Realistic guitar sounds are, probably, the most popular ones when it comes to music production. This is probably because these string instruments themselves are quite trendy. For instance, composer wrote many famous soundtracks, such as electronic music, rock and roll, and classical music, especially for acoustic guitars.
Although it is not easy, many producers have been able to transfer the exact same peculiarities of real acoustic guitars into sounds produced by the software. Nowadays, many music companies have tried to mimic the sounds of acoustic guitars in a digital atmosphere. And those are the realistic guitar sounds we will talk about in this piece.
Realistic Guitar Sounds: the Softwares
The interface of softwares that produce realistic guitar sounds involve five different buttons: setup, play, tune, strum, and chords. These buttons, organized in such a way that they are capable of controlling the whole interface, have a variety of alternatives to choose from.
The Guitar Fretboard
For example, the guitar fretboard view allows the user to see the notes in real-time. As a consequence, the player is aware of the strings in, as well as the location on the neck. The guitar fretboard view also allows the user to visualize the fretboard position, the tuning of the guitar, and the capo. At the lower end, there is a piano roll that involves blue keys and yellow keys. The blue keys represent the range of octaves, whereas the yellow keys represent sounds such as sliding and tapping.
The Mapping Area
The mapping area involves customizable controls capable of triggering several articulations. Some of these are latching and unlatching key switches, velocity ranges, and MIDI CCs. These controls are also capable of presenting several articulation alternatives, such as harmonics, palm mute, whole-step slide in, and buzz trill. When you set articulations to the adequate key switches, the right section of the piano roll turns red.
A Little Bit of History on Realistic Guitar Sounds
Around 1970, musicians recorded the Scarbee MM-Bass with flatwound strings that offered a warm and smooth sound. The record of the the bass was possible through a DI box that offered maximum flexibility in the sound production. They arranged full strings of the bass in a specific way so that they would be able to reproduce timbre alterations that usually occur when the user moves between low and high frets. As a result, this translates into a rich natural sound.
Scarbee MM-Bass involves a variety of playing and controlling techniques, such as slides, pull-offs, mutes, scripting, harmonics, hammer-ons, and sustains. The more sophisticated versions also include a dynamic fretboard display, chord recognition, arbitrary alteration between release samples, arbitrary insertion of pickup hits, as well as realistic vibrato.
In addition…
Complementarily, let’s not forget that bass guitar sounds play an essential part in modern music. In the beginning, the recording of bass guitar sounds was essential. Today, high-quality bass guitars have evolved into virtual instruments that mimic the same exact sound as the physical version.
