TapperMike

Now that many folks have amp sims that can recreate famous setups fairly faithfully. I've decided to do a follow up to famous keyboard sounds, this time focusing on guitar rigs. A guitarists career is long. They'll generally go through more then one guitar and one amp not to mention effects in a life time. So I'm going to classify by Artist first, Guitar Period, Amp and amp settings then effects/ There will be a lot of fuzziness in the details especially for details pertaining to the recording. Many artists (like Hendrix) would record with one amp and perform with another. Some simply can't remember what they recorded with. And still others have artifacts created by the recording process (console pre amps analog tape. tape speed all affect the sound) It will be a nice "How to sound more like your favorite guitarist" thing. The trickiest part so far is deciphering amp sim names. For trademark infringement issues Amp sim effects companies can't state Brand Name/Model. Some times It's blatantly obvious in the sim naming and sometimes it's obtuse. Wish me luck. If you have any contributions to provide. Artist/Guitar/Song /Amp/Amp Settings/Effects Please post them here I welcome all the help I can get. Thanks, Mike

I've only had it for a few minutes now. I'm really digging the classic sounds though I need to do some tweaking. I've got a line in on my guitar amp that I've been doing testing with as it bypasses the amp sound as much as possible. I'm going to try it direct to powered monitors before I can make any claims about how "real" it sounds.

Surprise - Simply Red

I'm finally buying hardware again. I picked up a korg pandora mini on ebay still waiting for delivery. One thing I like about it is the presets are of sounds to songs I already know but haven't played in awhile.

Blue Sky - Allman Brothers Boy you two never give up

Well It's not free however they do have a free version.

Doing something like that would be well beyond my scope right now, I've got a few sample based libraries Eve by Wusik http://www.wusik.com/ww/products/wusikeve seems to be my go to for sample based sounds. It's all multi sampled so more realistic then your average freebie. OPX isn't sample based and they've already done a great job of creating presets of famous sounds. I just wanted a list of famous sounds with famous songs associated with the sound. Imagine someone hands you a brand new Rickenbacker guitar. What do you play on it? Well anything you want but you'll prolly lean to songs made famous on it. John Lennon played a rick so you play some Beatles songs. Roger McGuinn played one so maybe you'll play birds songs or Tom Petty or Susanna Hoffs/ The Bangles As a guitarist I know all my favorite guitar songs and the instrument used. Now that I'm stepping into more keyboard sounds I stumble on to sounds and say to myself "Where have I heard this before?" Then I blindly try to associate the sound with a song. I would never cut it as a professional keyboard player just trying to get a setlist together. But if I had a cheat sheet where I could find a song and then pull up a preset that matched the song I'd have a fighting chance. So that's what the project is about. Helping to isolate the sound so that others and myself can pull up a patch in there favorite plug in and have something to play.. I'm sure all the big brands have decent libraries for recreating these sounds. However sometimes the performer just needs a little more info.

I've got this project going on. http://www.tappermike.com/?q=node/32 I'm trying to build a database of "Famous Keyboard Sounds" which links the artist and song to the specific keyboard/synth used in the recording. That way when I try my hand at a cover I can atleast be in the ballpark of the sound or when I'm exploring a sound library I'm not "as" stuck saying to myself I know this sound what song was it in. So far I've gotten lots of encouragement for my efforts but sparse involvement. I'm looking for "Famous Sounds' (keyboards and effects used on them) From the 60's thru the 90's I want to have a nice catalog so that anyone wanting to do a cover can use this as a resource pick a familiar song and have as close a representation of the sound as possible. So far it's been equal parts fun and frustration digging through the web trying to connect songs with the sounds only to have something proven false along the way. I've spent considerable time fact checking and comparing softsynths to actual recordings (which is entertaining to me but not always productive) Anyway. If you have something to contribute please do. Not every keyboard/synth sound will be listed nor will every song. I don't expect the project to ever be "fully" completed. Simply more complete then anything else on the web will do just find.

Update. I've been installing Wusik and it's massive. Included with the package is "Eve" which is like a three instrument mellotron with added sound scuplting. That alone is worth the price. In it are high quality samples of various classic instruments not only from the mellotron but other popular sounds of the 60's 70's ad 80's. The Vox Continental C and Fender Rhodes Bass keyboard are to die for. I can't stop playing music from the doors to explore other sounds.

You pulled a big rabbit out of that hat. Melissa / The Allman Brothers

How youtube treats the content varies. I did a video tute with a song in the background that lasted 5 seconds which is supposed to be well within the fair use policy and was in reference to a commentary on the song. I still got a take down order from youtube of which I quickly complied. The notification came via EMI to youtube and then to me. Honestly I didn't want to lose my channel and even though I did everything right in regards to copyrights and usage EMI still wanted to send me a message. I may have chosen to ignore the notice of infraction and nothing would have happened. I could have stated my own case which is well within "acceptable use" but it really wasn't worth the aggravation and further hassle.

Are you Experienced? / Jimi Hendrix

pc3's usually over 2 grand and pck's are close to three grand. They are the "Go To" instrument for local keyboard players. I finally opted for WusikStation. Though it's a lot of work as it's more a sampler/wav shaper then a rompler. It's sort of like a korg wavestation except you can import the sounds and manipulate them much more. Kind of like building the guitar of your dreams as opposed to buying it off the shelf. My main problem will be maintaining the ambition and findiing the parts. Just as a persay. instruments sound different at different velocities. It's not just volume. If you sample a keyboard first you have to sample in every octave so it doesn't break down on the low end. Then you have to resample for at least four (pc3 has 16 velocity layers, (Yamaha has 8 Roland and Emu have 4) for soft, medium, hard and very hard. Now go back and resample all of them again in all layers for the damper / sustain pedal as they also will sound slightly different. Then there is all the other stuff that has to be done just to capture a decent end product. Alicia's Keys..... Took world class sound engineers and designers 6 months for one piano. If I have to do that you can forget my foray into sample building.

Thanks Tom,

If I named them then I'd feel more guilty about selling them.

I've been pulling my hair out trying to find a solid user friendly sample based library. Something with bread and butter sounds on par or at least close to a Kurzweil PC3 Notice how all the presets resemble "famous sounds" I can't even get something close in the virtual domain. Although the proteus VX comes fairly close. The problem is the proteus doesn't want to play nice with any of my daw's and is a pain to organize. Suggestions welcome.

Fair enough. You have legitimate gripes against some in the industry who give it a bad name. I haven't.

I've never experienced that from a mastering studio. Yes they do have a lot of equipment but they also know what to use when and where as well as what not to use dependent on the situation. Radio And YouTube are more the scourge of the industry. A good mastering engineer knows what happens after he's done with it. Something that is often beyond the scope of a good mix down engineer.

Both Rudi and Tom have sage advice. I'm not playing in bands anymore, I don't play in front of people. I've grown very tired of playing everything I used to play. What's worse is when I do play guitar I have to play it so low as not to disturb the neighbors (at a whisper) Much of the magic is lost as all I have are electrics and I can't run them thru an amp. Writing music has also faded with me. Everything I do is instrumental though I'd love a singer lyricist who can collaborate irl. I just recently started pulling my guitars out of the closet. They should be closer to my computer which has become the center of my universe but they are in the other room. A few years back when I picked up my first ztar it possessed me. Everyday I'd be discovering new approaches with it. I still haven't given many of the newer approaches the time I need to for development. And because it's a ztar there is the chance that I'm doing something different no one else has. Simply put I look for new approaches. I've even documented a few on my website. Then came the chasing sound years (I'm still doing all three finding new ways to play, refining those stills, looking for different sounds) When you enter the world of midi whole new worlds open up with just different sounds you've never played before. When I'd find a familiar sound like Supertramps Wurly or Dizzy's Flugel (Usually they aren't named like that) I'd get them stuck in my crawl. WHAT IS THAT FROM? Then I'd try to think of the song I associated with the instrument. If I did remember I'd try to recreate the song from memory, I don't have perfect pitch. I do have relative pitch from years of practice. I could easily look for the song on the web and try to transcribe it or look for the midi/print version but I was having too much fun trying to figure it out on my own. It was and is an adventure in sound and would/does occupy me for hours. Prolly not the most productive use of my time. If we are talking about just playing guitar the best advice I can offer is play out. Even if you are playing to the birds and bees at a park. Put it down on a calender. Playing (location) at (time) on (day of the week) Playlist of songs I know already all the way through . Maybe someone will hear you maybe someone won't but it will give you and end goal for your efforts. There is a possibility that you may encounter other musicians and jam or just talk music. Talkng music IRL and getting feedback IRL is much more effective as a motivator then on the internet.

I enjoyed reading John's response. He could always copy and paste it into his own blog. I don't blog that much these days but I love giving long responses in forum posts. So he might be on to something. Give a direct answer to someone's specific question and use that as either your blog post or the outline of a later blog post.

For instrumental ideas I turn to band in a box. I'll play a melody or a chord progression. Then I'll open BIAB find a style that works and mute everything but the drums. I'll do a quick score of the progression so I can remember what I'm doing, but still keep all the instrumets aside from the drums muted while I work out the rest. The problem working with "Styles" in general is that they often influence the direction of the material too much. Slowly I'll work out how the other instruments will play out. by porting my biab song into Real Band and adding tracks. That way it doesn't sound like a biab song. BIAB styles are great for improvising they just distract me to much and I find myself wanting to play the biab style version as opposed to writing the parts for myself. While I do use the biab styles as a study guide to expand my knowledge of various rhythms and phrasing. I put that on the side of Practice not on the side of Writing.

I was watching this video. And it came to me that maybe I do. I have a certain expectation of cohesion in subject matter. I don't take cognitive dissonance in others or myself well (I have moments of struggling with my conscience) I'm curious about what you think.

Well now I have. I can say while it does sound better then the average soundfont not by much. I was unimpressed by 90 percent of the included sounds even after much editing to nudge the presets into something usable. I really wish each sound had a series of presets to try rather then manually having to adjust all the parameters to get some use out of it.

I'm looking to get a better sound library then I have currently. Mostly I'm either greatly disappointed our it's out of my range. Sonivox is short on details about the individual instruments and equally short on demo mp3's but of what I've heard I've liked. I just don't like the idea they only give you a three day trial to evaluate the product. And it' seems no one has done a review of the product. Anyone here try it?

Blues for a Playboy - Barney Kessel