I am in the process of writing a Country rock song, and just about have the structure and form of the song figured out. The song features a guitar riff, which I have written in my head, and have then tried to produce in midi using the Piano Roll screen. I want a Rock style, "twangy" lead guitar style sound for the riff. However I am not happy with the guitar sound I am getting, from the Cyote DXI synth which tends to sound halfway between a piano and a highly synthesized pad. I do not play electric guitar so cannot record it, and create it that way. I notice there are no Midi Super Tracks for electric lead guitar so that can't help me, and because I want it to follow a definite pattern I have written, cannot use a Real Track as that will do its own thing.
Just wondering if anyone has had success getting a "realistic" guitar sound doing something similar to what I'm trying?
Welcome to the forum. I have no clue as to the answer for your genre, but give it time; we have some fine guitarists here.
Not easy. The jazz guitar tends to sound the best in basic midi. Electric's sound dreadful. Real Guitar or something similar with sampled guitar would be the way to go, I guess. There may be a sampled guitar in the BIAB version of SampleTank? Perhaps someone could record the riff for you? Depends how hard. Put a mp3 copy of your riff up for us to listen to and replicate.
If you can send me a pm with a link to the following:
1. High quality .mp3 of the song without the guitar part
2. Same as 1 but including your midi track
3. An example guitar tone from a different song
I will take a crack at it. If you like what I did, I will send you back the guitar track by itself in the format of your choice and you decide what you might like to pay for such.
Scott
"Just wondering if anyone has had success getting a "realistic" guitar sound doing something similar to what I'm trying?"
To answer the above question "NO!" and no matter how hard you try you probably won't either. Not unless you are ready to spend big bucks on a synthesizer. Even then, probably would not convince most people that it is a real Twangy lead guitar.
However, if you use a midi wind synth, breath controller or have a top of the line hardware synth and are really, really good with a mod wheel you might get close.
I like lambada's idea, write it out in midi along with the rest of your song, post it up on soundcloud for us to here. Some of us might record the part for you, email it to you, you can import it to a track in your DAW and mute the midi track you made. If you do this you should post the entire song with count in and intro bars and all. That will make the recorded guitar track line up easily once you get it back.
As others have mentioned, the answer is, for the most part, "no".
Guitars as well as some other instruments such as horns and reeds, tend to not sound very realistic in Midi. Although that is getting better. However, the synths that can do that are fairly costly and have a learning curve.
For the time being and with low budgets, it's best to ask a friend to help lay down the track.
In this and other recording forums, you can easily find a guitarist willing to play the track for a small consideration. It could be money, swapping skills if you can sing or play another instrument for one of their projects, and some will do it just for grins to have some fun as long as the use is non-commercial.
The best way to garner interest is to get the song figured out, and then post a draft copy in the User Showcase stating that you'd like to have someone play the guitar part. That way, people can hear the tune, decide if it's something they want to do and PM you to get the ball rolling.
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions - I guess the only issue with recording the part and importing the song into a DAW such as Real Band would be changing the key at some stage in the future if needed. Would that be possible with a recorded guitar track?
It can be done in a good DAW. But, pitch changing has a negative effect on sound quality. 1 or 2 semitones up or down might be okay. Much more than that and you decide if you still like the way it sounds or not.
It's called planning.
Essentially you DO NOT want to change the key. Once you determine the key you want to leave it. Most singers can sing a few steps up or down. I had one who asked me to move the song one half a step. Seriously?
Anytime you move the key you end up with artifacts if you try to use a pitch changer of some sort to do it. Melodyne is the best for this process BUT.... it too will display artifacts for larger moves.
With BB & RB, moving a song to a different key is no big issue. It simply takes a bit of time and effort to render the tracks again in the new key and mix them. If you are using a DAW, it becomes a bit more complicated but not a brick wall to overcome.
There was a free mp3 pitch and tempo changer that did a reasonable job but it only worked with mp3's. You can google it.
you may be able to comp your riff in RealBand. Select the lead solo guitar 'sound' you are looking for and generate a track over the chord progression it plays. A realTrack is a finite piece of audio but some RealTracks are quite long. While your original riff may not be played in the audio, it is likely it is hidden there in tiny pieces. RealBand has a handy tool to help you find pieces. It's called multiriff.
Multiriff generates 7 versions from selected audio or an entire track. That is a total of 8 variations including the original. Each variation can be saved to it's own separate track and these tracks can be cut and pieced into a new variation made from these 8 tracks.
Before you get to the above step, you can generate multiple tracks to select from to start your search in multiriff from the variation you selected from the multiple tracks generated over the same chord progression. That narrows your search.
To create variations from your multiple starting tracks, RB allows you to change the chord progression and generate an new track without changing the previously generated tracks. This will provide greater variations to the new tracks. For instance, in your chord progression a C chord could be changed to C2,C7, Cdim, Caug, Cmaj7 or even AM, AM7 or pushes added. Experiment.
There may also be similar RealTracks you can use to generate multiriffs from new audio. In RealPicker look for variations of the RT you chose. There may be a (bluesy) variation, held chord variation or something similar. Search other guitar solos made by the artist of the RT you are using. They may have played a useable RT with another guitar...
The idea is to find 'snippets' of the riff that's in your head and cut and past these snippets from the huge Realtrack audio database into your specific riff. You may or may not get it exact but you should certainly be able to get very close or at least to something useable.
There are easier methods and the methods are likely much quicker as well, but this is a fun way thing to try if you have the time.
Charlie
Thanks heaps for the great feedback.
The reason why I would like to be able to change key, is that my voice is quite deep, and truthfully, not all that suited to Country - plus, it's hard to hide my Aussie accent. So, how I've done things in the past is to do an initial demo in a key that I can sing, and if it sounds good to that point, go to the next step and pay a professional singer to do a better quality demo. The professional singer, whether male or female, will usually ask for it to be a couple of tones higher.
I'll try the multiriff idea, and vary the chords - together with cutting and pasting sections into another track. I guess too, that if I put a chord variation on each beat, and maybe nudge the chords a little here and there, I might be able to help things get pretty close to the rythm and timing required. Should be fun trying to figure it out anyway.
If you're interested, my music is at:
https://soundcloud.com/stevebarnesmusicOne of the songs there "Still Blow my Mind" has the type of riff and guitar sound I'm aiming for.That's also my voice on that one.
Steve.
Sam smiles is great. Great recording, great voices. I like county with an Australian Accent (Brizzy boy) Nothing wrong with Australian Country. :-)
Actually, all the tracks I've listened to are great, recording quality and songs themselves.
Thanks for listening - and the positive feedback.
Those songs were done in a professional studio. My strenth is writing music, but as I only play acoustic guitar, it's sometimes tricky for a collaborating lyricist to "get" my musical ideas, and sometimes songs don't progress as I feel they could. Also, I can't afford to take every musical idea into a studio. I would like to use BIAB to get demos to say 70-80% of what the finished product could sound like rather than say the 20% that my current acoustic guitar versions are.
Steve.
Steve,
Welcome to the forum and to Band-in-a-Box.
If "When Sam Smiles" is representative of your singing voice then I think you're making a mistake using other singers as I do not find your accent a distraction.
"Chase The Heart" is an interesting instrumental. Is there a story behind the song?
Unfortunately, When Sam Smiles is not my singing and was sung by a session singer. My voice is on Still Blow my Mind, and as you can hear, is not that great for American Country. The song Chase a Heart was a different take on the lyrics from the song in my list In Tune.I'm still hoping to get a lyricist to wite something for it at some stage
Steve.
Steve,
Man you have a good voice. You may not like it but it's decent. Nothing wrong with it. There are a number of Nashville artists who have a deeper voice than you.
If those songs are any indication of how you write, man, you're gonna fit in nicely here and you'll be collaborating with some of the writers here in short order.
Still Blows My Mind is good, and you sing it well. In fact they're all good. You don't need a new singer, you just need to sing those tunes and not worry about anything else.
"Still Blow My Mind" is awesome, Steve! You've got a really wonderful voice, I mean that. Country isn't about having an American accent... sing away in my opinion! Being different from everyone else is often a plus in the music industry, too.
Steve, my offer still stands. I can get close to what your studio cats provided.
Stevie,
I believe I could write some lyrics to Chase a Heart in about 10 minutes.
Great song.
I would call it "Chase Your Heart" though. I heard myself mumbling some stuff listening to it.
Great song.
Why not replace it with either a harmonica or organ for now?
David,
Sounds good.
I'll send you an email offline to discuss further.
Cheers,
Steve.
Thanks Will,
And thanks for sorting out my order the other week.
Steve.
Thanks Scott,
I'll have a try at cutting and pasting from a RealTrack to see if I can put it together in some form, as per earlier suggestion. Either way, it will help me learn more about the program. I'll keep your offer in mind though if I can't make it work.
Cheers, Steve.
Steve, here is a video example of cut and pasting together a specific riff. Dan explains the riff starting about 2:15 into the video.
Video If you have time, I recommend his entire series. It is excellent and you watch him create a song from start to finish. There's quite a few tips along the way.
Hope this helps you get the sound you're looking for.
Charlie
Steve,
Do you have the capacity to play the riff as a midi on a midi keyboard and send me that when we talk about the other thing?
If so, let me take a look at it.
So... here's another option for getting a good guitar solo. Something that sounds real and is amazing.
Of course, just about any of the rhythm guitar parts from the REAL TRACKS list will give you a good sounding solid rhythm guitar sound.
But if you want a great lead or even some really top quality fills, that might be a bit harder to achieve. But, it's not impossible.
You find an electric guitar SOLO real track that has the groove you're looking for and the tone. Then you generate that SAME solo guitar track multiple times. The unique thing about real band and the real tracks is this..... it will never generate the same exact track twice. Each one is different. Some may be close, but others are noticeably unique. You simply save them all as waves in a folder. Then import them all into your DAW of choice and stack them up.
NOW.... use envelopes for volume control to pick and choose the licks you want from each of the tracks.... take the first part of a phrase from track 1, the next section of a few notes from track 4, and the ending to the phrase from track 2. Do this through the entire solo section. It's a bit of work but unless you're doing a concert edition of the song, most solo's are around 8 measures long.
In this song....
THE BEST CHRISTMAS The piano has 3 tracks and the guitar solo has 5 tracks all done in this manner.
The guitar tracks were a bit further down the track view. Notice how the piano fills are done by 2 tracks in this section of the song. These fills can be heard in the first verse.
Just another way to do a cool guitar solo using real tracks without having to use a live player to get close to what you need. I play guitar, but this solo was done totally by BB/RB.