OT: FYI - Real Guitar v.s. Samples

[Munsie]

Well, I just had a guitar player come by the home studio and lay down some demo tracks so I could compare them with my guitar samples. The real guitar was going through the same effects as my samples. The guitar player wasn\'t that good, but he could play chords, mutes, strums, etc. The bottom line, you seriously could not tell the difference between the two tones. The only thing that I could notice that makes the \"real\" guitar sound \"more real\" is the fret noise as the hand moves up and down the neck. Otherwise, the \"tone\" was frickin identical. WOW! To be continued....

[leadbelly]

The oceans could not contain the nuances of a single note produced by the rasp of steel on the fretboard, the cutting of fleshly fingertips and the pitch modulations of an artist of the guitar. Our job as sample users is to create a psycho-acoustic illusion of reality that evokes the emotions and musical idioms we wish to express. There is no comparison between a real guitarist, cellist or saxophonist and a sampled recreation. But we use the latter to meet our commercial and personal goals.

Peace,

leadbelly

[Z6]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Munsie:
The only thing that I could notice that makes the \"real\" guitar sound \"more real\" is the fret noise as the hand moves up and down the neck. Otherwise, the \"tone\" was frickin identical. WOW! To be continued....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hee, hee. You wouldn\'t believe the gyrations I\'ve seen classical guitarists go through to try to cut down the beloved \'fret noise\' and \'squeaks\' that we now purchase to introduce \'realism\' into the samples.

Twenty years ago, if you had owned a \'non-squeak\' guitar, I\'d have built a shrine to you (if you\'ve ever played in a church with wonderful acoustics - classical guitar-wise - and listened to the racket that those shiney new strings could make at the most inopportune of moments, you\'d maybe decide that sometimes the \'squeaks\' are a bit of a pain. I can\'t think of a single classical guitar piece that calls for a quiet passage with maximum squeak (although, of course, it does often add \'character\' in some contexts, and is an integral part of many other styles).

I\'m still waiting for Worra to fulfil his threat of a classical guitar library so that I can choose exactly if and when I want those squeaky little buggars to wake up the old geezer at the back of the hall.

[thesoundsmith]

Leadbelly said: [quote] Our job as sample users is to create a psycho-acoustic illusion of reality that evokes the emotions and musical idioms we wish to express. There is no comparison between a real guitarist, cellist or saxophonist and a sampled recreation. [\\quote]

I understand what you mean, but I can\'t agree. Our job as sample users is EXACTLY the same as it is as guitar/trumpet/piano etc. players - to play the very finest music we are capable of. Period. It DOESN\'T MATTER what your instrument is, what matters is the evocation and performance-the life and soul of the music.

I guarantee that a moderately skilled violinist on a Stradavarius will never sound half as good as a Heifitz or Wilkomirska on a Lark student violin. The power of the music is in the musicia, not the instrument.

Classical Hindusthani vocalist Pandit Pran Nath gave a concert in Berkeley back in the seventies. I had not heard him before, but even as someone very familiar with Hindusthani male vocalists, my first impression was, \"This guy sounds like he\'s projectile vomiting!\" Timbrally, sounded like \"Bleagggghhhhhhh...\" But after about ten seconds, I realized the purpose of this was to create a thick timbral bed that he could twist to his needs. What he did with this (initially ugly) sound was absolutely divine! One of my favorite live recordings ever.

Dasher

[clonewar]

Munsie, what guitar libraries are you using? Did you ever get the QL56 Strat? I\'m still thinking about getting it. What kind of tracks did the guitar player lay down? Rhythm or lead, or both?

I\'m a real hack on the guitar but I\'ve been practicing a lot lately and getting better. I\'m at the point now where I\'m trying to decide if I want to spend money on guitar libries and spend time trying to get the sound I\'m looking for out of them or just spend the time getting better playing the guitar.

Mike

[David Sears]

I agree with thesoundsmith. I\'ve gone rathered tired of the \"it doesn\'t sound like a real guitar\" arguments. As long as it sounds good I could care less if it\'s a real instrument or not. Maybe the fact that you can play it with all your fingers on a keyboard opens creative possibilities that can\'t be matched on a real guitar?

Pipe organs were originally built to try to emulate flutes and oboes and other instruments. They did a pretty poor job of that but became an important instrument in their own right. The Hammond was built to emulate a pipe organ and likewise did a pretty poor job of it but gained a niche of its own.

- David

[leadbelly]

Soundsmith:

Your observations are true in the sense that the instrument itself is secondary - it is the spirit and passion of the artist that ultimately defines the \"worth\" of the musical piece. But my point was that sampled instruments should not be viewed as replicas but rather as \"approximations\" of real instruments. I produce beautiful, passionate, evocative music using my synthesizers, samplers, acoustic instruments and assorted ambient noises, but one should not delude oneself into the idea that sampled instruments (at present) even approach the expressive potential of an acoustic string or reed instrument, or of the human voice. It is up to us as samplists to create the best music we can while accepting the inherent limitations that exist in today\'s sampling technology. Perhaps one day we will be unfettered by technological constraints and enter into a realm of expressivity and nuance that truly rivals acoustic instruments.

Peace,

leadbelly

[leadbelly]

One more point to illustrate my idea:

Listen to the instrumental version of Jimi Hendrix\'s \"Little Wing\" on a quiet afternoon.

Try to replicate that sound, feel and spontaneity with a sampled guitar library and you will be humbled by the power of the artist. Can you make a great solo electric guitar piece with samples? Sure! But not something so flowing and expressive as Jimi did.

Leadbelly

[PatS]

leadbelly writes: \"But my point was that sampled instruments should not be viewed as replicas but rather as \"approximations\" of real instruments.\"

This reminds me of Rene Magritte\'s This is not a pipe (\"http://www.ohnishi.nuie.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matumoto/art/images/pipe.jpg\") painting. The literalist would say that you don\'t see a pipe but rather an image resembling or representing a pipe. The non-literalist probably sees an elephant. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Pat


[This message has been edited by PatS (edited 04-12-2002).]

[Z6]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by leadbelly:
Can you make a great solo electric guitar piece with samples? Sure! But not something so flowing and expressive as Jimi did.

Leadbelly<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But each new sample or set of samples plus all of the equipment plus the player becomes a new \'instrument\'.

There were people who said that electric guitar could never be as expressive as acoustic guitar (and no, I don\'t know any personally). Jimi Hendrix incorporated many of the \'artifacts\' that had previously been considered as \'problems\' i.e. feedback, to create his music (just as many acoustic guitarists employ the \'squeaks\' or other \'byproducts\' as part of the music).

No one will ever do what Hendrix did, but no one will ever do what any great artist did. That\'s why they\'re great artists.

Sampled guitar only appears limited if that\'s how you want to perceive it.

I find the guitar limited (for my purposes); that\'s why I want samples. I want to use my guitar technique to play other instruments because it\'s fun. I\'ll never produce a work of art, but I have my moments.

All instruments are \'limited\'. A trombone is not a piano. A sampler is not an analogue synth.

But surely it bears no relation to the music that someone might produce and you or I might enjoy.

Each instrument is \'expressive\' within its own world, and each player manipulates his instrument and its \'limitations\' according to his own limitations.

Count Basie is one of the greatest jazz players who ever lived, but I doubt that much of his best work could be described as anything other than just \'right\'. He could play one note and somehow explain everything with it - just one note. Would using Michiel\'s new sampled piano have made his \'note\' sound wrong? I doubt it.

We don\'t know what Hendrix might have done with samples, but there is every reason to assume that were he alive today (and he felt like it) that he might produce music for a younger generation that might have said: \"Jimi did some OK stuff in the sixties, but he really didn\'t produce his best work until he started sampling.\" We will never know, of course, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility (given that he hadn\'t choked himself with heroin).

Acoustic instruments may \'seem\' more expressive; just as a Stardivarious \'seems\' more capable of expression than a cheapo violin (cue Pat?), but I remember reading a letter Liszt wrote where he admitted to being dumbfounded as to how on earth every gypsy violinist playing on an orange box was a virtuoso.

It is within limitations where the musican and the music exist. It is the \'limitations\' that define all of it.

A sampled guitar will never be a guitar. But a guitar will never be a sampled guitar either. It\'s what you do with it that counts (as the actress said to the Bishop).

(You might have noticed that my boss is on holiday today :-)

[leadbelly]

Z6:

You are right in saying that we should not view sampling as a limited medium, but rather embrace it as a valid form of musical expression and explore its (limitless) potentials. We are truly blessed to have musical tools at our disposal that allow us such a broad range of sound tools. Yet it up to individuals to create beautiful, inspiring, foreboding, angry, anguished, passionate and uplifting music.

Shalom

leadbelly

[KicknGuitar]

Well, so you can emulate a \"not so good guitar player\". Wow??? (Sorry, I had a few beers) and I love my gigastudio, but as a really passionate guitar player, I know I could ever emulate the way I play, and same for Sax and voice Just cant emulate a singer, and some instruments really express a musical phrase like a singer. There are some guitar chops that could obviously be sampled and looped, etc. Oh Hi everybody, I guess I am a new thorn in the forum, and let me say that because of this forum, I got the right stuff (computer, soundcard,etc )for giga to work, so thanks for the info, and keep postin !!! It really helps!!!

[thesoundsmith]

Leadbelly said: [quote]
But my point was that sampled instruments should not be viewed as replicas but rather as \"approximations\" of real instruments. I produce beautiful, passionate, evocative music using my synthesizers, samplers, acoustic instruments and assorted ambient noises, but one should not delude oneself into the idea that sampled instruments (at present) even approach the expressive potential of an acoustic string or reed instrument, or of the human voice. [\\quote]

I understand your point, and definitely agree that voice is not going to get properly sampled in our lifetime *except as a one-shot sample, commonly know as a \'recording\' http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

But I have to agree with Z6: the sampled instrument is not the instrument-it is a new instrument, with its own expressivity and unique emotive character (as I think you also don\'t disagree.)

\'This is not a guitar\' - excellent example, Pat. Geting down to the nitty Magritty.

The expressive potential of a sampled guitar is DIFFERENT than the original, but equally viable as a vehicle of artistic expression. But it\'s a new, different instrument, and takes a long time to get under the fingers the way the original did. I spent five years playing DX7 before I felt I had succeeded in making a realist equivalent transition from acoustic/electric (Rhodes) piano. Part of that is just my lack as a keyboardist, part of it is overcoming the techniques of piano - it IS possible to play fast and soft on an acoustic piano, try it on a DX!

You can try and fool the audience (and even yourself) that that\'s a real guitar, but if you treat it as a guitar-sounding keyboard, you\'ll have more fun...
Dasher

[Bardstown Audio]

Here are some quotes regarding the acoustic and electric archtop jazz guitars from Bardstown Audio...


\"Kip McGinnis, the wizard of Bardstown Audio has done a truly outstanding job of capturing all of the detail and nuance of the acoustic archtop guitar. It is not often that a sample set is able to approach this degree of realism. In fact, I find the degree of expression possibly great enough that I often actually prefer it to a live player. That\'s something I have never encountered in any other sample set, and something I never thought I would be saying. If Grady Martin were alive, I think he would love the sound of these!\"

Pete Leoni, Producer, Engineer and Tech Writer, Mix Magazine

~~~~~

\"Two musicians I know approached me last night after the show and asked, \'Who did the guitar stuff?\' They knew it wasn\'t me --I can\'t play guitar to save my life.
\"Bardstown Archtop!! Totally fooled two musicians! What else can you say about that? We\'ve come a long way when you can play a realistic guitar line on a computer, that\'s for sure.\"

Bruce Richardson, Pro Rec


\"I had a project fall into my lap where I needed to knock off a present-day Texas Swing sound. I just installed these libraries last night, and they\'re really good.
\"Just two splits and release triggers for each instrument, yet very expressive to play, and the tones are absolutely dead on. No one has done an archtop guitar at all that I\'m aware of, certainly not this good sounding. I loaded up the Tenor Banjo, played the line from \"Dueling Banjos\" and just cracked up laughing because it sounded so good. Same for the accordions, they\'re great instruments and well sampled and mapped.
\"These are definitely up there with the best Giga libraries in terms of realism and tone quality. Kip, whatever you\'re doing, keep on doing it!\"

Bruce Richardson, Pro Rec

Kip
Bardstown Audio
www.bardstownaudio.com (\"http://www.bardstownaudio.com\")

[Franky]

Munsie, when you did the comparaison, did you by any chance use Giga Clea ELectric Guitars http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

hehehe, you know i\'m eager to know.. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
Btw, Giga Clean Electric Guitars review coming in May\'s Sound on Sound Magazine. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Franky
Vintaudio Prod. www.vintaudio.com (\"http://www.vintaudio.com\")