Guitar Stroke Helper — design your MIDI guitar strumming/riffs with full control

16 posts

Guitar Stroke Helper
Living Fish Studio

Guitar Stroke Helper — design your MIDI guitar strumming/riffs with full control 2026-03-09T08:23:19+00:00 Hi everyone, I'm the solo developer behind Living Fish Studio. I make guitar arrangements as part of my composing workflow, and for years I've been frustrated by the same loop: Browse through strumming presets. Find one that's close enough. Start building the track. Then at the next section, the feel needs to change - so it's back to browsing presets again, trying to find something that works for this part too. And when nothing quite fits, there's a real temptation to start adjusting the song to match the preset instead of the other way around. And then there's the voicing problem - when you're inputting chords from a keyboard, it's easy to end up with note combinations that no guitarist could actually play. Checking whether your voicings are physically possible on the fretboard takes time and pulls you out of the creative flow. I wanted a more direct path: think of a guitar part, write it down, hear it back. So I built "Guitar Stroke Helper". The basic idea: - You write the fretting on a TAB editor (what notes to play) - You write the strumming/picking on a Pattern editor (how to play them) - These two layers are independent — change the rhythm without rewriting the chords, or swap chords without losing your strumming pattern - Export the result as MIDI and send it to your guitar library of choice It's a MIDI effect plugin (VST3/AU, Mac/Windows), not a sound source. It works with whatever guitar library you already own - anything that accepts MIDI input. Some things it handles that I personally needed: - Strumming and single-note picking written seamlessly in the same editor - Stroke speed and curve control (how fast the pick moves across strings) - Anchor string (which string lands on the beat) - Riff writing directly on the TAB - no need to register chords first - MIDI channel routing per string Links: - KVR product page: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/guitar-stroke-helper-by-living-fish-studio I built this because I needed it for my own work, and I'll keep developing it. But I'd genuinely love to hear from others who deal with similar frustrations. If you try the demo or have questions about the workflow, I'm happy to chat here. Cheers, Living Fish Studio lvngfshstd https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=784382

lvngfshstd lvngfshstd https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=784382: KVRer; Topic Starter; 8 posts since 2 Feb, 2026

Post by lvngfshstd » Mon Mar 23, 2026 3:24 pm

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Saffran wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2026 1:35 pm My experience:
Took several hours, spread over a couple of days, to find out how to get sound. Then searched for a manual. Found it on the download page, didn't help that much because i wasn't in the right mindset, thinking midi out to VI usually make a sound. I would have prefered a pdf manual and a link to it on the product page. Also have a reminder about the fact that you have to generate the midi to have sound, plus the two step technique for it. Why not one button named "generate midi" ?
I feel it's to much work for me as a lazy person that lose focus pretty quick.
.
That said, i probably buy it to test importing now when the price is low.

Thanks for the honest feedback.
I'll keep working on making things easier to get into - both the documentation and the workflow itself.

In the meantime, these should help get you started:
Manual: https://livingfishstudio.com/manual/guitarstrokehelper/guitarstrokehelper.html
Getting Started videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ9h6QPqy2R7rd7CceNOVVpbu3nVTqvCk
Reference videos(Feature walkthroughs and detailed explanations): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ9h6QPqy2R6sj7u52SQLBx-BVOf2AFL3

thank you!

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