guitar presets for Stevie Ray, Gary Moore, mark Knaufler etc sounds

whymark

whymark

New member
Has anyone taken the time to develop different presets for guitar so that they can replicate the sounds made by Stevie Ray, Gary M, Mark K and others. If so, would you be willing to share them? If not, do you know of anything that's "out there" that I can use?

ALSO,,,,how does one go about bending notes up 1/2 and 1 step??. How is a hammer-on and Pull-off achiever?

much obliged
Mark (man with many questions)
 
Stevie Ray used heavy gauge strings but tuned down a semitone. I'm sure it makes the string bends easier to manage. I don't know anything about presets, but for Stevie Ray I'd try the neck pickup in a Strat through a blackface style amp, and turn it up loud. I believe he used that green Ibanez overdrive pedal. Maybe someone can say for sure. Mark Knopfler is all in the fingers. He used Strats early on, then Les Pauls. You'll never get his tone using a pick.
 
thanks...I've got a Strat which plas through a Digitech sound processor that has pretty good presets for ZZ Top, Knoefler and the like...I'm trying to find presets for the guitars on Cubase which, in spite of their different names, all sound alike....also how can I bend the strings on Cubase?
 
whymark said:
ALSO,,,,how does one go about bending notes up 1/2 and 1 step??. How is a hammer-on and Pull-off achiever?
Click to expand...

You bend the string to the note and you hammer your finger on the string and then pull it off briskly. (Just in case it wasn't obvious enough when Greg said it.) These ain't state secrets, but you might want to get them figured out before worrying about whose tone you're going to emulate.
 
I don't have Cubase - my friend has Guitar Rig and Amplitube which he uses for his guitar tones.
Bending an already played guitar note within Cubase would require a pitch shifter, or auto tune.
 
OK.....let's try this.....Suppose I'm working with Cubase Elements 7 only.....all other instruments are in their cases neatly tucked away......now, just for fun, let's suppose that I'm working with a MIDI file which I have made duplicate tracks of.....I'm assigning guitars to two of the tracks (with me so far??....good!!)....I want the guitars to have distinctly different sounds e.g., Stevie Ray ,....thanks
mark Carlos Santana or Billy Gibbons.....they all have unique tonal qualities which, I believe, are a result of manipulating tonal attributes such as distortion, reverb, delay blah blah blah.....my original question concerned itself with duplicating these tonal attributes IN CUBASE...I was wondering if anyone has achieved these tonal qualities IN CUBASE and would they be willing to share the presets with me.....also, is it possible to bend a string, do a hammer on or pull off IN CUBASE
 
Cubase can do loads of things - but trying to recreate guitar tone, processing and effects, AND string effects, which are mechanical, and while looking simple, very difficult to replicate in electronics, frankly daft! One pitchblende might take all day, and be 'nearly' there, but the next note would need starting from scratch. Every pitchblend, pull off, hammer on, palm mute, left hand plucked note is individual. It would need considerable skill in manipulating cubase data, and I've been a Cubase user since Black and White Ataris days, and I don't think I could replicate the well known line from Parisienne walkways if I recorded it without the bends. Worse, to do the bends, you'd have to play it with the bends in your head, to play it properly.

Cubase is great for recording. Guitars are great to play. Best tool for the job is the rule. A guitar processor is best for the tones - you record what comes out. Cubase has some nice processor plugins. I don't use them - it's better to do this elsewhere.

Why on earth do you want to use Cubase for something it clearly isn't designed for?

To make Cubase do this properly, you need to be a good guitarist - and if you are one, then you would just play it!
 
whymark said:
...they all have unique tonal qualities which, I believe, are a result of manipulating tonal attributes such as distortion, reverb, delay blah blah blah...
Click to expand...

That's a bit like saying you can make a Da Vinci self portrait look like a Van Gogh self portrait by matching the color palette.
 
I'm using Halion Sonic SE


Why on earth do you want to use Cubase for something it clearly isn't designed for?
I must be really confused (actually that's how I know that I'm awake.....dazed and confused!!)....I figured that with all of the amp boxes and the multiplicity of effects to work with then somebody along the way must have felt Cubase could replicate different guitars....simply (?) a matter of getting the effects/attributes set correctly....forget about the bending etc and concentrate on attribute manipulation as it applies to replicating "known" guitarist sounds............I am not a guitar player...I'm a piano player but, have learned some tunes written for the guitar....Pipeline, Classical Gas and In Memory of Elizabeth Reid come to mind.............my piano creates MIDI files while I play....I then import these MIDI files into Cubase and make several duplicate tracks of the original. By cutting, pasting and using the automation function I can isolate various parts; bass, guitar 1 , guitar 2, bridge 1...each assigned its own VST instrument track.....all I'm trying to do is manipulate the plethora of effects/attributes to get the guitar sounds I'm looking for....what did Billy Gibbons do to achieve his signature sound? How about Stevie Ray?....each is a unique combination of amps, amp boxes and effects/attributes settings.....THAT'S what I'm looking for....given all of that, is there anybody out there who has mastered the art of effect/attribute manipulations?

To make Cubase do this properly, you need to be a good guitarist - and if you are one, then you would just play it! see above; I'm not a guitar player...I'm a piano/keyboard player
 
I'm not familiar with Halion, but I read a little about it just to see what you're working with.

What I'd try is finding a clean, generic electric guitar tone. No effects, nothing. Once you have your midi file built, export it as audio and load it to a new track. On the new track, use a VST like Amplitube or Guitar Rig so you can work with emulations of well-known amps and effects. Check out a site like GuitarGeek.com to see what guitarists like Stevie Ray and Santana use, and add those FX in the ampmsim software.

Otherwise you're working with totally different vocabularies between the guitar world and the sampler world. I doubt that anybody can translate between "use an Ibanez TS9 and a Fender Super Reverb" and whatever that would translate to in attributes in Halion.
 
In my opinion the OP is fighting a losing battle. Of all the things digital can replicate or simulate, it can not replicate the man behind the instruments.

I dont even think it's worth wasting the time discussing.
Being a man of my word, I will now bow out from this thread.
:D
 
It's the reverse of when somebody who cannot play a keyboard tries to replicate a pianist by using step input and the spending hours editing velocities and not lengths - it never works.

I do use Halion, and while it has some very good guitar sounds, they sound wrong played on keyboard. I have a midi guitar, and they sound much better played on that. They both output the same data types - note on, note off, velocity and pitchbend, but it's the subtle timings and pitch changes that are very difficult to replicate. If you look at the midi guitar data, there's so many differences. Pianists play differently. If they play an E Major chord, do they play E, B, E, G#, B, E? or any of the other guitar inversions - and do they play the chord as a very fast arpeggio? Guitarists do. How would you play two notes in a chord as normal notes and the remaining 4 muted. How do you deal with harmonics that change depending on where on the fingerboard you fret the note? If you want realism, play a guitar. Spending hours layering 4 or 5 versions of a tone on a note by note basis is daft! I have a couple of guitar processors, and a few guitars. I downloaded some versions of Mark Knopfler's Money for Nothing guitar processing and tried a Strat, a Les Paul and a PRS. While the basic sound was right, my version won;t cause any claims for copyright infringement as the combination of real guitar and quite decent processing wasn't good enough. playing it on a piano keyboard would be plain silly!

It's a quest that can't be won.
 
WHEW!!!....thanks to all for your input and opinions....it seems like a couple of you guys understand what I'm trying to achieve here....THE SOUND ...JUST THE SOUND....how does first position E Maj sound when played by various guitarists...that's it....I am the man behind the music and I happen to be a piano player/composer.....When I'm putting together an ensemble piece, there are certain SOUNDS that I'm looking for.....forget chord inversions that stretch 2 octaves and all of the other differences between guitarist, pianists, trumpet players, fiddle players and violin players.....I am looking for something that, when listened to, people will say..."that sounds kinda like _________"......EXTRA THANKS TO TADPUI for offering a solution instead of comments as to why I can't achieve my goal in this endeavor

Later,
mark
 
ido1957 said:
Here is a video that shows you the gear used by ZZTOP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6DrxfrbbF8
Google the internet to find VST's that simulate each piece and you will be golden!
Click to expand...
Of course, this is what he used ona recent tour, which has nothing to do with what he uses in the studio or what he has used for the last 45 years. Sharp Dressed Man had a completely different rig than Cheap Sunglasses, so you need to check the era.
 
I suppose the closest thing you could do would be to find a VST that sounds like a DI of various guitars and simply run them into an amp sim which might have various presets for those guys.

The thing you will run into is the guitar samples will probably be sampled through an amplifier, which will muck up what you are trying to do.

The other thing you will run into is, when you look back to the 70's and 80's, almost everyone was using a strat, tele or les paul through a marshall or a fender. That would make it seem like there were only 6 possible tones, but no two marshalls ever sounded exactly alike even before you added the players touch into it.

Good luck, sir.
 
The Sound.... The Sound?????
The sound you are after is created BEFORE it's recorded. If you had Santana in the studio and got him to play one note, it would sound like Santana. You could sample that one note, and stick it into a sampler and play that one note in Cubase, and it would sound like Santana. I've never found Cubase has any synthesis VSTi plugins that can create that sound, not even for one note. One note is of course useless. Many years ago, I got a quick 30 seconds on Rick Parfitt's Telecaster. First problem was the man had finger muscles unknown to man, as I could hardly hold them against the fretboard, and my twanging sounded totally unlike him. It's the combination of instrument, processing, amplification, cabinet and most importantly technique that makes the sound. Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton have quite similar guitars but play them so differently.

This is what we're trying to explain, that's all. Sure - Richie Blackmore and Hank Marvin both have a Strat. A crunchy distorted sound is more like Blackmore and a clean twangy delayed sound is more like Marvin, but that's really it.

You can forget the stuff I mentioned, it's really fine - but without considering all of that, you are never going to make it work.

I have a line 6 processor and a Behringer one. Both have presets that have names that give you a clue what they are attempting to emulate. I like some on both of them. How you play is the final arbiter of realistic or not.

I can't see the point in asking a question, then moaning when people don't say yes - totally possible and you will be able to sound like X by looping a few presets together. Right tool for the right job. Cubase isn't the thing to recreate guitars in, for so many reasons.
 
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