Guitar strumming in Reason

[mashers]

Hi all,

I use a fair amount of acoustic rhythm guitar in my songs, but because I'm not a particularly good guitarist I'm restricted in what I can do. I also don't particularly like using instrumental recordings as these are more limited in terms of modifying the part once you have recorded it (compared to sequenced samplers).

So, I'm looking for a recommendation for a plugin which can fairly accurately produce a guitar strumming. Pre-requisites:

• Definable rhythm pattern for the strum
  Ability to determine up-stroke or down-stroke on each strum
  Muted strums

I tried the "ST100 Strumming Machine" Rack Extension by zvork, and the strumming seemed fairly effective, but I found that with Reason's built-in guitar samples (such as those for the NN-XT) the effect was far from realistic. So I'm looking for something which either works better with the built-in samples to produce a more realistic sound, or includes samples within the extension. I don't care whether it's Rack Extension, VST or external.

Thanks in advance!

[childofsaturn]

I'm not the best for giving advice on this, but I thought what I heard of Propellerhead's A-List Acoustic Guitarist RE was decent, especially when sitting in a mix.

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[esselfortium]

Orange Tree Samples' VST guitars are excellent and can do both rhythm and lead parts very convincingly, fully sequenced with no pre-recorded loops. They include some premade strum patterns but you can build your own in their GUI or just use the sequencer for it.

Impact Soundworks' Shreddage 3 VST is another solid all-rounder with great strumming functionality, though they don't have their acoustic guitars updated for that engine yet. Hopefully soon!

I'm not a fan of the A-List guitars because their use of pre-recorded patterns of pre-recorded chords is very limiting.

[MrFigg]

I play all my guitar stuff myself. I got UJam Sparkle VST for free and from what I’m led to believe it’s pretty much the same idea as A-List. I don’t like it at all. Even for free. Depending on what you’re going to use it for the Rob Papen May be ok but I’ve not tried it and I think the sounds might be quite limited. Nothing like the real thing but I guess you’ve maybe not got that option at the moment.

[Boombastix]

Orange Tree and Native Instruments has pretty good strumming engines. Hard to tell if in a mix, but obviously noticable on its own.

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[esselfortium]

Orange Tree and Native Instruments has pretty good strumming engines. Hard to tell if in a mix, but obviously noticable on its own.

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It can take a bit of fiddling around with timing and velocity and other performance details to get the most natural possible results, but I've used Orange Tree Samples' guitars prominently and had guitarists mistakenly thinking I had written and recorded the songs on guitar instead of in a sequencer.

[mashers]

Thanks for the replies guys! I will check out those plugins for sure. I had heard of the Orange Tree plugin and wanted to give it a try, but there didn't appear to be a trial version and the Kontakt player thing looked like it added another layer in between Reason and the plugin itself, which seemed untidy.

I actually downloaded a trial of one of Ample Sound's VSTs and it is incredible:

https://www.amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=4

I programmed in the strum patterns and chord changes for one of my songs and it sounded fairly realistic, but once I cranked up the humanisation parameters (which add random velocity and timing changes) it really sounded great. A bit of reverb to give it a bit of "gloss" and it really does sound very natural. I'll need to tweak the pattern a bit by playing on a real guitar and trying to more precisely reproduce what I actually played in terms of the mutes etc., but overall I'm pretty happy with the sound of this plugin.

[Creativemind]

You could also trial Rob Papen's RGRE Guitar Groove Machine see what you think of that.

[mashers]

.

[ejanuska]

When I first recording guitar parts with Reason I would play a track back after a take and think I was the worst player in the world. Then I realized I had to compensate for the delay in the Preferences.
Now I'm just the second worst guitar player in the world.

[zvork]

Hi all,

I use a fair amount of acoustic rhythm guitar in my songs, but because I'm not a particularly good guitarist I'm restricted in what I can do. I also don't particularly like using instrumental recordings as these are more limited in terms of modifying the part once you have recorded it (compared to sequenced samplers).

So, I'm looking for a recommendation for a plugin which can fairly accurately produce a guitar strumming. Pre-requisites:

• Definable rhythm pattern for the strum
  Ability to determine up-stroke or down-stroke on each strum
  Muted strums

I tried the "ST100 Strumming Machine" Rack Extension by zvork, and the strumming seemed fairly effective, but I found that with Reason's built-in guitar samples (such as those for the NN-XT) the effect was far from realistic. So I'm looking for something which either works better with the built-in samples to produce a more realistic sound, or includes samples within the extension. I don't care whether it's Rack Extension, VST or external.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Mashers,
Using the ST100 with the builtin NN-XT guitar patches does need some work. The realism of the strumming highly depends on the samples and it works best when the instrument played through the ST100 reacts nicely to velocity. Try using the Pangea instrument with a "sitar" like sound which can sound like a guitar. That instruments reacts much more nicely. Hope this helps.