Simulating up-strum and down-strum on guitar chords in MIDI.

[midilance]

With a down-strum the picked notes hit from the high strings down and the up-strums just the opposite. I am wanting to try to simulate this in MIDI with just a couple of tics between each note in a strum. I know this sounds weird but I just want to try it. The question is, is there a way to play in the chord and have the notes all have a predetermined space in between them and then, for the next strum, set it up in reverse? Go ahead and laugh. I just want to try it.

[Tidwells@aol.com]

I did this for a song using tedious manual editing. I would love a way to do this automatically.

Doug

[stubbsonic]

I've seen this feature in arpeggiators and chord generation tools. Before you do it "the hard way", do some searches. I bet you'll find more than one option that matches your platform.

[mikehalloran]

You have Komplete Ultimate 14. SESSION GUITARIST – STRUMMED ACOUSTIC and the other SESSION GUITARIST guitars have patterns that incorporate up and down strums.

If you search for up and down strum in Kontakt, you'll find a number of 3rd party libraries that may giver you more control.

[stubbsonic]

This got me to wondering if DP's arpeggiator could be wrangled into doing a strum simulation. It does have an option to load a rhythmic pattern and a melodic pattern.

To get more nerdy, a person with a divided pickup could record some strummy stuff and convert to MIDI.

[Killahurts]

You have Komplete Ultimate 14. SESSION GUITARIST – STRUMMED ACOUSTIC

Mike beat me to it!This is the way to go if you want to do it right.

If you just want to try it with MIDI, having an exact, predetermined length between each note may not give a very realistic result. The speed of a guitar strum, especially a down strum, can change over the time of the strum.. e.g. finishes slightly faster than it started out. You would probably get a much better result by playing it in from the keyboard. I have done that more than once, when working an idea and I don't want to break the flow in order to plug in a real guitar, or I have a part that the Komplete strummed acoustic, et al is not appropriate for.

Doing it with a mouse, I guess you could try Step Record, although probably not fast enough note values.

[James Steele]

Wasn't there a hardware box years ago that you inserted inline between your MIDI controller and DAW (or sound module) that did something like this? I think it was called "Strummer" and was made by either Oberheim or Emu?? (I haven't tried to Google it yet.)

[Killahurts]

Wasn't there a hardware box years ago that you inserted inline between your MIDI controller and DAW (or sound module) that did something like this? I think it was called "Strummer" and was made by either Oberheim or Emu?? (I haven't tried to Google it yet.)

Yep, here it is:

https://www.vintagesynth.com/oberheim/strummer.php

Good Memory James!

[mikehalloran]

Wasn't there a hardware box years ago that you inserted inline between your MIDI controller and DAW (or sound module) that did something like this? I think it was called "Strummer" and was made by either Oberheim or Emu?? (I haven't tried to Google it yet.)

Yep, here it is:

https://www.vintagesynth.com/oberheim/strummer.php

Good Memory James!

There’s one on Reverb
https://reverb.com/item/69441362-oberh ... m-strummer

[midilance]

I love my NI Session Guitarist plugins. Maybe NI's developers might also be able to add these types of features to their plugins.

[SMS]

Strum GS-2 works great for this. Haven’t tried session guitarist but I gather it’s a similarly implemented solution.

https://www.applied-acoustics.com/strum-gs-2/

[stubbsonic]

Strumming is such a complex and expressive way to chords (as is fingerpicking), There's all this dynamic shaping and damping and percussive smacking etc. Quite a project to simulate all that.

It would be kind of interesting to make a "strum gesture library". Perhaps NI already has this.

[HCMarkus]

Mike beat me to it!This is the way to go if you want to do it right.

Just have to say: The real way to do it right is to hire a guitarist.

[HCMarkus]

Strumming is such a complex and expressive way to chords (as is fingerpicking), There's all this dynamic shaping and damping and percussive smacking etc. Quite a project to simulate all that.

This is why.

Brings me to a thought about composition and arrangement: Sometimes, having the tools dictate direction is cool. Sometimes, it is undesirable. Parts played by musicians help assure us the recording will reflect the composition, not the other way around.

[stubbsonic]

But to play devil's advocate....

In one scenario, let's say (hypothetically) we had a gtr to MIDI converter that did an effective job of capturing velocity and duration on the all 6 strings independently (a la divided pickup). And we captured, a reasonably complete selection of strumming gestures.

It could be kind of fascinating to hear non-guitar sounds strummed with kind of guitaristic gestures. It would be especially cool if the instrument (whatever it is) had some way of adapting to the upcoming strum business.