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Acoustic Guitar for Strumming - Your favorite?

Tim_Wells

Tim Wells
Looking for programmability, realism, and (hopefully) great results.

I have done a forum search and the results are a bit hit and miss.

I own Orange Tree Evolution Steel Strings, which is awesome for nearly everything. But IMO, the strumming tools seems a bit a awkward and my results (so far) are not great. I also own NI Strummed Acoustic, which sounds great. But it's basically loops and lacks programmability.

These look most interesting to me:
- Ample Sound Acoustic Guitars (Martin, Taylor, Gibson SJ 200, etc)
- AcousticSamples Sunbird & GD-6
- Indiginus Renegade

What have you gotten your best results with?
 
Orange Tree libraries are tops for leads, but when it comes to strumming, it just takes more time and patience (more than what I have, anyway) to get results. Last year I recorded a song that needed two measures of a very specific strummed sound requiring fine control over the performance, and an OT guitar worked perfectly. But that was two measures. I'd never program a whole song that way.

For strumming I use RealGuitar, because once you set your settings, you can pretty much record the entire performance on the fly. The trade-off is that it does sound a little more like a strumming engine than actual strumming, but I've found that reducing the pick noise in the mixer window reduces that effect and helps the track sit in a mix.

I also continue to use Pettinhouse for some things.
 
Prominy's Hummingbird has recorded chord strums both as up and down strokes and also a very decent strumming engine, it takes a bit of time to get used to but it's worth it
 
Between the AcousticSamples GD-6 and Sunbird, I much prefer the sound of the GD-6. The Sunbird has a nice rustic feel to it but it's always a struggle to get it to not sound terribly boxy. Neither of them have any sort of double-tracking support, though (and the haas effect definitely doesn't cut it for acoustic guitar!), and their auto chord recognition is often more of a hassle than a benefit.
 
I'm actually a big fan of UJam's Virtual Guitarist Amber. They have strums that slightly vary with a lot of presets. You set the key and it will play the chords from one note. change up the strumming each bar or so and it sounds pretty natural in a mix. I'm not sure if it would hold up on it's own for long. But it is a great rhythm guitar.
 
Between the AcousticSamples GD-6 and Sunbird, I much prefer the sound of the GD-6. The Sunbird has a nice rustic feel to it but it's always a struggle to get it to not sound terribly boxy. Neither of them have any sort of double-tracking support, though (and the haas effect definitely doesn't cut it for acoustic guitar!), and their auto chord recognition is often more of a hassle than a benefit.
Good info! I had to look up what the haas effect was... 😊
 
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I'm actually a big fan of UJam's Virtual Guitarist Amber. They have strums that slightly vary with a lot of presets. You set the key and it will play the chords from one note. change up the strumming each bar or so and it sounds pretty natural in a mix. I'm not sure if it would hold up on it's own for long. But it is a great rhythm guitar.
Thanks, I will check it out. Is it all predefined patterns or can you program your own?
 
Prominy's Hummingbird has recorded chord strums both as up and down strokes and also a very decent strumming engine, it takes a bit of time to get used to but it's worth it
I'm glad you mentioned that, because I get Hummingbird confused with Sunbird. Two different things.
 
Orange Tree libraries are tops for leads...
For strumming I use RealGuitar, because once you set your settings, you can pretty much record the entire performance on the fly. The trade-off is that it does sound a little more like a strumming engine than actual strumming, but I've found that reducing the pick noise in the mixer window reduces that effect and helps the track sit in a mix. ...
I get great results from MusicLab RealGuitar when I need full control.

I'm gonna give RealGuitar a close look. Thanks! The flexibility and feature set look great.
 
I was impressed by strumming capabilities of these in a random Youtube video I saw. Have you noticed the boxiness in Sunbird or the other issues that Sarah mentioned above?
Not sure if it's boxiness, but I do agree that the overall tone is not as good as Orange tree's guitars for example. So yeah, it definitely needs some EQ'ing to get the best out of it.
 
Thanks, I will check it out. Is it all predefined patterns or can you program your own?
Predefined. Makes it really quick. If you want to make your own, you are better off with Orange Tree or Real Guitar (MusicLab) Both offer the option to create your own patterns.

Okay, I maybe take that back. You use the keyswitches to change the strum, but I usually go a bar before changing. So it would maybe strum 2 to 4 times in a bar then switch to a different pattern? I usually have 3 that I switch between for a verse and another 3 for the chorus, but add it stops and slides? I just found it to be the easiest to use for me.
 
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