William Wave

A little more progress is made: applying a Chorus effect gets the sound a bit closer to what is required. A free sustain plugin is also found, and it works fine ( https://plugins4free.com/plugin/1455/ ). The next step is making smooth transitions between notes. The way they sound now reminds bell ringing because of too much impulse at the start, which has to be fixed. Update. The soluton is found: toning down velocty of certain notes with the articulation map.

Checked out, TH3 is still doing a much greater job. As for wailing, yes, this is the right definition. Something like this might be just fine. Decreasing release to 50 and increasing velocity also helps a little.

This is how the track sounds in its current state: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H0HVCbuuZ5iMFSCHtZhHGTb0ZvP5JwB5/view?usp=share_link . Instruments are likely not going to be changed, so from this point it's rather a matter of processing with effects. The goal is same: achieve deep and emotional sound. By the way, as the lyrics go, the hero tells about his long life in a poor town and recalls what he has been doing there all this time every single day. It's a sad and nostalgic song with a bit of hope, and it has to sound accordingly.

Yes, seems so (tested with another plugin). Guitar notes still fade away immediately. Making every note sound evenly, without fading away, might be the solution, the question is how.

At this moment there is no necessity in other instruments. The current task is to find a way to increase the power of existing instruments, presumably by adding more drive on top of the one from TH3.

Copying the main guitar has actually given a decent result after transposing the copy down an octave and playing around with TH3. Amplifying lower frequencies for all guitars also adds more density to the sound. However, the composition still lacks expression. Increasing drive in TH3 to the limit doesn't help that much, so there might be some other way to add more drive.

Or maybe do both: duplicate and give a different sound to the copy. The question is how exactly this different sound is given apart of panning.

Another idea: the sound might be thickened by duplicating the main guitar and giving specific configurations to both versions. Finding the exact configurations is still in progress, so if you have any suggestions (about duplicating), let me know.

Actually, for a poor guitar BJAM is doing fine if configured properly. Consistency is still the aspect to work on, and it might be improved by applying certain effects. Setting maximum release solves it, although not entirely.

After increasing medium frequencies and toning down the others both guitars sound much more powerful on higher notes, and yet they still lack that lower-note juiciness. Applying lower attack (5 ms) and higher release (3000 ms) values in the compressor barely does anything.

Frequencies are being adjusted, but this requires a specific graph that looks like this: one segment from 0 Hz to 250 Hz with minimum gain, then a segment from 250 to 4000 with increased gain, and then another segment with minimum gain. Experimenting with the number of positions on the graph and their modes gives a close result, but transitions have to be as steep as possible to avoid unnecessary frequencies. Edited: anyway, the proper setup is found.

Instruments have been changed to BJAM posted above for the main guitar and Ample Bass P II Lite for the bass. Using electric guitars really makes a huge difference: the sound has become much clearer. Now, there was something about decreasing gain to get consistency on high notes. Explain in more details how to do it.

Of course. Still, specify a couple of free plugins to try. At this point my goals are same: achieve the consistent sound like in the intro of the project and avoid noises.

Okay, it's definitely worth trying an electric guitar, but first it is interesting to know your recommendations about what plugins in particular will suit the most (both main and bass guitars, free options only).

Here is the project file then: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e84aJ3wWT8pr85puutZ80ivUjdZQeYZW/view?usp=share_link .