Question about guitars

[ravisoni]

Using just stock sounds, have you ever tried to put an arp/melody guitar in a song to good effect?
I usually take the clean or jazz electric guitar in NNXT, process it a bit to make it sound electric, and then add an acoustic guitar for the higher notes, which seems to get me as close to a real guitar as I possibly can.
Do you have any techniques you use to get good sounding guitars?

[Joerg]

Listen to Tyberium on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/tyberium
He makes awesome 'guitar tracks' just on Reason and even did a tutorial series about his workflow.

[QVprod]

Some of it also has to do with the way it's played/recorded. Think about the way a guitar player moves from not to note, dynamics, pitch bends...etc... and try to emulate that. When you get that down It's possible to make the stock reason guitars sound passable for real within a mix. There's an FSB combi patch called "Cocteau Guitar" (or something) like that sounds fairly decent for a bluesy type lead sound.

The clean guitar in the ID8 is worth looking at as well. Last night I used it in a production for a distorted rhythm guitar part by routing through a line 6 amp, but I think it can be used for lead as well.

Definitely check out Tyberium on youtube though. The results he gets with lead guitars in Reason are amazing for being just FSB.

[Rice]

Technique surely has a lot to do with the overall end result...even-though someone may not be a guitarist - you do have to kinda approach it as a guitarist would, and you'd be very surprised with the end results...

Also try "head bobbing" while you're tracking

[tyberium]

Hey guys, finally found you! Thanks for the big compliment.

[busystreetstudio]

One thing I have found that helps is setting up a 14:2 in a combinator with some spiders. Have the clean channel, a dirty channel, and more wet fx channels (delays/verb/chorus). Then messing with the mixing of those during the song to get a more dynamic fx thing going.

In terms of playing "guitar" with midi Rice and QVprod I think have the right idea. Little bits of pitch bending on longer notes, slides, etc. Get in the head of a guitarist and try to emulate that play style.

If you need a guitar line sometime shoot me a message and maybe I can record something for you. I'm not the best at anything but maybe it can give you some launching points.

[SteveDiverse]

Some of it also has to do with the way it's played/recorded. Think about the way a guitar player moves from not to note [...]

^this^

If you are 'performing guitar chords' on a keyboard, you need to think not only about the tonal qualities of the guitar, but also the strumming, and which notes are in which guitar chords.

Most chords on the guitar aren't closed triads, or simple inversions, like they are on a keyboard.

Get the tonal qualities right, yes, but to be really convincing, you have to also play what would be semantically correct for the guitar.

[AlienJunk]

I have made some fairly nice strumming sounds with NNXT and NN19 string patches by writing in notes of a chord, then shifting ech new note 1/64th forward from the preceeding one. If you think about it thats how a guitarist attacks the strings. I also do this in a combi with a couple of instances and fiddle with the old half rack delay to dial in a decent result.

[AlienJunk]

PS Tyberium has made some great MIDI guitar stuff in the past, well worth checking out.