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Programs For Guitarists


RogueHart

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i was curious if there were any other guitarists that knew of any programs to mimic effects (distortion, chorus, overdrive, etc, etc, etc) and apply them on the fly while recording.

the main reason being that i have little money to spend on the hobby but i do enjoy it and it would be nice to have the ability to use a bit of distortion even if the quality suffers without the hardware.

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Last year I went to a colleges house to play a bit of guitar with him, and he showed a software that he uses to do all the background effects, but I can't remember from the top of my head, whats called. Will get in contact with him and find out for you.

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Last year I went to a colleges house to play a bit of guitar with him, and he showed a software that he uses to do all the background effects, but I can't remember from the top of my head, whats called. Will get in contact with him and find out for you.

Thank you very much. Its bad enough i have to use a crappy practice amp. Don't need to deal with this issue when it should be easily resolved with the right software lol.

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Propellerhead Reason will do this or Pro Tools, but you will probuly need a special hardware piece I used a M-Audio delta 66 for recording, can hook up a Mic, Guitar, ect.. Steinburg Nuendo is good also. You can even use FL Studio or Reason to make drum beat patterns to record your guitar over.

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Propellerhead Reason will do this or Pro Tools, but you will probuly need a special hardware piece I used a M-Audio delta 66 for recording, can hook up a Mic, Guitar, ect.. Steinburg Nuendo is good also. You can even use FL Studio or Reason to make drum beat patterns to record your guitar over.

think reason would work connecting my amp to my comp with a cable with 2 3.5mm male ends?

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Thank you very much. Its bad enough i have to use a crappy practice amp. Don't need to deal with this issue when it should be easily resolved with the right software lol.

I texted my college a message last night, I am just waiting for his reply.

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think reason would work connecting my amp to my comp with a cable with 2 3.5mm male ends?

These are the size plugins I use I dunno what they are called ..

cable-electric-guitar-bass-amp-3m-0.jpg

You may need a adapter to convert the left & right 3.5mm PC audio cords into a size cord like in the pic above, then it should play threw the Amp then to your speakers. If you are really into music though I would ask Santa for a M-Audio delta series audio card.

edit:: that is also a bad picture, I recommend the gold ones for better quality, the one pictured is a generic cord

Edited by 555
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Line6 makes some software that interfaces with their processors as well, so you can download and update the pedal with custom guitar effects and simulated amp sounds:

http://line6.com/products/software/

http://line6.com/products/propellerhead/

When I used to work in my band, we used Emagic's Audio Logic to record all our music and which could mix effects in real time and post production, but sadly, Apple bought it and turned it into the garbage that is Garage Band. Audio Logic is not available for the PC any longer, but it was the best windows based multi-track recording software there was at the time. Then ProTools kind of took over the scene and is the defacto standard for high end recording rigs.

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well the main reason i need the software is that im not in a good enough financial situation to invest anything into my guitar. im playing a nice guitar(epiphone g400 1966 limited edition with silver burst) but all i have to play on it with is a crappy little travel amp. i have no effects nor the cash to get them.

as far as cables go that cable in the pic is a standard guitar cable (not sure what they are called either) but i dont have any way to directly connect my guitar to my laptop, thats why im wondering if there is a software that can apply these things to incoming sound from a mic or something because i can use a standard 3.5mm headphone cable with 2 male ends to plug my travel amp into my computers mic jack. not very clear but its all ive got lol.

i can barely afford to keep it strung when the strings start to rust

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Few things. Don't use the mic jack. If your sound card doesn't have a line in as well as mic jack, be sure to turn mic boost off. Next, most mic jacks are mono as are guitar chords, as where line in does stereo. If you go the line in route(which would be better in the long run, less distortion), you need to go to radio shack and get a cheap splitter that does stereo headphone male, to mono 1/4" female (looks like this - http://www.amazon.com/Headphone-Adapter-Female-Jack-3-5mm/dp/B001E3XLNU). The one in that pic wouldn't work though, as that one is stereo to stereo, you need mono 1/4" to 1/8" stereo headphone. If they dont carry mono to stero, then go mono to mono 1/4" to mono 1/8".

That way you can plug your guitar in, and it will split the signal to the stereo jack for line in. Otherwise, it will only pan to one side, which isn't a big deal since you might end up doing that with the final mix anyway, but that is totally up to you depending on the song you are recording. If your amp has a headphone jack, then buy a male to male 1/8" and use the line in stero jack. Looks like this: http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Unlimited-AUD-1100-25-3-5mm-Stereo/dp/B000V6R2OK/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1292849251&sr=1-5

Most laptops only have headphone, mic and line out. Mine only has headphone/lineout and mono mic, no stereo input, so I can't do stereo multi-track recordings without a USB sound card for the extra jacks.

The other thing about recording guitar on the computer, if you can't find a real time effects processor, you can always edit them in something like cool edit, or sound forge, which is something you might do anyway when multi-tracking, so you can compress them, remove noise, do fade ins/outs, add other effects, etc. If you can find it online, get an old copy of soundforge 4.5 before sony destroyed it with their newer versions. Its a solid wav editor that works on all windows platforms from Win95 up to 7. Cool Edit LE is also a nice one before adobe turned it into audition, which kind of sucks compared to the single editor of old. Audition lets you do multi-track recording, but isn't really suited for that. Cake, ProTools, and some of the other ones are better at this and meant for it. Then there is a free multi-track program I've used in the past. Its not the greatest, but far better than some pay for programs: http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php?section=download They also make a pay for version that is a step above this one, but if you are on a budget, start here, learn, then move up.

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Careful, the amp might blow out your sound card. I would go from the guitar directly into the sound card with a set up possibly like this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Yet-another-amplified-acoustical-guitar/. I use audacity to capture the sound. You can make a preamp if you need to. An old tape recorder is good for that. Or for a couple of dollars in parts you can build one.

Edited by inventoman
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Careful, the amp might blow out your sound card. I would go from the guitar directly into the sound card with a set up possibly like this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Yet-another-amplified-acoustical-guitar/. I use audacity to capture the sound. You can make a preamp if you need to. An old tape recorder is good for that. Or for a couple of dollars in parts you can build one.

A guitar amp wont blow the sound card, just don't have it up ALL THE WAY when plugging it in. I've been recording music since the 90's using the sound card with direct line from the amp, mic's, effects processors/pedals, and mixers without any issues and never broken any sound cards. Just don't 1, have things powered on when plugging them in, and don't 2, have the volume up really loud until you can check the levels in your sound recorders monitors. That kind of goes without saying.

Best practice, get a mixer, and mic up all your instruments, but if you want a real amp sound, line in directly from the guitar won't cut it. It will sound tinny and empty. If you want effects, sure, line in till your hearts content, or even go from a pedal or effects unit direct line without the amp, but even for using the PC as the post production effects, for best, realistic sound of an guitar the way an amp makes it sound, mic the amp itself with a half decent (powered) microphone or through a powered mixer to the line in on the sound card. Never use the MIC port unless you absolutely have no amp or powered source, and you just dump directly from the guitar to mic jack. Otherwise, you won't really hear anything through line in without a powered source, if anything at all depending on the guitar/mic/mixer/device, etc.

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Most people are not as learned as you are. I do not seem to get the tinny sound though.

Tinny as in basic pickup sound vs the warmth and depth of the amplifier sound. That is of course unless your amp sounds tinny as well, you probably wouldn't notice the difference.

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Cool edit, Audacity, ect.. are all old school, go with Steinberg Nuendo, or Pro Tools. I know professional recording artist that use that, I also use it too for recording. If you are serious about music I recommend this http://cgi.ebay.com/M-AUDIO-DELTA-66-PCI-INTERFACE-NEW-DELTA66-MAUDIO-/130468009969?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e607fd7f1

You will never blow your sound card (it also has phantom power), I had a pro studio setup and yelled as loud as possible threw a studio mic, I probuly sound like a commercial for M-audio but the delta-66 is great..

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Cool edit, Audacity, ect.. are all old school, go with Steinberg Nuendo, or Pro Tools. I know professional recording artist that use that, I also use it too for recording. If you are serious about music I recommend this http://cgi.ebay.com/M-AUDIO-DELTA-66-PCI-INTERFACE-NEW-DELTA66-MAUDIO-/130468009969?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e607fd7f1

You will never blow your sound card (it also has phantom power), I had a pro studio setup and yelled as loud as possible threw a studio mic, I probuly sound like a commercial for M-audio but the delta-66 is great..

Cool Edit is far better than audacity, but yes, old school. Might not be able to use them though, as I think the ones up until becoming audition for adobe, were only for Fat32 systems. They didn't work on NTFS I think.

We've had all kinds of interfaces over the years, from sound cards with 16 leads that went to eight different stereo devices, optical sound cards that hooked up to DATs and digital track machines, digital multi-track recorders(still have my digital 8 track fostex in the closet) but the more shit we bought, the less we used of it. By the end, we just used a small mixer and mic'd up everything and recorded straight to the line in of our sound cards since all our multi-tracking was eventually done in Audio Logic in windows 95. We just did everything track by track on the PC, starting with basic click tracks and loops until we had everything sequenced how we wanted, then we removed the basic drum click and worked in our own custom acid loops and samples from my live drums or home made percussion.

We also did a lot of unconventional stuff that just turned out to be the norm for us, like mic'ing dinner plates, pots and pans and playing them with forks and knives over djembe tracks played backwards. Weird stuff that ends up sounding like you did it with a Groovebox, but was done live and then spliced up into samples for loops.

Its not even what you buy for that matter, its that you make the most of what you already have to work with, or see in the room and have on hand at that moment. For example, I mic'd up a piece of paper on my desk once, and used a jazz drum brush to just scrape around on it, then effected the hell out of it how I wanted it to sound in order to create my own rhythm track for a song. We took a glockenspiel and mic'd it through my guitar processor, then direct line from the processor to the computer to do backing tracks giving it effects right from the guitar processor (song we used the glockenspiel in, middle of song - http://www.twistedpairrecords.com/Music/twisted_picking_full.mp3).

There are no limitations. All the hottest equipment in the world will do is show how much cash you had to spend on equipment but some of the best sounding stuff, comes from the cheapest equipment and the most outdated software. Hell, my partner in my band only had Windows 95 when we recorded half of our music. This was from 1998 all the way to 2000 until I upgraded to the almighty windows 98. Thats right. Windows 98. With 256meg of ram and a 20GB HDD using a "creative sound blaster live" sound card for all our later works. The best equipment and software we had at the end were our condensor microphones and Emagic's Audio Logic, which I still feel is one of the best multi-track recording programs ever put together.

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Yeah that is very true about the creativity part, but it does make a big difference on sound quality if you have the right tools. I do not think Cool edit or Audacity can match the sound recording quality and features that Pro tools and Nuendo offer, you can still bang spoons on a plate to make a certain sound to loop in both programs but it will sound better in nuendo or protools imo, plus they offer cool plugins like autotunes and such.

A delta 66 may set you back $180 but it is worth it if you are serious about your music. I guess it boil's down to what you can afford and work with, 9th wonder (hip hop producer) used nothing more then I think a cheap MIDI keyboard, and Fruity loops and made beats for Jay-Z just off of skill.

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