Is there a Guitar VST that can do actually decent rhythm guitar?

[progtronic]

This thread makes me sad...

I've been emulating various types of guitars (and other instruments), almost my entire career. I really enjoy the challenge of trying to get something as close to "real" sounding as I can.

Actually, in some cases.. I've had to dumb down various guitar libraries (and some drum libraries as well), "humanized" functionality a bit.. to sound more un-realistic and more electronic, to fit particular genres better.

So, you folks pushing the "Just use a real guitarist!" concept.. are really missing the point of why these very advanced, meticulously scripted, heavily detailed sample instrument libraries even exist in the first place.

Please realize there are artists like me, that genuinely enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of of doing absolutely everything electronically.

[donkey tugger]

Please realize there are artists like me, that genuinely enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of of doing absolutely everything electronically.

I can appreciate that, and each to their own etc. Do you play at all? I ask because I share sjm's opinion expressed earlier that if you can play an instrument even a little bit it helps you understand it. I'm an utterly hopeless keyboard player for example (don't even have one now) but I know enough and have 'played' enough in the past to know what's going to sound passable in terms of programming a piano. I think this holds true even more for guitar given the more physical nature of guitar playing, and the limitations it imposes compared to keyboard.

[bill45]

This thread makes me sad...

I've been emulating various types of guitars (and other instruments), almost my entire career. I really enjoy the challenge of trying to get something as close to "real" sounding as I can.

Actually, in some cases.. I've had to dumb down various guitar libraries (and some drum libraries as well), "humanized" functionality a bit.. to sound more un-realistic and more electronic, to fit particular genres better.

So, you folks pushing the "Just use a real guitarist!" concept.. are really missing the point of why these very advanced, meticulously scripted, heavily detailed sample instrument libraries even exist in the first place.

Please realize there are artists like me, that genuinely enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of of doing absolutely everything electronically.

Progtronic's stuff is fantastic!!!

[progtronic]

...Do you play at all? I ask because I share sjm's opinion expressed earlier that if you can play an instrument even a little bit it helps you understand it. I'm an utterly hopeless keyboard player for example (don't even have one now) but I know enough and have 'played' enough in the past to know what's going to sound passable in terms of programming a piano. I think this holds true even more for guitar given the more physical nature of guitar playing, and the limitations it imposes compared to keyboard.

Nope! I dabbled with guitar a bit when I was younger.. but never seriously.

I do, however, listen to a lot of guitar heavy music.. in a variety of genres. So, I think I have a pretty good ear for what just sounds right (or wrong..), in terms of designing guitar patches and tones.. and composing and producing with them in general. Everything from Jazz, to Death Metal.. and a lot in between.

Here's one of my early tracks ('92): Aliens Among Us

I was creating sampled, D.I. guitar patches.. and running them through amp/cab sims, long before it was ever a thing.

Sampled several notes from each string (palm mute, to full pick), direct out.. from a total shit, $30 Synsonics electric guitar:



...into an Ensoniq EPS. Patch was designed with all the sample sets; looped, zoned across the board.. and arranged into several velocity layers:



...and run through a Rockman X-100:



Ahhhhhh the good ol' days...

[sjm]

This thread makes me sad...

Please realize there are artists like me, that genuinely enjoy the challenge and satisfaction of of doing absolutely everything electronically.

My comments were not intended as a value judgement on others. They were intended to speak to a deeper issue, the trade-off of instant results now vs better results in the future. Whether that applies to an individual is up to them to decide. I realise now that trying to bring that across in a casual humorous approach (in true KVR tradition) didn't work.

So it's more a question of time. If you need a guitar sound now, learning guitar isn't a viable option. If you are just getting into music, and your intention is to make guitar-based music for then next few decades, then over the long-term, you will be better off learning to play guitar.

Or put it this way, if you had invested all the time you have spent on programming guitars on playing guitar, you would probably be at the stage where recording yourself playing guitar could now save you hours of time. But you would never have made the songs you did 25 years ago.

It's like the question of renting vs buying. Renting is cheaper in the short term. It gets you the thing NOW. But 30 years down the line, if you are still renting, it will work out as more expensive over those 30 years. There can be many reasons to choose one option over the other.

My personal take: guitar is a relatively easy instrument to learn. You can be banging out your Bob Dylan covers in 3 months. Indie rock and basic punk? 6 months to a year. Flash solos? Give it a few years. Especially with the ability to cut and paste from multiple takes, it's easy to fudge it so you sound better than you are.

So there's a trade off to be weighed up here. And which option is better is something everyone needs to decide for themselves. In 20 years, it's still going to take you an eon to program decent guitar parts, because of the nature of the beast. You will be quicker than when you started; you will be better than when you started too; but you will never be as quick as playing the part in real time.

Now, if you like programming parts, and don't want to learn to play guitar, that's absolutely fine by me. I don't expect everyone to have the same interests. I just think it should be part of any discourse to accept and share other opinions to give a rounded picture and allow people to draw their own conclusions. It's not about invalidating anyone's approach. I am always very impressed when someone pulls off MIDI guitar to sound like the real thing (or close enough for it not to matter). I'm equally impressed by people who create other forms of painstaking art. Just because I don't want to do it myself doesn't invalidate those who enjoy doing so. Not everyone has the same amount of patience for meticulous detail when there are (IMO) easier ways available. I'm lazy, and I'm not the only one!

[progtronic]

Well, there's also the concept of composing and producing music, for certain traditional instruments.. that might be just totally, physically impossible to play.. on the actual instruments themselves.

I released an entire albums worth of of Technical Death Metal, with material that would most likely be completely impossible to perform by any actual guitarist or drummer. Most listeners, who are familiar with the genre.. won't even realize that absolutely everything they're hearing, is electronic.

So.. there's that whole, whacked, possible, artistic angle of it.

[sjm]

Well, there's also the concept of composing and producing music, for certain traditional instruments.. that might be just totally, physically impossible to play.. on the actual instruments themselves.

I released an entire albums worth of of Technical Death Metal, with material that would most likely be completely impossible to perform by any actual guitarist or drummer. Most listeners, who are familiar with the genre.. won't even realize that absolutely everything they're hearing, is electronic.

So.. there's that whole, whacked, possible, artistic angle of it.

In fact, the video DT posted earlier of the MIDI guitar brought to mind the other side of things - playing an instrument on the "wrong" physical format. Like the guitar used to play a string ensemble in the video. The different form factors and playing techniques will result in a different type of sound from what you'd expect. That can open up new creative avenues. I'd love to try an Eigenharp for much the same reason.

It's always interesting when people take something and explore new territory. Be that programming "impossible" parts, transposing instruments outside their normal range or applying the "wrong" technique. My Turkish friend was horrified when I strummed his saz like a 6-string guitar. I found it absolutely fascinating to create chords on an instrument that is not traditionally played that way at all and where the fingering and string tuning is so different from a guitar. You can write an album of Indian-period Beatles in about an hour like that

[tonedef71]

Well, there's also the concept of composing and producing music, for certain traditional instruments.. that might be just totally, physically impossible to play.. on the actual instruments themselves.

I released an entire albums worth of of Technical Death Metal, with material that would most likely be completely impossible to perform by any actual guitarist or drummer. Most listeners, who are familiar with the genre.. won't even realize that absolutely everything they're hearing, is electronic.

So.. there's that whole, whacked, possible, artistic angle of it.

In fact, the video DT posted earlier of the MIDI guitar brought to mind the other side of things - playing an instrument on the "wrong" physical format. Like the guitar used to play a string ensemble in the video. The different form factors and playing techniques will result in a different type of sound from what you'd expect. That can open up new creative avenues. I'd love to try an Eigenharp for much the same reason.

It's always interesting when people take something and explore new territory. Be that programming "impossible" parts, transposing instruments outside their normal range or applying the "wrong" technique. My Turkish friend was horrified when I strummed his saz like a 6-string guitar. I found it absolutely fascinating to create chords on an instrument that is not traditionally played that way at all and where the fingering and string tuning is so different from a guitar. You can write an album of Indian-period Beatles in about an hour like that

The Artiphon MIDI controller affords multiple ways to play the notes: strum, tap, "bow", press, etc.

[donkey tugger]

You can write an album of Indian-period Beatles in about an hour like that

Now he tells me....

In a similar vein (and one advantage of virtual stuff over physical instruments), I'm a big fan of alternate tunings and also using a capo to get a different type of sound. I'll usually make a note in the project of what the tuning is and the capo position. If I forget......

And of course you can't snap strings on a virtual guitar..just...one.....more.........semitone............ping...

[bill45]

...Do you play at all? I ask because I share sjm's opinion expressed earlier that if you can play an instrument even a little bit it helps you understand it. I'm an utterly hopeless keyboard player for example (don't even have one now) but I know enough and have 'played' enough in the past to know what's going to sound passable in terms of programming a piano. I think this holds true even more for guitar given the more physical nature of guitar playing, and the limitations it imposes compared to keyboard.

Nope! I dabbled with guitar a bit when I was younger.. but never seriously.

I do, however, listen to a lot of guitar heavy music.. in a variety of genres. So, I think I have a pretty good ear for what just sounds right (or wrong..), in terms of designing guitar patches and tones.. and composing and producing with them in general. Everything from Jazz, to Death Metal.. and a lot in between.

Here's one of my early tracks ('92): Aliens Among Us

I was creating sampled, D.I. guitar patches.. and running them through amp/cab sims, long before it was ever a thing.

Sampled several notes from each string (palm mute, to full pick), direct out.. from a total shit, $30 Synsonics electric guitar:



...into an Ensoniq EPS. Patch was designed with all the sample sets; looped, zoned across the board.. and arranged into several velocity layers:



...and run through a Rockman X-100:



Ahhhhhh the good ol' days...

Rick,this is awesome!!!.I Used to run my Yamaha Tx802 into my Rockman.The guitar
patch was from a company called Vallahala

[donkey tugger]

Well, there's also the concept of composing and producing music, for certain traditional instruments.. that might be just totally, physically impossible to play.. on the actual instruments themselves.

I released an entire albums worth of of Technical Death Metal, with material that would most likely be completely impossible to perform by any actual guitarist or drummer. Most listeners, who are familiar with the genre.. won't even realize that absolutely everything they're hearing, is electronic.

So.. there's that whole, whacked, possible, artistic angle of it.

Had a listen to a few tracks from your various stuff on bandcamp - interesting stuff. Still don't think that it sounds entirely 'real', but at this point, that's besides the point- it's something in it's own right. As I posted earlier, there's definitely a place for doing stuff that has some or many of the attributes of a guitar sound, but transcends the 'rules' that the instrument imposes.

[progtronic]

Had a listen to a few tracks from your various stuff on bandcamp - interesting stuff. Still don't think that it sounds entirely 'real'...

Honest question.. and I'm not disrespecting your opinion (you're certainly entitled to it), but (regarding the Mortis Metallum album).. if you hadn't known in advance, that what you were hearing was done entirely ITB with VST's.. would you have thought, "this is probably all electronic..."?

Not saying my stuff sounds 100% realistic.. in fact I had to dumb down both the guitar and drum humanization, both in Electri6ity and Superior Drummer, to get closer to that mechanical "feel" the genre requires. Then I pushed it all a bit further, to try to get closer to a more Industrial electronic sound.. adding synths and using some general (overblown) Electronic styled mixing and mastering techniques as well.

Even with all the humanization nerfing, and electronic element boosting.. I still think (in a lot if cases), my Tech Death productions actually sound more realistic.. than actual (real instrument playing) bands, in the same, or similar genres.

example:



When considering all the studio trickery that goes into a typical Technical Metal album (midi drum trigger &/or sound replacement to midi, guitar and bass stem slicing & hard sequencing, etc..), it sort of seemed more straight forward, to just literally do everything 100% electronically, from the start.

So, back on topic...

Yes, totally possible to emulate just about any kind of guitar style (or any other physical instrument) imaginable these days.. with all the advanced sample libraries available.

[twitewhite]

The AmpleSound guitars come with a riff generator that actually sounds quite good to my ears.

[donkey tugger]

Had a listen to a few tracks from your various stuff on bandcamp - interesting stuff. Still don't think that it sounds entirely 'real'...

Honest question.. and I'm not disrespecting your opinion (you're certainly entitled to it), but (regarding the Mortis Metallum album).. if you hadn't known in advance, that what you were hearing was done entirely ITB with VST's.. would you have thought, "this is probably all electronic..."?

.......

So, back on topic...

Yes, totally possible to emulate just about any kind of guitar style (or any other physical instrument) imaginable these days.. with all the advanced sample libraries available.

Honest answer, I would probably have been slightly dubious - the musician in me would have been listening to things like the vibrato, bends, chugging etc. Having listened to the second example you posted, I would have been dubious about that too though! A lot of sequencing/editing going on there no doubt.

The second assertion is interesting. I think you can get close, particularly with electric guitar where amplification and effects can hide a multitude of sins (I've been relying on that for over 30 years... ), but I've not yet heard anything convincing such as indie/folkie strummed (picked is probably easier) acoustic where you'd have the guitar upfront with only a vocal so can hear all the minor human choices and errors, plus the interactions with the instrument. I think someone mentioned earlier about release/fret noises/fret buzz as always being a big giveway.

Wondering if anyone has had a convincing go at a sequenced take on this?

[zzz00m]

Here's one of my early tracks ('92): Aliens Among Us

Hey, that's some good sh*t!!!