands would be interacting with the strings. The palm will cut off some notes entirely, or mute others. There are many subtle interactions going on, and it takes a pretty powerful sample library to truly capture this.

It's like a six voice synth, and each string is an oscillator. Just try to understand that a huge part of the guitar's sound is not just coming from the pick striking the string, but from what the hands are doing to the instrument as a whole. If you use a less-than-capable sample library, you could run into a machine gun effect, because there won't be any variance on the attack of each note. On a real guitar, there will be so much organic variation here, so keep that in mind when you edit your MIDI. Even the extremely subtle changes could make a huge difference. Anything too mechanical will stand out immediately.

Of course, any specific advice will depend a great deal on style/genre, as well as the particular samples/VSTis and their capabilities. Really, the most common way to get better at anything is just to do it a bunch, and learn the ins and outs of whatever you have. But also, accept that there are always limits to what your tools can do, and find their sweet spots rather than trying to push them too far out of their zone (unless that's what you're going for anyway, of course).

[lmv]

That's a good reply. Thank you.

[ourafilmes]

Hi.
You might want to check out this video in Youtube: a great tip to make it sound like a guitar (with distortion - great for solos and leads).

Cheers!

[SweetCarolHeart]

Hey I am a guitar player and it's not easy to program midi for a realistic guitar part.
There are not many tutorials on Youtube on how to make a Guitar sample library sound real.
If your into rock and metal (solos and heavy music) I found a very helpful video that explains the best midi sequencing guitar technique.



If anyone has any other guitar midi tutorials for other genres or programs. Please let us know.

[SweetCarolHeart]

Hey I am a guitar player and it's not easy to program midi for a realistic guitar part.
There are not many tutorials on Youtube on how to make a Guitar sample library sound real.
If your into rock and metal (solos and heavy music) I found a very helpful video that explains the best midi sequencing guitar technique.



If anyone has any other guitar midi tutorials for other genres or programs. Please let us know.

[Melkor]

It can certainly be done, I knew a guy who could rip Still Got The Blues note for note.

He could play the entire solo to Hotel California .. I also remember him doing a note perfect version of November Rain.

One thing I noticed, was his left hand rested on the pitch wheel.
If he needed to stab or hold a chord, he would, but he would quickly move it back to the wheel.

He added very subtle pitch wheel to just about every note he hit, and it sounded very guitar like.

Mind you, he was an older guy, and said he had been practising guitar lines on synths for more than 30 years

[King Conga]

I have AAS Strum Session (their 1st ver.) I love the easiness of it. But here's a question I'm wondering about. It's also kind of kin to the topic you're discussing now. If I play a chord on my keybd, does AAS rebuild the chord as a guitar would play it? NOTE*** I'm NOT spking of the slight delay in the strum, rather how the instrument builds or spells the chord.