New rock guitar library in production

[little-dreamer]

Hello, my name is Ashley MacLean and I am in the process of creating a rock guitar library for GigaStudio. It is still a little way off completion, but on reading the recent lively posts about guitar libraries I thought it would be a good time to announce my project.
Called Total Rock Guitar, it will be a big and dirty library for creating awesome hard-rock/metal guitar parts. It will feature five guitars:
-Distortion 1 rhythm
-Distortion 2 rhythm
-Clean rhythm
-Solo
-Effects (harmonics, whammy dives, pick scrapes etc.)

The aim of this project is to make a rock guitar library that sounds great straight out of the box. Some special features include
-multisamples of every note (of a seven string guitar)
-vibrato modulation crossfades on held notes
-separate instruments for power chords and tonal chords
-slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs and all major playing techniques

You can hear some demos I have made with Distortion 1 rhythm at http://www.little-dreamer.net/guitar.htm (\"http://www.little-dreamer.net/guitar.htm\")
I am open to suggestions and comments about any features you would like to see included.

[Isabella Rowlins]

Dismiss

[johnhutch]

Little-Dreamer (Van Halen reference?)

I liked it. Being a guitar player myself I do not know how much use I would have for it. However, others looking to spice up the mix may find it useful.

Good luck,

John

[Didier Rachou]

Thanks. I have been waiting for Tob\'s labour of love, but this is just as effective. Thanks for doing this. I am a guitarist as well, BUT I need to keep things in MIDI as a film takes shape. When the pic is locked and approved, then I will add/layer the real stuff.

A VERY useful library for certain things. Thank you, thank you and again, thank you.

My CCard is ready. Funny last night I thought to myself how there was no word from the 2 people on the Forum who had been developing this aggro-GTR type of library....

Best,
Didier

[JoelS]

Ashley -

I gave the demos for your upcoming library a listen and I have to say it seems very promosing, and is especially welcome since no released lib\'s cover this ground. I do have some comments, though.

In the demos as you\'ve presented them, the rhythm guitar tone seemed very flat and lifeless to me. Looking past the fact that the parts appeared to be heavily quantized, the actual sound of the guitar is what concerns me. It seems to lack high frequency content, muffling the sound and killing the impact it ought to have. It\'s possible this may be adjustable through EQing, but I\'d rather have it sound edgy and mean out of the box instead of having massage it to get it there. It\'s a subjective assessment, to be sure, but that\'s my two cents.

If you want to check out what I would pick as the best sounding guitar tone / mastering out there, Peter Tägtgren produced a couple gems with his mixing on Immortal\'s \'Sons of Northern Darkness\' and Grimfist\'s debut \'Ghouls of Grandeur\' (clips of which you can listen to here (\"http://www.grimfist.com/music.htm\")). That\'s the raw, cutting, aggressive sound I want in my personal \'dream metal guitar library\'.

I\'d also like to suggest that you include a couple items I didn\'t see mentioned:

- a buzzy tremolo speed picking articulation like you commonly hear in black metal

- some form of loops of actual chugging type riffs (even if only repeated 8th or 16th notes at different tempi) to get that natural flow you\'re unlikely to duplicate with only multisamples.

I definitely think your library shows promise... there were parts in all the demos that sounded very natural and fluid. If the guitar tone stays the same, though, I think I\'d wind up using it more as a placeholder until a real guitarist shows up to play the parts than I would as something in a finished mix. Good luck with this, though! Im looking forward to hearing more demos.

[Tamino]

That has to be a Line6 POD I\'m hearing in those demos.

[keytar]

Kick but! Hence my screen name I play a little keytar myself. images/icons/smile.gif This seems like an excellent product. So, how much will you be charging for this?

[Martin Boyer]

Originally posted by little-dreamer:
Hello, my name is Ashley MacLean and I am in the process of creating a rock guitar library for GigaStudio. It is still a little way off completion, but on reading the recent lively posts about guitar libraries I thought it would be a good time to announce my project.
Called Total Rock Guitar, it will be a big and dirty library for creating awesome hard-rock/metal guitar parts. It will feature five guitars:
-Distortion 1 rhythm
-Distortion 2 rhythm
-Clean rhythm
-Solo
-Effects (harmonics, whammy dives, pick scrapes etc.)

The aim of this project is to make a rock guitar library that sounds great straight out of the box. Some special features include
-multisamples of every note (of a seven string guitar)
-vibrato modulation crossfades on held notes
-separate instruments for power chords and tonal chords
-slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs and all major playing techniques

You can hear some demos I have made with Distortion 1 rhythm at http://www.little-dreamer.net/guitar.htm (\"http://www.little-dreamer.net/guitar.htm\")
I am open to suggestions and comments about any features you would like to see included. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">OK. Here\'s my take.

I am a bassist and a guitarist (somehow...). Your product could interest me, as I hate to record myself (playing 20 times the same line over and over to get the \"perfect take\" isn\'t my bag of tea).

I will start with the pros. Your transition between the articulations (palm mute on and off), seem to be one of the best I have heard, so far. This is what makes me think your product have great potential. The editing of the articulation, I mean what you keep from the attack to the release seems pretty good, especially for the palm mutes. You seems to have different level of pressure for the palm mute, if I hear correctly on the Pantera demo, which it seems to be good. Also , I seen you have up and down mute strum (based on the Orion mock up).

The things that could be improved: The sound could be bigger, louder and crispier, and have a little more sharp edge. You know, somewhere between Fear Factory, Rammstein or System of a Down. A Mesa Boogie dual or Triple Rectifier in a Marshall 4X12, perpendicularly micked, kind of sound maybe (If you go that way, I hope you have good neighbors...).

The mute on a given note seems to be always the same sample, which gives a machine gun impression (an evidence on the Master of Puppet mockup). Two things could help to prevent that. Offering 3 or 4 varieties of the same articulations (at least for the palm mutes) so the user can alternate these. Sure, they will sound very alike, but the subtle differences can bring a line to life, a bit like Sam Horns and Sam Trombones excellent staccatos. Having multiple velicity layers, especially for the upper velocities, like f, ff and fff (lower velocity won\'t be that important since the style required to play loud ;o)). This last trick could applied to most of the articulations and can make your library sounds so close to the real thing and makes a real winner.

Things I would like to hear in that kind of library:

- Powerchords and single notes half step and whole step slides (for up and for down). At different speed, of course, to match different tempos. A little bit a la Rammstein.

- Hammer-on and pull-off half step and whole step at different speed.

- Kontakt format ;o)

- Up and down strum for the powerchords

- Lower extended power chords (the actual power chord plus the fift lower), to give a very Nu Metal sound.

An idea could be also to record all these articulations in your clean guitar, so one can choose his or her favorite amp sound with a plug-in like Amplitube.

Best Regards,
Martin

[keytar]

\"which gives a machine gun impression...\"

I think the machine gun effect is more obvious due to this being a demo without any further editing or layering of other instruments. But you could edit velocities in the track to minimize this effect, but when you layer in keyboards, vocals, (for a pop or rock track) this probably wouldn\'t be that noticeable as it is right now. In my tunes where I use a guitar sample, if the machine gun effect is really noticeable, a slight pitch editing of every other machine gun run (up or down a wee bit) usually takes care of it. This library may appeal more to pop, dance, hip hop, rock, then to the orchestra composers.

[Martin Boyer]

Originally posted by keytar:
\"which gives a machine gun impression...\"

I think the machine gun effect is more obvious due to this being a demo without any further editing or layering of other instruments. But you could edit velocities in the track to minimize this effect, but when you layer in keyboards, vocals, (for a pop or rock track) this probably wouldn\'t be that noticeable as it is right now. In my tunes where I use a guitar sample, if the machine gun effect is really noticeable, a slight pitch editing of every other machine gun run (up or down a wee bit) usually takes care of it. This library may appeal more to pop, dance, hip hop, rock, then to the orchestra composers. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">In this case, you probably recognise the mocked-up song I was refering to: Metallica, the excellent \"Master of Puppets\". So almost all the 2 minutes you heard don\'t have more than what was there: Drum, bass, guitars (the vocal only kicks-in at the end of the 2 minutes, since the original song is more than 8 minutes). So the machine gun effect is very obvious. In hard rock, heavy metal and nu metal, guitar riffs are very upfront, so machine gun effect will be obvious. And I am not talking about putting it in an orchestra yet...

The way you describe to avoid machine gun effect (pitch shifting) is counterproductive. A good library is there to save you time and get a very good results fast. Pitch sifting a bit is time consumming and can be tricky. I find the velocity variation trick to be more effective with multi-velocity layers articulations, what I suggested the developper to do. Otherwise, repeating the same sample at different velocity usualy still produce a machine gun effect. Again, in a upfront metal riff, this is hard not to notice.

Best Regards,
Martin

[Hardy Heern]

Good sounds Ashley. Sadly I\'m not a guitarist but I enjoy most guitar music so I was listening to your demos as a music lover. I would like to hear demos of more popular?, mainstream, older? heavy styles....Gunge and Roses, Spinal Tap ¦:^) etc

The one thing that did stick out to me was the \'machine gun effect\' drum rolls. This you can easily get rid of by kicking random hits, backwards and forwards by a few ticks, away from the beats. BTW This has nothing to do with the other machine gun comment, I didn\'t pick up on it and I don\'t know enough to comment.

I look forward to the library...I\'ve added myself to your newsletter.

Frank

If you don\'t know what you are talking about
Say it anyway

[SOD213]

Originally posted by JoelS:
Ashley -

I gave the demos for your upcoming library a listen and I have to say it seems very promosing, and is especially welcome since no released lib\'s cover this ground. I do have some comments, though.

In the demos as you\'ve presented them, the rhythm guitar tone seemed very flat and lifeless to me. Looking past the fact that the parts appeared to be heavily quantized, the actual sound of the guitar is what concerns me. It seems to lack high frequency content, muffling the sound and killing the impact it ought to have. It\'s possible this may be adjustable through EQing, but I\'d rather have it sound edgy and mean out of the box instead of having massage it to get it there. It\'s a subjective assessment, to be sure, but that\'s my two cents.

If you want to check out what I would pick as the best sounding guitar tone / mastering out there, Peter Tägtgren produced a couple gems with his mixing on Immortal\'s \'Sons of Northern Darkness\' and Grimfist\'s debut \'Ghouls of Grandeur\' (clips of which you can listen to here (\"http://www.grimfist.com/music.htm\")). That\'s the raw, cutting, aggressive sound I want in my personal \'dream metal guitar library\'.

I\'d also like to suggest that you include a couple items I didn\'t see mentioned:

- a buzzy tremolo speed picking articulation like you commonly hear in black metal

- some form of loops of actual chugging type riffs (even if only repeated 8th or 16th notes at different tempi) to get that natural flow you\'re unlikely to duplicate with only multisamples.

I definitely think your library shows promise... there were parts in all the demos that sounded very natural and fluid. If the guitar tone stays the same, though, I think I\'d wind up using it more as a placeholder until a real guitarist shows up to play the parts than I would as something in a finished mix. Good luck with this, though! Im looking forward to hearing more demos. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">I have to agree, definitely promising. Here\'s where you can check out some of Immortal\'s Sons Of Northern Darkness:

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005V6QB/ref%3Dpd%5Fsim%5Fdp%5F2/701-1769835-2205111 (\"http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005V6QB/ref%3Dpd%5Fsim%5Fdp%5F2/701-1769835-2205111\")

I believe that\'s one of the last albums Tagtgren produced, currently he\'s only working on his own projects (Hypocrisy, Pain, and another one I think.)

As for the tone, yes, it does sound like a POD. That isn\'t necessarily a bad thing, I\'ve gotten a lot of good sound out of a POD (I\'ve owned a Mesa Boogie Triaxis, I know what heavy sounds like. images/icons/smile.gif ) Currently I use a Behringer V-Amp Pro. 1/3 the price of the POD Pro and I can get even better sounds out of it. There\'s a large following of it too.

I also would like to hear a black metal tremolo sound, one of my favorites is on Dimmu Borgir\'s Mourning Palace:

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000H22/qid%3D1060435291/701-1769835-2205111 (\"http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000H22/qid%3D1060435291/701-1769835-2205111\")


Personally, I prefer to play the guitar, but if I found a library that could do solos for me, I\'d definitely pick it up. (I\'m a rhythm player.) Did you mention a pricepoint for this yet? Also, on the demos, is that a single guitar line or is the sound doubled? I think if we could hear some more power out of the library, it\'d make more of an impact.

[Nagash20]

This is a very interesting project and could prove very usefull.. Though I am concerned about the fact that I always record my guitars two or three times and layer the recordings.. I think that layering sampled guitars wouldnt give the best results, except if everything is recorded twice or even three times with some difference in on the amp settings..
However, for jotting down ideas and such, Im confident it will prove usefull..
Peter Tågtgren really knows how to record guitars.. I think his latest work is Gorgoroth - Twilight of the Idols..
Also check out Dimmu Borgir\'s two latest albums.. Great guitar sound there.. Recorded in Studio Fredman, also in Sweden..

And could you give us some details on what amp and guitar you used? Pick-ups and such..

Try mailing the guys who made Drumkit From Hell.. Maybe they have some ideas and pointers they would like to share..