MODO BASS: Get ready for a new level of realism (1.5 update available now)

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benjamind wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 3:55 am Still no guitars though. Yeah I'd like to think we'll see em this year or next but for some strange reason I have a gut feeling that I am going to be disappointed and heartbroken..
I wonder if a shortcut to a modeled guitar exists in approaching it as individual string modeling.. each being calculated in a rotation of cpu cores... perhaps even a handoff to gpu cores in some of the more recent silicon architecture.

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Why don't you take guitar lessons? ;)
John Braner
http://johnbraner.bandcamp.com
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
and all the major streaming/download sites.

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Can't play guitar because my hands got rekt from years of construction labor.
Little Black Dog - 2008-Present

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Oh - I'm sorry to hear that :-\
Personally, I don't think a software guitar is ever going to get you close to the real thing.
John Braner
http://johnbraner.bandcamp.com
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
and all the major streaming/download sites.

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jbraner wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 10:39 am Oh - I'm sorry to hear that :-\
Personally, I don't think a software guitar is ever going to get you close to the real thing.
Using modeled instrument is not limited to emulating real players.

Modeled instruments can simply offer a different method to create a pallet of sounds to make music with.

And what fun it is to tweak the virtual physical characteristics of vibrating objects. A whole different pleasure vs twisting the parameters of a traditional synth.

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jbraner wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 10:39 am Oh - I'm sorry to hear that :-\
Personally, I don't think a software guitar is ever going to get you close to the real thing.
I think it can. Honestly, emulating an electric guitar string isn’t the difficult part. ReFx Slayer was able to make semi-convincing electric guitar sounds almost 20 years ago. And that was with limited processing power and technology.

Acoustic guitar is a bit more tricky.

I think the most difficult part of guitar emulation is not the sound itself. It’s how well the user understands how a guitar is played. Scripts and programming can make up for a lot of this, but one way or the other, a virtual guitar has to be played in a way that is consistent with a real guitar. And that is already possible. So it comes back to the sound.

But truthfully, are we talking about exact emulation or convincing emulation? To the normal listener, they don’t think at the level of detail that we do. They don’t care. ReFx Slayer sounded perfectly fine in a mix to most inexperienced ears. Trust me, I fooled people with it myself.

We often overthink realism. Yes, it’s good to have ultimate realism. But do we NEED it to go that far to be useful? Absolutely not.

Brent
My host is better than your host

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I think the most difficult part of guitar emulation is not the sound itself. It’s how well the user understands how a guitar is played.
That's more what I was thinking.
I don't think it's going to be easy to play proper string mutes, bends, pinch harmonics, vibrato, fret noise, various squeals and squeaks etc etc to sound like a real guitar.

Well, that's just IMHO - if IK wants to make a guitar VSTi, then you guys can enjoy it - and maybe even start your own thread ;)
John Braner
http://johnbraner.bandcamp.com
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
and all the major streaming/download sites.

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jbraner wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 8:12 am Why don't you take guitar lessons? ;)
I really hate when people say this, even as someone who's getting guitar lessons soon.

But moving on, I'd hoping Modo Bass 2 can do a better aggressive bass sound. Modo Bass 1 wasn't good for heavier styles of music from my usage. Submission Audio's basses are the king in the category.

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xphen0m wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 4:41 pm
jbraner wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 8:12 am Why don't you take guitar lessons? ;)
I really hate when people say this, even as someone who's getting guitar lessons soon.

But moving on, I'd hoping Modo Bass 2 can do a better aggressive bass sound. Modo Bass 1 wasn't good for heavier styles of music from my usage. Submission Audio's basses are the king in the category.
I wasn't very impressed in the MB2 demos. The main "innovation" seems to be fretles, both electric and upright. I own MB1 and find it pretty good for such a light implementation. I own the Spectrasonics Trilian as well, and the fretles incl. upright basses in that library are pretty good, and so are most of the electric samples. But Trilian is rather heavy.
Fretles suits in some places, but who will listen a bit out of tune bass sound constantly. Jaco Pastorius records are special case, of course.

So, I doubt that the MB2 will bring anything too desirable add on for me.

I own lot of IK stuff, mostly quality stuff. MD2 was a real improvement soundwise, hope it had better mixer. E. g. the kit piece volume tweaking is is unbelivable clumsy.

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Harry_HH wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 4:57 pm
xphen0m wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 4:41 pm
jbraner wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 8:12 am Why don't you take guitar lessons? ;)
I really hate when people say this, even as someone who's getting guitar lessons soon.

But moving on, I'd hoping Modo Bass 2 can do a better aggressive bass sound. Modo Bass 1 wasn't good for heavier styles of music from my usage. Submission Audio's basses are the king in the category.
I wasn't very impressed in the MB2 demos. The main "innovation" seems to be fretles, both electric and upright. I own MB1 and find it pretty good for such a light implementation. I own the Spectrasonics Trilian as well, and the fretles incl. upright basses in that library are pretty good, and so are most of the electric samples. But Trilian is rather heavy.
Fretles suits in some places, but who will listen a bit out of tune bass sound constantly. Jaco Pastorius records are special case, of course.

So, I doubt that the MB2 will bring anything too desirable add on for me.

I own lot of IK stuff, mostly quality stuff. MD2 was a real improvement soundwise, hope it had better mixer. E. g. the kit piece volume tweaking is is unbelivable clumsy.
I also wasn't impressed with the demos. Currently, I have no reason to upgrade. So far, this seems like something that could've been a 1.6 or 1.7 update. Another instance of a company putting out an unnecessary paid upgrade.

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jbraner wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 2:25 pm
I think the most difficult part of guitar emulation is not the sound itself. It’s how well the user understands how a guitar is played.
That's more what I was thinking.
I don't think it's going to be easy to play proper string mutes, bends, pinch harmonics, vibrato, fret noise, various squeals and squeaks etc etc to sound like a real guitar.

Well, that's just IMHO - if IK wants to make a guitar VSTi, then you guys can enjoy it - and maybe even start your own thread ;)
Train neural networks on actual guitar playing (particularly great guitar playing). Maybe with some assistance from including the relevant laws of physics and psychoacoustics (or other priors) in the model. It's doable, has probably already been done to some extent....

Personally I thought Geoshred and Strum GS2 sounded realistic, until a professional guitar player assured me they don't... though they sound good in their own ways. OTOH they thought ISW's Jupiter sounded realistic (well, through a good amp...), but I've found programming it well to be a bit of a chore. AI enhancement (or at least AI humanization etc. to make it easier to incorporate those elements and sound realistic (eventually even with automatable blends of emotion or genres etc.), maybe melody/chord generation as well) would be fantastic....

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Well, there's another thing - you have to pay attention to how you voice chords etc, on your VSTi - if you want it to sound like a real guitar.

It's the same, to a lesser degree with bass - isn't it?
I'm sure a proper bass player is not going to be convinced that our MODO bass parts sound like a "real" bass... ;)
John Braner
http://johnbraner.bandcamp.com
http://www.soundclick.com/johnbraner
and all the major streaming/download sites.

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Throw me in the: it'll be a bigger pain in the ass to program convincing guitar parts than just playing them yourself camp. You can get up and running with guitar in a few weeks if you just practice and watch some good YouTube videos. That and electric bass are the easiest non-electronic music instruments to get decent results quickly from.

Now I'm not saying a convincing guitar plugin can never be done, but I think a user would need a lot of help. I'm imagining an EZDrummer AI-style bandmate type feature where you program some chords, provide some instruction to the plugin about style (genre, style, picking patterns, fingers vs. pick, how busy, even microphone options) then let the system take over and provide a few parts (even if from pre-made patterns) that fit the music that you can modify (e.g. chord voicings, rhythms, etc.). And even then rhythm and lead guitar would likely require totally different interfaces/instructions, enough so, that they could be two different products. MPE would be a must or you'll never be able to do a double-stop bend.

So I think it can be done, but to do it right, it would need to be multiple products at once:

1. A convincing emulation of different kinds of guitars and string interactions (body resonance modeling too)
2. An "EZGuitar" type of interface to help users create convincing guitar parts for their songs (based on a combo of AI and a pre-existing rhythm/lick library that can be modified to fit any key/tempo)

...Forget about trying to play guitar on keys entirely. As a guitar play and a keyboard player, that can be convincing with monophonic lead lines (or even better with an MPE controller) or simple arpeggios but that's about it IMO.

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xphen0m wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 4:41 pm But moving on, I'd hoping Modo Bass 2 can do a better aggressive bass sound. Modo Bass 1 wasn't good for heavier styles of music from my usage. Submission Audio's basses are the king in the category.
Did you try putting it through better amp (and pedal) sims for those styles of music? Or do you think the issues are primarily with the signal before the amp/pedal?

I've generally liked the NeuralDSP and Plugin Alliance amps more than IK/Amplitude, though I haven't used Amplitude 5 much.

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 6:18 pm Throw me in the: it'll be a bigger pain in the ass to program convincing guitar parts than just playing them yourself camp. You can get up and running with guitar in a few weeks if you just practice and watch some good YouTube videos. That and electric bass are the easiest non-electronic music instruments to get decent results quickly from.
I'll vouch for the pain in the arse programming. I've spent over 10 years programming guitar parts, and I'm now able to get really good results. But it bleeds the life out of making music, and I've decided to cut it out completely. When the time's right, I think I'd rather hire someone off fiverr.com.

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