Rave: Amplesound electric guitars

[JMVideo]

Amplesound has received a lot buzz for their acoustic VI guitars (and rightly so), but hardly a peep about their electric guitars. I own Electri6ity, RealLPC, RealStrat, Strawberry Evolution, etc... all of these have their strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately I've been unsatisfied with the level of realism these VI's provide. I decided to bite the bullet and purchase the Amplesound electric guitars and.... wow... the missing link! I recorded a track with these guitars, and for the first time ever, I am satisfied with the realism.

Though I'm primarily a keyboardist, I've played rhythm guitar in bands so I'm not a guitar newb who doesn't understand the nuances. Of course there's no substitute for the real thing, but to my ears, these sounds real.

I recorded a Post Rock track to my SoundCloud using only Amplesound electrics, a Fender Bass, electric piano, and Slate Drums through a Roland Kit.

https://soundcloud.com/fej-rellim/in-th ... eres-light

(Disclaimer: No real guitars were harmed during the recording of this song.)

[Luke]

Wow! That sounds pretty amazing. Nice song. Keep up the good work!

[Armageddon]

Interesting take! I have RealLPC/Strat/Guitar, Electri6ity and Ministry of Rock 1. Out of desperation to find a guitar VI/sample set that could load on my system and would allow me to do convincing doubled rhythm guitars, I tried out the Amplesound electric VIs. None of them sounded good to me at all; the overall sound was kind of fake-sounding (more like an older PCM keyboard workstation electric guitar sound) and the articulations were extremely lacking. What's most frustrating is that the Amplesound electric (and acoustic, I assume) VIs have one excellent feature that the Real series (my main guitar VIs) lack: a humanization/doubling engine. I even tried tracking a RealStrat/Real LPC with an Amplesound VI and it didn't sound right. I was in communication with the MusicLab guys to try and convince them to incorporate a doubling and/or a humanization feature into their version 3 electric VIs, but I don't think there was enough of a call for it to warrant the programming. Hopefully, I can get Electri6ity to play nice on my machine and do what I need to do that way ...

Your track sounds great, though! The stuff I'm trying to do is more doubled hard rock/metal/power chords with half-mutes, slides, etc, which none of the Amplesound electric VIs sound good doing (to me, anyway). And none of the demos on their site feature this style of playing, which leads me to think they're probably not designed for it. Again, it's a shame, because their humanization and doubling would be extremely useful.

[JMVideo]

I should have prefaced by saying that I think these guitars lend themselves well to the mellow/light rock genre. I agree they aren't well suited for hard rock/metal... probably Electr6ity would be your best bet for that, although I found it really difficult to program.

There's something about the Amplesound guitars where the slides and releases sound more realistic than the other VIs, and really easy to program.

I hope they continue to enhanced and expand these guitars because it's just a really simple interface and a joy to work with.

[Armageddon]

I should have prefaced by saying that I think these guitars lend themselves well to the mellow/light rock genre. I agree they aren't well suited for hard rock/metal... probably Electr6ity would be your best bet for that, although I found it really difficult to program.

There's something about the Amplesound guitars where the slides and releases sound more realistic than the other VIs, and really easy to program.

I hope they continue to enhanced and expand these guitars because it's just a really simple interface and a joy to work with.

Thanks for actually articulating what I failed to! Especially in your track (and the ones on Amplesound's site), it's obvious that the Amplesound electric VIs are more suited to a jazz/lite rock/"mellow" (as you put it) sound. As much as I love Musiclab's stuff, the electric VIs don't have a lot of dynamics, though you can tweak them for a lot of things. Same goes for Electri6ity. For a "clean" guitar sound with a lot of realism and dynamics, I usually just turn to the Telecaster patch on Ministry of Rock. There's a lot of stuff to like about Amplesound's programming, though. I keep hoping a third party is gonna come along and create an electric guitar VI taking the best stuff from Musiclab and Amplesound and creating an electric guitar VI that does it all.

[JMVideo]

I keep hoping a third party is gonna come along and create an electric guitar VI taking the best stuff from Musiclab and Amplesound and creating an electric guitar VI that does it all.

Yes, exactly! They all have so much potential but fall short in so many areas. Electri6ity in particular I thought was a big disappointment because version 1.1 was such a great start, but then further development was abandoned.

Although I think it's impossible to capture all the subtle nuances of a real guitar via a VI, the time is ripe for a new developer to make one that comes close! The Amplesound guys are still hard at work perfecting their acoustic guitars, but I'm hoping they do a 2nd pass at the electric collection as well and do some refinements.

[Prime Mover]

I know Armageddon isn't a big fan of Shreddage, but I've found it to be very useful for really big crunchy metal guitars. Be sure to add it to that list. As much as I like Strawberry Electric, for instance, Shreddage kills it in the power chord rhythm department.

I play it live a lot. Realism is definitely important, but there's something to be said for something that works extremely smoothly for live performance, and I haven't found anything that does it better.

[Armageddon]

I know Armageddon isn't a big fan of Shreddage, but I've found it to be very useful for really big crunchy metal guitars. Be sure to add it to that list. As much as I like Strawberry Electric, for instance, Shreddage kills it in the power chord rhythm department.

I play it live a lot. Realism is definitely important, but there's something to be said for something that works extremely smoothly for live performance, and I haven't found anything that does it better.

The more we talk about this, especially in this particular thread, the more I come to realize that everybody has different requirements for what they need in an electric guitar VI. For example, you place emphasis on playing live/in real time. JMVideo wants a mellow Santana/jazz electric sound. I'm looking for convincing rhythm guitars that can be tweaked and doubled, but not some unconvincing "chord samples" ala Ministry of Rock 1. Not only is sound and placement a factor, but also programming that works with this way you personally work and think.

I don't hate Shreddage, and everything I've ever heard in demos certainly points to it being effective. It doesn't work for me -- I don't even know why -- but you can't argue that it isn't a good-sounding rhythm guitar sample set. For that matter, a lot of people swear by Orange Tree electric guitar sample sets. The keyswitching is too wonky for me, but again, the people who use it get decent results. Right now, I'm struggling with Electri6ity, which sounds pretty awesome, but its behavior, at least on my system, is a bit erratic. Articulations aren't being activated properly. It's possible (EXTREMELY possible) that it's some sort of user-side error, so I'm still struggling to get it to sound right.

I've had the best results with Musiclab's VIs. For lead guitars, for me, it has no equal. I can stack ten different articulations on their own programmable keyswitches, two more on high and low velocity switches, and get it to sound like the real thing. Like JMVideo, I'm not thrilled with the lack of dynamics, so it does have its limits. And if I were only doing one rhythm guitar, it would also be perfect. Unfortunately, doubling your rhythm guitars is tricky. Shreddage, Electri6ity, Amplesound, Ministry of Rock and most other sample sets/VIs have some sort of a doubling feature that simply allows you to route one MIDI guitar track to two corresponding channels and you have instant doubled guitars -- you can even add additional MIDI information to one track or another to change it up even more. As it stands right now, I have to copy a MIDI guitar track to a new track, "humanize" it (usually an hours-long process, because it requires moving keyswitches around and only "humanizing" certain notes and chords) and dump the audio from two separate instances of a Musiclab VI.