For the project I have to choose an area of expertise.
I have chosen to do my area of expertise on creating a realistic guitar solo in MIDI. I have found that most MIDI instruments aren’t that realistic and lack important nuances of the real instrument. As the only way to recreate the instrument would be to have a massively sampled MIDI sound that incorporates all the nuances at the right levels (which for an instrument like a guitar is very difficult), doing this in Ableton cannot be about using a clean sound to do so. The only way is to mask the sound.
I found a clean sounding strat (Fender Stratocaster electric guitar) midi instrument and experimented with various effects on it. I used the Audio effects rack (3) in the Audio effects section (2) of the device browser (1).
In this there are various preset effects for different instruments. I decided that as I was heading for a solo guitar sound that an amp simulator or overdrive effect would probably sound right.
After dragging and dropping the effects onto the midi track with the strat sound on it, and playing some notes with various settings on them, I found a tube amp (or valve amp) simulator called “Guitar Tube Amp”. There are three available presets – Light, Heavy and Killer. Each one is just the same simulator with different settings to achieve popular results.
I chose to use the Killer preset, and after tweaking the settings decided it wasn’t enough. The settings comprise of
- Dry/Wet – defines how much of the effect is used compared to the uneffected sound
- Light tube – allows you to use only a small amount of the effect or act as fine control
- Heavy Tube – allows you to use a larger amount of the effect or act as a medium control
- Killer Tube – allows you to use a very large amount of the effect
- Air – allows you to have a focused mono sound or add “air” which has more of a stereo feel
- Cabinet Morph – changes the sound slightly to mimic a range in cabinet sounds *
- Verb – Is the dry/wet mix for the built in reverb effect
- Verb time – adjusts the delay of the reverb to give the feeling of different sizes of room
* I wasn’t able to find any details on this sound effect online or in the Ableton manual, and so (more specifically for the Cabinet Morph settings) only have been able to determine which control does what by listening to it. The exact explanations for the controls might be different.
To get the sound I wanted I had to turn up the tube sim to full on all controls (to get the greatest distortion and reverb) and add another 2. The sound produced is heavily distorted, with masses of feedback, and when played gives the impression of a guitar solo at a large concert, compared to the original uneffected sound which sounds very digital and “keyboard” like.
To give even more of a feel of a live instrument to the sound, I used the pitch bend wheel on the MIDI keyboard when playing, to give the impression of the guitarist “string bending” the notes or using a tremolo arm (sometimes called a “whammy bar”). The wheel adds adjustment points in the clip envelope “transpose” section.
I finally recorded a set piece (or solo) using the distorted strat sound, and the pitch bending for effect (shown below),
and finally cleaned up the pitch bends in the clip envelope transpose section by removing unnecessary points (see previous blog on “Clip View & Envelopes” for details on manipulation in the clip envelope section).
The clip was then ready for use in the piece.
This clip isn’t in any scene to be triggered, I have purposefully left it out so that it can be triggered on it’s own.
Some excellent work here. Although your area of expertise covers no single area of new ground, it is successful because it shows your ability to combine a range of techniques (use of instruments, use of effects, midi editing) within a key part of your project. It is obvious from listening to your piece that the guitar sound you have created is realistic and effective.
Although you have used the preset Audio Effects Rack, you post shows that you have dug into the controls of the Guitar Tube Amp and have shown a solid understanding of what each control does. This shows some evidence of independant learning. You also make concise use of screen captures (they are used sparingly but in just the right places to illustrate what you say).
The main points for improvement are that your post could be stronger on describing how and where the final sound was used within your piece, and the final screen capture could be annotated to give a more detailed understanding of how the pitch bends were created (although if you have covered use of Clip Envelopes elsewhere in your blog, some of this detail could be redundant).
Comment by bssblogger — June 6, 2008 @ 2:12 pm