Emulating Guitar - Musical Creativity 20

Which type?

Firstly, I'd want to decide which type of guitar to emulate and then understand as much as I can about that instrument particular type of instrument and how it's played. Actually, that can be said of emulating any instrument. Take note of the instrument's range and where its tonality changes with pitch or volume. For an electric guitar, take note of the pickup types, whether it's strummed or picked, how many notes at a time, how the guitar would be recorded, etc. A strat sounds markedly different to a Les Paul.

Apply the process

Whatever you use to produce the sounds for an electric guitar, it generally sounds better being put through a guitar amp simulator as well, in much the same way that you may do with a guitar. Guitar amps are often mic'd up with two mics and the two tracks mixed together for the desired effect. So try the same sound through two channels, one to emulate the close-up dynamic microphone and another to emulate a condenser placed further away. The condenser channel would be subject to more room sound, so bring in your convolution effects if necessary.

It's the space as well

The recording space and techniques used to record a classical nylon guitar would be different than the for a electric guitar through a hi-gain amp. They would also be mixed differently.

I'm a guitarist, why would I want to emulate a guitar?

I can think of several reasons:

1) Saves having to get a guitar, amp, microphones, etc out to check out an idea

This isn't really an issue for me, I have an acoustic and at least one electric ready to go at all times. But if you're short on available space in your home studio, I can see this being the case. Occasionally I'll change the patch on a channel to a guitar so some midi notes I've written are produced by a guitar-ish sound, just to get a quick feel for whether it's worth learning the part on a guitar. If I then want the guitar recording, I'll record it properly myself.

2) For creativity

For the same reasons in starting on a different instrument, to be able to play in a different style to what you're used to playing on guitar. By trying to play the instrument on a different interface (e.g. a midi-equipped or USB keyboard), then you have to think differently. That brings out a different result compared to just playing guitar on its own.

3) For flexibility

To play something you couldn't normally play on guitar. If sweep arpeggios are beyond your talent, then you could program them in using midi. Or if it's genuinely impossible to play on a guitar, e.g. a stab consisting of 4 consecutive semitones, e.g. D, D#, E and F in the same octave. Ok, that example would be pretty discordant, but it may float your boat for one reason or another. More useful would be chord inversions that may be theoretically feasible but so awkward to transfer between that they're impossible from a practical perspective.

How effective can it be?

I've found it inspiring to try different musical phrases using an emulated guitar. I've also found it helps with my composing workflow. Furthermore, I can produce something technically complex in a shorter time than it would take to learn it. This has been useful when I've wanted to record an idea for future reference. Better to have the emulated sound that fits into rough mix, which will give me longer to learn the more complex parts, than forget what I wanted to record. In that sense, I'd be using it for taking notes.

If sonic accuracy is your aim, then perhaps try one of the more specialist virtual instruments such as RealStrat. I don't use virtual instruments, I remember looking into one a couple of years ago and I was impressed, very impressed in fact by the resulting sound demo. I was suspicious of how much time it took to get that result. At some point I'll go back and try it again and look in more detail.

Tuning

Apart from the fact that the strings can be tuned to different notes, e.g. nu-Metal would often feature at least a dropped D, if not yet another whole tone decrease, the interaction of the strings themselves can be important. For any guitar with a floating bridge (think most stratocasters and telecasters), the pitch of any one string is dependent on what's being fretted on the other strings. Bend one string and the others will decrease in pitch by a few cents. A lot of blues leads and chicken pickin' styles make use of this effect.

Tone

Guitarists apply tone and produce different sounds just in their playing style. For instance:

1) picking nearer the bridge produces a harsher tone (ponte)

2) picking nearer the neck produces a softer tone (dolce)

You could emulate the above by have a simpler tone more like a sine wave for the dolce sounds and adding more harmonics and a bit of distortion to emulate ponte. I'd also bring in compressors and gates to modify the envelop so that the attack on dolce is slower. The overall volume is lower on dolce than on ponte. If you're going to emulate a classical guitar, then ensure that your samples/virtual instrument can handle the difference between ponte and dolce and hopefully a few points in between.

Free or Palm-muted

By resting the side of the palm on the strings near the bridge, the guitarist can dampen the sound of the strings. This is reminiscent of a low-pass filter and if the guitarist increases the pressure applied to the strings, the cut-off frequency is reduced, thereby reducing the resulting tonal range. The palm-muting also reduces the dynamic range, probably why it's used to much in heavy rock chugging. By keeping the volume consistent, you can quickly develop a rhythm. Actually guitarists take it a step further and change the pressure applied as the notes are played. This can result in notes being accented or muted througout the phrase, accentuating the desired rhythm.

Further info

KVR Forum had a good thread on emulating guitars.

How a guitar works

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Bookmark/Search this post with: