Tezza

This is really interesting Bill, I might also give it a shot. Generally, the piezo pickup on acoustic guitars sounds awful when recorded, scratchy, at best it is something that might be used at a very low level to add bite to to the microphone recorded acoustic track but I never bother with it. I use the piezo pickup when first sketching out a song simply because I can plug the acoustic in without worrying about background noise and because it's easier just to plug in. But that is just a guide track and is never used in the completed song. I'll muck about with it, see what happens.

Yes I've given those a try, they are not as convincing as the more expensive ones if they are the only instrument but can sound fine mixed in with other instruments.

You can't be old if you are using a magnifying glass app. You would have to use a real magnifying glass to be old.

I run my DAW off the internet as well but I have a USB dongle that I use for the laptop for internet. I can plug the USB dongle into the DAW as well just to activate things if I have to.

When I was at uni, I had a mate that we were all concerned about because he was both brilliant and also struggled with quite severe mental health problems. An A+ honors student that spent 3 - 6 months in a mental institution every year. We would constantly ponder what might happen to him, would he become a brilliant research scientist or would he end up in an institution. What eventually happened to him was far worse than any of us could have possibly imagined. He became a drummer in a rock band.

I think these statistics are polluted by the fact that those with mental health conditions tend to be attracted to the TV, Film and Music industries in the first place because creative industries require different kinds of thinking and they can't fit in with the boring mainstream 9 - 5 computer cubicle type jobs anyway.

When you say "bridge pickup" are you referring to the under saddle piezo pickup on an acoustic-electric guitar?

Looks like they've at least changed the interface, unfortunately for me, from too bright and garish to too dark and garish.

I use Battery 4 under windows 10 and windows 7 and am not having this problem. I don't really use the kits though, rather the cells, which I populate with whatever samples, it retains the cells I've created between projects.

Yes, there are advantages to guitarists to transcribe acoustic work, I guess it depends on the style you play. Ironically, my style is very much suited to transcribing to acoustic VST because I can actually write all the single notes, chords and occasional strums into the piano roll easily. But... the acoustic guitar VST's are not designed for this purpose, they are designed that you will either strum (using the pattern strummer) or play solo (which doesn't allow chords) or play direct from the keyboard (different VST's implement this differently). The Amplesound is winning at the moment for me as I can do most of what I want to do. It's a bit of work initially to start with but then there are benefits: 1. You have better control over finger noise and fret noise. 2. It doesn't matter if you have a real life ordinary guitar, you can access a better sound. 3. You can "record" acoustic guitar (transcribe to midi) despite the angle grinder and barking dogs next door. 4. Once transcribed, you have access to a midi roll with all the notes, making it a lot easier to build arrangements from that (if you arrange with midi) 5. You can change tempo's or experiment with the song after it's transcribed, with no audio track to worry about. 6. You can change notes or chords in the arrangement after you transcribe rather than being locked to an audio recording. 7. You can choose to include different notes in chords that might not be playable on an actual guitar for a different sound.

I've never been there before but it comes up with a request for my email address saying that I have visited a number of times before. I don't usually just give out my email address because some website requests it.

I thought Cclarry had lost it here, camel growls? ffs however, drop it down a few semitones, slow it down a tad and you've got great monster or demon growls for anyone doing a horror movie. Truly terrifying.

This is what I do, but not with hardware, I just run a software eq and compressor before guitar rig, I've got a 32 band graphic that I use on the dry sound, get that sounding as best as possible, depending on the style, cut and boost, then a compressor, just a light one, with slow attack, you don't want to kill the bite or attack of the guitar.then it goes into guitar rig, really helps the tone, but I am looking for clean. I do the same for midi samples playing guitar sounds. One thing I stumbled on was a guy on the internet that said if you want an electric guitar to sound like it's coming from a speaker, download the real world frequency response of that speaker and then set up a para eq with shelves to mimic it on the dry signal, before it goes into the amp sim, for the reasons Craig mentioned. I haven't yet tried this myself yet, so can't vouch for it personally, it is on my to do list to try along with the 570 other ideas for getting better guitar tone from amp sims.

Thanks Jim, I hope it is of interest to those who might be looking at acoustic guitar VST's. One thing I've learned is that these VST's seem to be aimed at keyboard players wanting to play in an acoustic guitar finger picking or solo sound and to assemble strumming tracks. They are fine for that, they don't seem to be aimed at guitarists wanting to transcribe their guitar playing into samples, especially if you are a jazz player. I have achieved success in getting the Amplesound VST player to play my chords with the correct fingering and on the right frets by using the key switches but I have to put them in at every chord change for consistent results. Not too bad since I can copy the midi blocks with the key switches in them and then just change where different chords might sit. One other problem I have come across is if you play a note at a set velocity and then play that same note a second time with the same velocity, it sounds different, more trebly. This is because these players automatically apply up and down strokes to everything you play, ok for solos but a nightmare for chords and finger picking between the chords. They usually have a way of turning this off with a slider or switch but haven't found this yet in Amplesound. Nevertheless, I will have soon transcribed the first half of the song and then send that to David for feedback on the timing. Just now being able to convert my acoustic jazz style playing into midi and retain the original feel is an eyeopener for me.

I used an LX61 with Cakewalk for a while, no problems with getting everything to run. Think of the DAW controls and the Keyboard as 2 different devices that must be setup individually. I cannot remember how I set it up now but you need to follow the advice given on the Nektar site for setup with Sonar as I don't think they have specific instructions for Cakewalk or at least they didn't when I was using it. If you follow the Sonar setup guide you should be fine. You have to activate both devices in the Cakewalk dialog box and make sure they are in the right boxes. There is an additional step as I remember for setting up with Sonar, just installing the setup files won't do it, look on their site for the instructions.

Yes, exactly, in reality, there are about 4 different alternate notes per octave (on the higher notes) these VST's have to cover. I don't think guitarists are interested in playing high notes on the 22nd fret of the lowest E string. It wouldn't be functional to have to put in key switches for every note on the midi roll to identify the string being played, not even possible I think, especially if you have 4 or 5 notes all being played at the same time. At the moment, I am experimenting with Amplesounds "forced capo" feature, which is available in open play mode (some VST's have this feature but only in strum mode). This tells the sample player that you are playing in a certain range of about 4 or 5 frets and it must select the notes being played from that range. It only requires two keyswitches per bar generally before you move out of that range and then require another 2 keyswitches. It requires 2, one to tell the sample player that you are going to force capo and another midi note to say what string is the root. It's doable in terms of programming, I'll see how it goes. It's probably worth saying that these problems wouldn't be encountered by most keyboard players seeking a strumming acoustic guitar to put into the mix. They want and expect the open string sound, or they can capo the VST to strum at a certain fret. All the VST's can do this in one way or another.

I haven't forgotten enlisting your help in the timing issue. It's become apparent to me that I have to spend more time trialing different libraries to find the one that will work for me, I have most of them now and have been going through them. My problem is that my style of play falls between strumming, solo and finger picking modes. I pluck chords "claw" style, a number of notes at the same time, while also doing a little finger picking and break in and out of the occasional strumming, I also move up and down the neck doing this. All this may happen within one short piece. The acoustic guitar VST's are struggling with this since they tend to break things up, you are either in strum mode, solo mode or finger picking mode and there are different rules for each that don't fit the way I play. I just want one mode where I can do everything. Also, they can't easily detect where on the fret board I am playing. I am having some success though, but it is taking time going through the libraries/manuals and learning if they have the relevant key switches I need or not. I probably won't get the time to work it out until the weekend. I didn't think it would be this hard but then when I think about it, it is hard to get the VST to play the exact same chords I am playing when you consider that on a keyboard and midi roll, one note exists only once in each octave. On a guitar, there may be 5 or 6 instances of one note, all the same octave but played in different fret positions on different strings and therefore a very different sound or timbre for each one. This is the problem for me and different libraries have different ways of handling this or not. I am hoping to get as close as possible to getting exact replication of what I am playing, I think it is possible, will just take a bit more time.

Also interested in this, I'm not really a synth sound design person, tend to stick with presets with a little tweaking. I've got a bunch of synths, most of which I never use. I find them frustrating. trying to create a sound from scratch or deeply twiddling with presets just results in a time destroying, horrible noise for me. Sorry, I can't help but I am sure someone will come along who can.,

A small vocal booth draped in blankets is going to sound very boxy. The purpose of the blankets is to make sure they are behind you when you sing into the mic. It's better to have nothing at all behind the mic itself, if by vocals, you mean singing. Singing can be loud and anything you put behind the mic while you sing will rebound back on to the mic with unpredictable but usually horrid results. Making sure that the reflection of sound from behind you when you sing into the mic is deadened is usually enough, it will deaden the sound of the room in general a little as well. If you need to deaden the sound of the room a bit more, cover one of the walls or set up a T stand with something draped over it, away from the mic. If you want air, you need to give the mic air. Also, anything rebounding on to the mic can cause distortion because the mic diaphragm is being hit by conflicting sound waves from the front (your voice) and the back (whatever you have behind the mic that your voice is bouncing off of). The pop screen can work as well for plosives but if your mic technique is good and you come at the mic from an angle and can back off/move away etc while you sing, you shouldn't need one. This can only be achieved if you have good isolated monitoring of your voice through headphones.

After a bit more time, it's starting to make it. Responds well to equalization, boosting the lower frequencies gives you more of the sound hole sound and more of the wood, which I like, not just more bass frequencies. Tapering off the high frequencies gets rid of the brighter sound and giving it a boost in the high end gives it some air without harshness. Running velocities at about 100 for the baseline produces a better balanced sound and evens out the dead and clangy strings, not so noticeable. There is a control which try's to predict up and down strokes for finger picking, it gets a bit out of control in the harder parts so I just turn it off, sounds more predictable and the alternating loud and soft sounds go away. In the Jazz standards I am covering, some of the odd picking sounds that have arisen happened because the midi programming was a bit off. It wasn't noticeable with the nylon string VSTi which blended into the mix but when I put the steel string on, it stuck out and was noticeable. It's growing on me but there is one caveat with acoustic guitar sample libraries that I wasn't aware of. Some sample all the frets and some sample only the first five or so, then follow the high string up. On a keyboard, each note responds to one pressed key but on a guitar, the same octave note can be found on different strings, different frets. For example, the E on the 8th fret of the third string is the same octave as open E on the sixth string but they sound very different and have a different timbre. This is important if you are playing jazz chords for example, you want the right timbre. But if I play a Jazz chord that involves the E on the third string/8th fret, what the sampler plays is an open E which is not want I want. This is what is contributing to it sounding brighter than it should. Some of the Orange Tree samples and the Ilya Esimov guitars and others do sample all the notes so you can get that 3rd string/8th fret E sound, I think through key switching, not sure. Also, it automatically applies effects with the main presets but that is not obvious until you look at the buttons on the fx page. I turn them off and run it through guitar rig with a compressor and IR. I'm not sorry I got it, it does other things that I haven't yet tried and I'll see how far I can go with programming it to sound like my playing and guitar sound. I've got it sounding as jangly, woody and rough as my own acoustic now, just leaving it like that while I transcribe. They've got construction going on near me at the moment but using the VSTi I am still able to "record" acoustic guitar and can continue to work on the song.

I did end up purchasing Indiginus Renegade Guitar. It's quite bright and the E and B strings are pretty overwhelming out of the box. With a couple of jazz standards that have midi tracks of quite fast and complex finger picking, I was hoping I could just drop it on the track and all would be well. All I could hear was the E and B strings cutting through and not much else. Previously, I had my Kontakt factory nylon running on that track with no problems. Balancing the strings was a problem, by dropping the velocity of the E and B strings on the track (and everything played on the E and B strings) it's starting to sound more balanced in volume, I had to drop the velocity on those strings by 40 velocity points which is quite a lot. On all the "F" notes on the middle string I had to raise it by 25 velocity points because that note on the middle strings sounds dead. There is also something going on with the D#, sounds like fret buzz of some sort but it cuts right through the mix in a really irritating way. The finger picking is also problematic, it's not coping with the piece flipping all over the place with louder/softer sounds being spontaneously generated for no apparent reason. Currently, I regard it as not usable but I will try again later as it is new and I may have something wrong with the settings somewhere. I like to get it sitting as best as possible before adding compression or equalization and reverb. In terms of my original stuff where there is just the guitar and vocals at the moment, it worked a bit better, still with string imbalance though. It is really nice having an option of an acoustic guitar VST that is really clean, makes my transcribing easier and I have been able to create 6 bar loops of one of my songs, so I have an idea of the timing. The actual sound quality sounds good but different to what I am used to from my guitar, again, very bright, might tone down a bit with EQ. I thought last night I'm probably running it completely wrong. I'm sitting at 70 with the velocity, to give myself headroom to move in either direction but I think it should probably be around 100 for a better sound, will try it out. These are early days and I think it will improve as I use it more and understand it.

This is what I did, I removed all win 7 drivers, graphics etc and also disconnected all peripherals, also all software that was not win 10 compatible (I didn't have much). Then I just reinstalled stuff with Win 10 drivers after the upgrade. I remember reading about it somewhere, the installer might fail if it found incompatible hardware or software. To be honest, I do not know why anyone wouldn't do this, I took the view that Win 10 is a completely different OS to Win 7 and nothing will be compatible. I see posts everywhere where people are trying to run Win 7 drivers for something under Win 10 "it might work or not". I would never bother to do this or even try it. If you don't have the hardware and software to support Win 10, then I would say don't upgrade until you do. My USB 3.0 ports never worked that well under Win 7, I also put their third party drivers on, no difference. I took all those drivers off before upgrading, after installing Win 10, the USB ports work flawlessly without the need for any third party drivers. My Steinberg UR44 interface hated the USB 3.0 ports, I bet I could run it on them now.

I think if you upgrade to Win 10 using the free utility, you will understand why Microsoft still allows this upgrade to be made. It's basically a billboard for hooking you into Microsoft products, nagging you to visit their store etc I turned it all off because my DAW is offline. I don't think they care that much, they just want people on this operating system so they can bombard you with their other products. I have a Win 10 product key showing on my system, however, some have said this is not the case for them, instead they have a "digital license". You of course, have to make the decision that you are most comfortable with. I found that upgrading to Win 10 opened the door to other software that I needed that was only available running on Win 10. I am not having any problems with software, it seems a little snappier. My computer is old, a 3rd generation i5, with 8gig ram yet it still amazes me I am not running into any blocks as yet to justify upgrading the CPU and motherboard, I am running all SSD's though.

In your situation, I would bite the bullet, get an updated sound card and get windows 10 free through the media creation utility if that applies to you. In this thread: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/9531-upgrade-to-windows-10free/

I don't post my original songs in the songs forum because I worry about copyright issues, people nicking your songs and making millions from them. Some of mine are earning me money and I've got awards from them. I've yet to put anything there but I have a couple of old Jazz standards (covers) that I am planning to put up. You don't worry about copyright? Listening to your songs, they would be a film composers dream come true.