Steinberg Virtual Guitarist 1 Manual
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VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 11 ENGLISH Installing Virtual Guitarist (PC version) To install Virtual Guitarist on your PC: 1. Switch the computer on and wait for Windows to load. 2. Insert the Virtual Guitarist CD-ROM 1 into your computer. 3. Open the Windows Explorer, or the “My Computer” window, and double-click on the CD-ROM drive icon. 4. Double-click the Virtual Guitarist Installer icon to run the installation program, and follow the on-screen instructions. Removing Virtual Guitarist (PC version) To remove Virtual Guitarist from your computer: 1. Open the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel. 2. Select Virtual Guitarist and click “Add/Remove”. 3. Follow the on-screen instructions.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 12 English System requirements (Mac version) To run Virtual Guitarist you’ll need at least: • A Power Macintosh® with a 500 MHz G3 processor and 100 MHz bus • 256 MB RAM (512 MB recommended) • 1.6 GB of free hard disk space • Mac OS® 9.x or Mac OS® X • Cubase VST 5.1, Cubase SX/SL, Nuendo 1.5, or another VST 2.0 compatible host application ❐ Please also observe the system requirements of your host application. Installing Virtual Guitarist (Mac version) To install Virtual Guitarist on your Mac: 1. Switch on your computer and insert the Virtual Guitarist CD-ROM 1. 2. If the CD window doesn’t open automatically, double-click the Virtual Guitarist icon. 3. Double-click the Virtual Guitarist Installer icon to run the installation program, and follow the on-screen instructions. Removing Virtual Guitarist (Mac version) To remove Virtual Guitarist from your computer: 1. Run the Virtual Guitarist Installer again (as described above) and select “Uninstall” (from the pop-up located at the top left) when prompted. 2. Select the program component you want to remove and click “Uninstall”.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 13 ENGLISH Setting up Virtual Guitarist as a VST instrument in your host application This section describes how to setup Virtual Guitarist with Cubase VST as your host application. However, the same procedure applies to most host applications, and you should consult your host’s documentation if you need further help. Make sure the host program has been correctly installed and setup to work with your MIDI and audio hardware (eg. a MIDI keyboard and a sound card). To setup Virtual Guitarist: 1. Open the VST Instruments window. 2. Click the “No VST Instrument” label. In the pop-up menu choose the folder Virtual Guitarist, select “VG Electric Edition”. ❐ The image shows the folder content with both the original Virtual Guitarist and VG Electric Edition installed. 3. Open the Virtual Guitarist window by clicking the Virtual Guitarist’s Edit button in the VST Instruments window. 4. Select a Player from the plug-in window’s toolbar. This is described in more detail on page 15.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 14 English 5. In the VST host application, select “VG Electric Edition” as the output for a MIDI track, and make sure this track can receive MIDI data from your MIDI keyboard. ❐ Please note that when you activate Virtual Guitarist or change the currently selected player, the relevant data has to be loaded into the computer’s RAM (memory) before the instrument is ready to be played. Latency Although Virtual Guitarist is practically latency-free, high latency times (which result in delays between pressing keys on your MIDI keyboard and hearing a sound) can occur when you play Virtual Guitarist via your MIDI keyboard in real time. This is often caused by the audio card or the MIDI interface, although it won’t be an issue when playing back a song with a Virtual Guitarist MIDI track. To get rid of annoying real time latency, we recommend you to replace your current audio card with a professional audio card for which an ASIO driver is available. Most soundcards built into off-the- shelf computers don’t use an ASIO driver and usually produce latencies of up to several hundred milliseconds.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 15 ENGLISH First test At this point, you’re probably itching to get your hands on Virtual Guitarist “Electric Edition”, so: 1. Activate Virtual Guitarist (as described in the previous section) and load a player. In the Virtual Guitarist window, click the “Latch” button to activate the parameter. 2. Play a chord or note on your MIDI keyboard, and Virtual Guitarist will start to play. Because we activated the “Latch” button, playback will continue when you release the key(s). 3. If you have a sustain pedal connected to your MIDI keyboard, press it to stop the Virtual Guitarist. If you don’t have a sustain pedal, you can assign the “stop” function to a note on your MIDI keyboard. For more information about this, check out the “Remote keys” section on page 23. ❐ The MIDI LED in the Virtual Guitarist window lights up when Virtual Guitarist receives MIDI-Events. How to play Virtual Guitarist There are several ways of playing the Virtual Guitarist: • You can play chords and vary the expression using keyboard velocity, MIDI controllers, the sustain pedal, and program changes. • If you’re not familiar with a keyboard, you can enter chords and other MIDI events using one of the editor’s provided by your sequencer software. • You can use Virtual Guitarist to dub the chord tracks of existing songs and MIDI files to improve the way they sound. Many commercial MIDI files include special chord tracks, although duplicating a typical Pad sound” track (such as strings) with the Virtual Guitarist will usually produce good results.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 16 English Multiple Virtual Guitarists You can use as many Virtual Guitarists simultaneously as your host application and computer allow. There’s nothing wrong in using two rock guitar tracks at the same time with different phrasing, and then throwing in an additional riff from a third VG instance here and there. Players In Virtual Guitarist terminology, a player is a guitarist with a unique style. However, more than just a style or rhythm, each Virtual Guitarist player refers to particular guitar, sound (amp, speaker, etc.), and dedicated playing style. ❐ When a player is selected, up to 200 MB of sounds are loaded into your computer’s RAM, which can often take quite a while. If the wait is too long, you can use the chord set option to decrease loading time, although this reduces the number of chords available. (See the “Chord Set” section on page 47 for more information). Selecting a player • To select a player, click the small downward-pointing arrow on the Virtual Guitarist’s plug-in window, and choose from the pop-up menu. The loading status is indicated in the sound hole”, as illustrated below.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 17 ENGLISH • You can also use the left and right arrows window to switch between players, but this isn’t recommended because of the long loading times. ❐ The loading status in the sound hole” (as pictured above) is only visible if the Virtual Guitarist window is open. ❐ After loading, a picture of the original guitar used for the recording is visible in the “sound hole”. Removing a player To reload a player (for example, if you wish to change from the XXL to the ECO set—see the “Chord Set” section on page 47 for more infor- mation), you must first remove it from memory. It’s important to note that you can’t simply reselect the player from the pop-up menu as nothing will happen. • To remove the current player from memory, select “nothing loaded” in the player pop-up menu, and then select the previous player again. Auditioning players When you start working with Virtual Guitarist, you’ll want to become familiar with what each player sounds like. To help you with this we’ve included a short audio clip of each player, which can be found in the “Prelisten” folder on the Virtual Guitarist CD 1. Using your computer’s audio player (such as QuickTime or Windows Media Player), you can easily preview a player before loading it.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 18 English Parts Each player offers up to eight different parts. A part is variation—vary- ing in rhythmic phrasing, note structure (e.g. single notes, chords, octaves) and effect setting. You can either play the same part all the time, or switch parts while playing to add variation to a track. Selecting parts You can select a part by clicking one of the two part selection arrows in the top left corner of the Virtual Guitarist window. Switching parts in real time You can switch between parts while you play without any glitches, and one way of doing this is to send a MIDI program change message (from one to eight) from a MIDI keyboard. The program change number cor- responds to the part number. ❐ Alternatively, you can switch between parts using certain notes on your MIDI keyboard. For more information about this, read both the “Key Remote Octave” section on page 47, and the “Remote keys” section on page 23.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 19 ENGLISH Chord recognition Virtual Guitarist contains an intelligent chord recognition system, which always plays the correct chord based on the MIDI input from a sequen- cer or MIDI keyboard in real time. The MIDI input can consist of a com- plete chord or simple one-finger notes—you don’t need to make any special settings because Virtual Guitarist will always know what to do. Playing chords If you play a complete chord (for example, the notes C, F, and G for a Csus chord), Virtual Guitarist will automatically recognize it. • For the best possible chord recognition, all the notes of a chord must be played. Playing three notes is sufficient for major, minor or sus4 chords, but for other chord types (maj7, 7, 6, dim, mmaj7, m7, m6, m7-5, sus2 and 7sus4) you need to play all four notes. Chord inversions In most cases, it doesn’t matter what inversion of a chord you play. However, there are some exceptions where the bass note has to be the root or tonic note: • m7. For example, in Am7 the A must be the bass note because Virtual Guitarist would otherwise interpret the chord as a sixth (C6, in this case)—although the chord uses the same notes on the keyboard, it sounds totally different on the guitar. • dim chords (for example, Adim uses the same notes as Cdim, Eb-dim and Gb-dim). • +5 chords (A+5 uses the same notes as C#+5 and F+5). • m6 chords (Am6 shares the same notes as F#m7-5).
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 20 English One-finger chords For the chord types major, 7, minor, and m7, you don’t actually need to play all the notes in the chord. Although playing a single note always indicates a major chord, you can indicate a different chord type by playing an additional key. ❐ For keyboard schemes see “Chord reference” section on page 55. Chord display The chord display shows the currently playing or pre-selected chord. If the chord you play can’t be found or is missing in the current chord set, Virtual Guitarist will automatically choose the most appropriate replacement chord (indicated in the chord display). This will also be the case when the chord isn’t available just because you’ve selected the MID or ECO chord set. ❐ By setting the “Chord Display” parameter in the setup window (see the “Display Chords as” section on page 52 for more information), you can specify whether chords names are displayed with flats or sharps. Additional key Chord None major Next left white key 7 Next left black key minor Next left white and black keys minor7