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Acoustic Guitar Strums?

I just researched the libraries mentioned here... Man the Ample Sound guitars sound really nice, and pretty realistic as well! The strummer is a bit hard to use but I think almost every guitar library is like that, I'll just need to get my head around it.

I'll use the free Ample Sound guitar for now, but it might be worth getting one of them later. Thanks for all your suggestion guys!! :)
 
d4vec4rter said:
I'm not a keyboard player so I'm more into MIDI programming these sort of plugins but it has a well designed engine and is relatively easy to program. Like all plugins of this sort, the more work and effort you're prepared to put into it, the better it will sound. The demos on the Spitfire Audio site are superb.
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The walkthrough is impressive as well. It looks like a good combination of playable and programmable - i.e. programmable in creative musical ways. Thanks. We are so spoiled for choice these days for...guitars and everything else. I have quite a few guitars already, but this one seems special
 
Bara Matahari Pagi said:
I don't have a microphone or a properly treated room though, which is why I haven't been doing any recording/sampling yet. But when I do get a microphone, I'll definitely try to record more stuff, including guitars!
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Don't worry too much about treating your room (unless you're in a fully square concrete room with no furniture lol), invest in a good quality condenser mic (doesn't have to be insanely expensive, a lot of the entry level options really are good enough these days) and you're off to the races. I scored a movie with 4 months of guitar experience in my bedroom with a Neumann TLM103 and the score was almost entirely guitar based. Yes I kind of had to be an editing wizard to get it all to work, but honestly I'm so glad I did because no way in hell was I going to get decent results with a plug-in in that kind of work.

There's always hiring a guitar player too, if the budget allows. You can literally kick a pebble off the floor and 5 guitar players will emerge. And if you're a musician and have musician friends, guaranteed that one of them will be a half decent guitarist and have a decent recording setup too.
 
antoniopandrade said:
I used to use a lot of guitar VSTs and never got the results I wanted. In my opinion, it is well worth picking up a used guitar and learning how to strum basic chords. I would say with a small daily effort for a few months you'll be able to strum chords more naturally than any guitar VST out there. For something quick and dirty that you can tuck and hide in the mix, all of these suggestions here are pretty good.
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This.

While libraries have gotten better in recent years for guitar, I still find that the effort required to make a great performance with them and the limitations they have make it far more worth it in my opinion to just learn some basic guitar skills instead. What is also great about guitar when it comes to chords, is you can use open and drop tunings to make chords easier to play if the goal is just to get some strumming into your track. with one finger you can fool the average person that you know what you are doing hahaha

You do not need to be a session level guitar player to be able to play acceptable strummed chords. The DAW is your best friend to take a mediocre performance and turn it into something passable. I am a pretty average guitar player, but if I can't play a part perfectly, I will often do section by section, note by note, chord by chord, I will record at a slower tempo and stretch it back to the original tempo, I will shift notes and chords up and down a few steps, I will basically sample my own guitar to get the right performance. And the result beats out any library on the market ten fold. I also find that just adding a little bit of live performance to a mockup does wonders for the realism of it, even things as simple as shakers or guitar strums can really breathe life into your mockup.

Also to your point @Bara Matahari Pagi about not having a treated room - honestly you can get away with bedroom recordings with guitar. Hell most of the top 40 indie folk acoustic songs right now were bedroom recorded guitars. Bedrooms are actually pretty great for recording smaller instruments like guitars and ukuleles because the close proximity in which you record them and the pretty low reverb time in a bedroom

With that said, the best guitar libraries I have used with strumming have been the NI libraries and the Ilya Effimov libraries. Musical Sampling has really great legato libraries as well. Especially love their mandolin!
 
Bara Matahari Pagi said:
Sooo...I'm a huge Powell fan right now lol, and I'm wondering if you guys have any suggestions for John Powell-esque acoustic guitars? I'm especially talking about strums (but of course, bonus points if it can do melodies well too!).

Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about (timestamped).








(this is more of a melodic type thing)

Also, please let me know if there are some free alternatives! Would help a lot haha, thanks in advance guys :)
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I really love the Acousticsamples guitars for strumming. Never found another one more intuitive than their guitars for strumming.
 
Obi-Wan Spaghetti said:
It's my understanding that this instrument is limited to jazz type chords so it might not be for everyone.
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It is aimed mainly at jazz, but I suppose it's a question of what chords one's particular track requires. It has a dedicated strum instrument with the chords: maj, 7, maj7, 6, m6, m7, 6/9, m7b5, 7b5, 9, dim7, aug.
 
danstein said:
@d4vec4rter - do you have any favorites of the Ample acoustic guitars? I have several of the Ample China instruments and they are fantastic. I’m interested in the acoustics but they have several.
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I have the Alhambra Luthier (nylon) guitar and the Martin D-41 (steel) as well as the Ukulele and Telecaster. I love the strumming and riffing engines. Both acoustics have one or two samples with annoying artifacts, but the usability trumps those minor issues for me and overall they sound fabulous. I also have the OrangeTree Modern Nylon and Songwriter (steel), but the interface is clunky at best, and very time consuming to set up in comparison with Amplesounds, so the Amplesounds get more use in my set up. I will say though - the OrangeTree guitars sound really good.
The D41 comes with three sample sets (finger/strum/pick), while the Luthier comes with two (finger/pick).

The Amplesound interface takes s little getting used to, but its worth the effort.
 
+1 vote for Ample Sound guitars. I have the P-bass and the upright (ABP and ABU) and the Luthier acoustic (AGL), they are the best bass/guitar VSTs I ever heard, and extremely playable!
 
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