I am planning tu buy a guitar vst for hard rock and metal. I was planning to get the artefakt guitar but there is very little information in the web, everything I found is related to the riff sequencer, but no info at all related to the solo instruments and how good it is to record leads, what techniques does it have and so on.
On the other hand I was looking at the odin 3 vst, and it looks like a good option but I am not sure how well integrates with dorico (in terms of creating expression maps, etc.).
If you have information either on artefakt guitar or odin 3 guitar, could you please share with me your opinions on how well these vst works in dorico??
Ample LP is nice. There’s a good selection of cabinets and effects to choose from but you can turn them all off and put Guitar Rig on an FX channel as well. I have expression maps that map most of the functionality: fret position, string indicators, and the normal, mute, H/P techniques. I could never get slides to work in Dorico, but they’re fairly easy to add in a DAW at a later stage.
Native Instruments session guitarist is also pretty good. It doesn’t have nearly as much programmability as Ample, but it’s still useful for rhythm work.
There are countless others available but if you aren’t willing to spend an inordinate amount of time programming them in a DAW, you won’t get convincing results.
Please allow me to reiterate a feature request to the team at this point:
Consider implementing a keyswitch during the duration of a note. This would enable multiple additional “articulations“ in VSTs originally more catered to playing live, like my Chris Hein Horns and indeed Ample Guitars.
In the end i bougth the amplesound metal guitar. I’ve tried to set up an expression map with limited success, I am very new to expression maps and I no longer know what I am doing. Would you be willing to share with me the amplesound expression map? Thanks a lot in advance
Attached is a test project with everything. Let me know if you have questions. Note, there’s an additional expression map for managing the Strummer section of the VST. I suggest you read up on that so you’ll understand what the playing techniques actually do.
Otherwise, there’s the standard key-switches and additionally positions (force capo) and strings (force string).
EDIT: just noticed you bought the metal guitar, this project uses AGT (Taylor), but if you just replace the VSTs with the ones you have, all should be ok.
I bought Ample GM just a few days ago. Looking at your test file, I see you have two instances of the guitar; one for main panel and one for the strummer panel.
I’m curious as to what’s your reasoning for doing that?
I also saw that you created chord, position and sequence playing and playback techniques.
The chords & positions are direction. The sequences are attribute. What helped you decide on these choices?
One can, of course, use a key switch to go between strummer and main panel but how one notates things for the strummer is really unique (bunch of D4-G4 rhythmically aligned with differing velocities). So I decided to have that notation on a different instrument then just mute the actual notation. This allows me to leave it out of certain layouts.
The original decision was based on positions as I didn’t implement strummer. Position, of course, is a direction (play barre 3 for x-(notes|measures)). It’s also easier to see when one exports the midi to a DAW.
If I revisit it, I would probably have sequences and chords as attributes and leave just positions as directions, but, it doesn’t really matter because, if I remember, I added mutual exclusion groups.
In my quest to develop the Ems, I’m finding that there doesn’t seem to be any documentation of cc events for AmpleSound guitars. Have you found anything of the sort?
The riffer is just a UI that mimics the key editor (or a piano roll in a DAW). It isn’t a separate mode like strummer (C#6 toggle) as far as I know and hence, you can’t “switch into it”. It’s basically just alternative notation. I don’t use it because normal notation with judicious pedal (CC64) works the same way.
You can’t switch underlying samples on fly. This is a good use-case for multiple instances with a player holding multiple instruments.
Continuing my work with AmpleSound Guitars in Dorico I have another question:
How are you able to choose in the score the rhythm pattern sequence?
I set up PB, PT & EM to supposedly trigger any of the 8 possible sequences, but the PT in the score just will not trigger anything. I know it’s a KS based trigger.
If you look at my sample project I posted above, you can see the correct sequence of notes needed. e.g., seq01 = C3 etc.
You don’t really need a trigger region, they are simple key switches. @algae592009 can go about it 1 of 2 ways
write out the guitar part in notation and add the playback techniques where appropriate and suppressing playback on the notation or;
use a separate instrument (I named mine “Strummer” routed to a dedicated ample instance with strummer mode activated) that literally writes the notes and the appropriate rhythms (C1=chord 1; C3=seq 1).
Lately I’ve been by-passing the sequence and just writing the rhythms directly into the strummer part, e.g., C4 velocity 100 = down strike full, D4 velocity 60 = down stroke 4 middle strings etc.
Here’s another sample project illustrating what I wrote above (was done very quickly without regard to partial strums etc.): Normal notation, strummer (notated) and strummer using a sequence.
Thank you for the sample file. I’m comparing what I’ve done so far with what you’ve done to see differences and approaches.
Do you play guitar? I ask because I ready don’t and therefore the way we each view things can be very different. For example: you have been assigning Add-on switches for some of the things I’ve used a base switch.
In finger and pick mode B6 is to go from Melody to Chord Mode. I can’t envision what type of switch to use for it, being that I’m not in strum mode.
At the same time I thinking of using Add-on switches for all FX options.
