Shay-Dan: I've heard about your virtual guitar rack.  Why do you use all that if you can play real guitar ?

Dante:  Good question.  Yes I can play real guitar to a certain extent, but its time consuming when I have to edit, cut and paste bars all the time.  Also, I can never get a decent lead guitar without an amp in my bedroom size studio.  The SoftPhonics Amp is useful on some guitar sounds to provide a Marshall edge.

Shay-Dan:  So you use preset guitar rhythm licks ?

Dante:  Yes - for rhythm.  For lead however I play Shreddage 2 on the keyboard.  That's shown in the Virtual Rack picture right hand middle.  Its not just a time saving mechanism, but having a choice of preset rhythms adds variety to what I would normally play, with a choice of picking and strumming styles I wouldn't have thought of when playing a real guitar.

JoPo: Virtual guitars seem to be very difficult to do! I think I tried every new virtual guitar either based on samples or modelisation that have been released since 15 years. And I never found a satisfying one for what I want to do : funk/soul rhythm guitar. It never sounds like I wish and nevertheless, I spend hours to try to make it sounding like I wanted !   IMHO virtual guitarist product results are much better with heavy rock distortion chord sounds.  I tried the Scarbee "funky" - the AAS electric guitar - Native guitarist electric session - Sugar Bytes guitarist library and I certainly missed some other.

YaYaJohn: I've been using this one https://www.applied-acoustics.com/strum-gs-2/ for a while. Like it a lot. You can create your own MIDI file rhythms if you don't find any you like.  You can also export the MIDI to other instruments like Six String. I bought the Latin pack. The guitar mode with the strumming keys is cumbersome, haven't really gotten on with that yet. Personally I like the sound quality of some of the other programs better but this one seems to be very light on resources.

Dawman: Here’s a pretty impressive finger picking instrument by Mike from Realitone https://realitone.com/products/fingerpick-2-0

I just got Shreddage 3 just because the Scorpions excerpt sounded great. Now I got some big ass power chords that go really low.
I still use a Modular Patch with Pulsifiers and Diode Modules that sounds great for leads. Sampled leads are too thin and Scope's Powerchords kind of suc, so these 2 will be my dirty stuff for a while.  Funny that the original 8 bit sample of a Gibson SG on the Ensoniq Mirage still kicks ass. The feedback on the mod wheel was so cool for 1985.

Dante:  Yep that Realitone is pretty good too. Damn it that means I'm going to have to write some bluegrass now with some southern drawl...

 

   

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Dante, Shay Dan, JoPo, YaYaJohn and Dawman February 2019