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ALL OF YOU - new version to "fix" things that have been mentioned

ALL OF YOU - original Soundcloud version



I've always felt that trying to create a realistic sounding guitar track using MIDI was a complete waste of time.
A recent thread elsewhere about creating bends in MIDI or with a mod wheel will take you down that rabbit hole.
And acoustic guitars always sounded like toys. In the past, certainly.
But Peter's recent post surprised me - with a good sounding vst acoustic guitar track. And Mario's current one has one, too.
So I started looking around at what is available these days.
Turns out there is an excellent sounding acoustic guitar from Ample Sound available for free.
(They have a free bass guitar, too)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu2iOQ15AtQ

BIAB acoustic guitars are awesome.
And there is a HUGE variety of styles these days...fingerpicking and strumming that cover most of what you might ever need. The #1 go to for acoustic guitar.
BUT... if you want a particular, distinctive pattern played you need to figure out another way to get it - typically by recording it yourself.
Like a typical Jim Croce song ("Time In A Bottle" or "Operator") or some of the stuff that Bread did ("If" or "Diary").
It would not make sense for PGMusic to try to cover things like that with a RealTrack. An "Operator RealTrack" would be good for ONE song - "Operator".

I wondered if you could cover this need using a vst guitar (MIDI)...

SO I wrote a song that required that kind of distinctive picking pattern.

You can use a keyboard (MIDI controller) to play the Ample Guitar vst, but you need to be a pretty good keyboard player to pull that off. And you have to understand how to pick guitar to get that right. (Guitar chords are not all configured the same on a keyboard the way piano chords are). I am a good acoustic guitar player and I know my way around chords on a keyboard well...and I still found it difficult.

There is also an extensive "strum machine" with the vst - which includes a library of patterns - but fingerpicking styles aren't well represented. There is a learning curve to get to a point where you can use this effectively in a DAW.

After fooling around with the Ample Guitar enough to figure out how to use it, I decided to input the MIDI using the mouse (in my DAW - Studio One) to emulate exactly the way I play.
Since this was the first time I had ever done anything like this, it took me a couple of days (I got a lot better as I went along).

I added a BIAB bass and a BIAB MIDI Supertrack Strings track.

I also "played" a string solo (and an additional line above the BIAB string track) again using the mouse to input the MIDI.



ALL OF YOU - new version

Lyrics are on the Soundcloud page.



The BIAB stuff:

RealTracks in song: 3502:Bass, Electric, NashvilleRadioBalladA Ev16 075
MIDI Supertrack: 2060Strings, Rhythm PopCountry Ev 120
(rendered with Spitfire BBC Orchestral Strings - also free)

Harmony - created using the Harmony fumnction in RealBand - TC Helicon Audio Harmonies

The other stuff:

Guitar: MIDI programmed input in DAW using Ample Guitar M Lite v2.31
(https://www.amplesound.net/en/download.asp)

Additional Strings - MIDI input in DAW using BBC Orchestral Strings



Hope you enjoy this experiment.
If you have ever felt like trying a bit of MIDI-based guitar, I recommend this free vst.
I've already used it on another "experiment" song...

Thanks for listening.
Comments encouraged.

fj