Steinberg Virtual Guitarist 1 Manual
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VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 21 ENGLISH Players and chords You’ll soon discover that the selection of available chords depends on which player you have selected. Some players only offer neutral chords. But it’s no problem to control this type of player from a MIDI track containing more complex chords—Virtual Guitarist automatically selects the most appropriate chords from the available selection.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 22 English Latch mode Latch mode sets whether the Virtual Guitarist continues to play when you release the keys on your MIDI keyboard. With latch mode on, the Virtual Guitarist plays continuously from the moment you play the first key, until you manually force a stop by using the stop button of your sequencer, the sustain pedal, or by playing the B remote key. If you only want to play a lick here and there, set latch mode to off and Virtual Guitarist will only play while the keys are held down on your MIDI keyboard. You can find more information about using remote keys and the sus- tain pedal on page 24. Expression and timing variations Virtual Guitarist offers a number of functions for adjusting the playing style and to create variations. Accents and syncopation If you play the notes on your MIDI keyboard quite forcefully (which will result in a high MIDI note velocity value), Virtual Guitarist will play the chord in a syncopated style. This means that the chord will only be played on the weak beats, with the chord on the strong beats being omitted. For information about setting the velocity where Virtual Guitarist starts treating chords as being syncopated, take a look at the “Velocity Switch” section on page 35. ❐ To make Virtual Guitarist revert back to a normal (unsyncopated) playing style, simply play another note or chord with a lighter touch.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 23 ENGLISH Long chords You can also use Virtual Guitarist to play long (sustained) chords. • To play long chords, press the sustain pedal and play the chords as normal on your MIDI keyboard. There are two types of long chords, triggered by different MIDI note velocities: • A light key stroke produces a slowly strummed chord (not available in all players). • A stronger key stroke produces a heavy chord. If you don’t have a sustain pedal, you can assign this function to the B- key of your MIDI keyboard’s remote octave. For more information about how to do this, look at the “Remote keys” section on page 23, and the “Key Remote Octave” section on page 47. Fills While the Virtual Guitarist is playing, you can trigger a fill (a little varia- tion of the current part) by using the modulation wheel on your MIDI keyboard. Simply turn the modulation wheel forwards and back, and Virtual Guitarist will play a fill before carrying on with the normal groove. ❐ If you don’t want to use the modulation wheel to trigger a fill, you can assign this function to another MIDI controller in the setup window—see the “Fill Trigger” section on page 49 for more information. You can also trigger a fill by pressing the A# key on the remote octave of your MIDI keyboard, and you can find out more about this in the next section and in the “Key Remote Octave” section on page 47. Remote keys With Virtual Guitarist’s remote keys, you can use an octave of your MIDI keyboard (the remote octave) as a remote control for the most important playback variations. The remote keys are especially useful if your MIDI keyboard doesn’t have program change buttons or a sus- tain pedal, although it’s important to remember that Virtual Guitarist’s remote keys and controllers can be active simultaneously.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 24 English The keys for the remote octave are mapped out with the following functions: ❐ You can select which octave on your MIDI keyboard is used as the remote octave in the setup window’s key remote octave section (see page 47). Sustain pedal The sustain pedal has an important function in Virtual Guitarist, and it works differently depending on whether latch mode is activated or not. ❐If you don’t have a sustain pedal, you can simulate it by using the B-key in the remote octave instead (as described in the previous section). Try experimenting with the functions described in the table below to get an understanding of how you can use the sustain pedal. If Virtual Guitarist is not playing and you hold down the sustain pedal, notes played on the keyboard will result in single long chords, instead of starting VG’s rhythm playing as usual. (See the “Long chords” sec- tion on page 23 for more information.) Key Function Description C to G Parts one to eight Selects a Part G# Fret noise Adds fret noise A Stop noise Triggers a stop noise A# Fill trigger Triggers a fill B Sustain pedal Same effect as using the sustain pedal Latch Mode OnStop functionVirtual Guitarist will stop playing if you press the sustain pedal during playback. Latch Mode OffSustain pedalVirtual Guitarist will stop playing as soon as you release the keys played on the MIDI key- board, unless you release the keys while the pedal is down. (This is similar to how the sus- tain pedal works when playing a piano instru- ment on a keyboard, for example.)
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 25 ENGLISH Te m p o Virtual Guitarist automatically adapts itself to the tempo of the current song, which is setup in the host application (such as Cubase). Virtual Guitarist will also automatically follow tempo changes during playback, like an accelerando, for example. However, the slowest song tempo that Virtual Guitarist plays correctly at is 70 bpm (beats per minute). With high shuffle values (see the next page), the minimum tempo played back correctly is slightly higher. The slowest tempo for perfect triplets (Shuffle 66.7%) is 85 bpm. However, there are no upper limits to Virtual Guitarist’s tempo—except for taste! Tempo section You can set Virtual Guitarist to play at half- or double-speed, indepen- dently from the tempo of the current song, by clicking on the buttons in the tempo section: HalfVirtual Guitarist’s tempo is halved in proportion to the tempo of the current song. NormalNormal tempo, which is the same as the tempo of the current song. DoubleVirtual Guitarist’s tempo is doubled in proportion to the tempo of the current song. The green LEDs light up in 4/4 time signatures.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 26 English Shuffle The shuffle dial allows you to add a swing factor to the virtual guitar- ist’s playback, enabling you to fit the rhythmic feel more closely to your song. Technically speaking, the shuffle dial sets how far the off-beats are placed behind the eighth note positions—you can get Virtual Gui- tarist to play exact triplets by setting shuffle to 66.7%. ❐If your music has a mostly triplet-based rhythmic feel, Virtual Guitarist will sound better if you set shuffle to a slightly lower value than 66.7%—between 58% and 63% is usually a good starting point. ❐There’s one exception from the shuffle rule: In parts 6-8 of the player “R’n’B: Rock’n Roll” there’s already a shuffling of 66,6% at the minimum setting of the control. This is because a straight pattern doesn’t make any sense here. By turning the control up you can increase the shuffling to extreme values. Timing accuracy One of the great advantages of Virtual Guitarist is the timing is always perfect and reliable. However, given that these two words are rarely used to describe the timing of a real guitarist, Virtual Guitarist also allows you to add some slight timing variations to make the guitar track sound slightly more human.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 27 ENGLISH So, to alter the timing of the Virtual Guitarist, you can adjust the timing dial, and the maximum deviation in milliseconds is displayed just below the dial. ❐The maximum timing deviation limit of 25 milliseconds is very modest and will hardly be audible if only the virtual guitarist is playing. However, in conjunction with other tracks, especially those that have been quantized, it will become clearly noticeable. Dynamics The dynamics control is used to increase the amount of random vol- ume change per beat, similar to a real musician who just cannot deliver perfect dynamics. Decay The Decay dial sets the decay time of the individual beats, which enables the guitar track sound more “staccato” with shorter delay times, or more fluid and “legato” with longer decay times. • Note that the decay dial controls an envelope that shapes the playback of the originally recorded guitar tracks. This means that your Virtual Guitarist tracks won’t sound “natural” any more if you set the dial to the upper extremes.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 28 English Sound variations Stereo Width The Stereo Width dial controls a DSP effect that sets the stereo width of the output signal. With the dial in the normal position, the sound remains unchanged. If the dial is set to the full left position, it produces a monophonic signal, and if it’s set to the full right position, the stereo width is doubled using a comb filter effect. ❐Sound engineers will be happy to note that Virtual Guitarist’s stereo width effect is fully mono compatible. Track Doubling In a recording studio, guitar tracks are often doubled as another way to enhance the stereo image, and to produce a richer sound. To do this, the guitar player must record the same track twice onto two sep- arate tracks, which are panned left and right. Virtual Guitarist doesn’t need two recordings to achieve this. Simply activate the Doubling switch and, as if by magic, two guitar players will play in unison.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” English 29 ENGLISH The doubling feature is not a DSP effect like the stereo width feature because Virtual Guitarist literally plays back two different tracks. This means that Virtual Guitarist’s doubling sounds exactly the same as the conventional, but more cumbersome, doubling method. ❐Be careful not to overuse stereo width and doubling. It might be tempting to let each guitar track sound rich and fat, but it can lead to a bad final mix. Sound adjustments You can adjust the basic sound character of the guitar with the pick- up selector and presence controls. Mic Position With this 4-way switch you can vary position and angle of the micro- phone in front of the amp speaker, resulting in a subtle phase-related change of the sound character. Position A is the normal recording position. Moving the slider towards position B virtually moves the microphone away from the speaker and also changes its angle. Presence A presence dial is found on most guitar amps, and its function is to emphasize or dampen the upper-mid frequencies of the sound spec- trum. Turning it upwards from the neutral mid position increases the bite, while turning down produces a warmer guitar sound by damping presence.
VIRTUAL GUITARIST “ELECTRIC EDITION” 30 English Low Cut To avoid frequency masking between your guitar tracks and other tracks in the mix, it’s often a good idea to slightly reduce the low frequency content of the guitar signal. By turning the Low Cut control clockwise, you move the highpass filter cutoff frequency from 0 Hz to up to 800 Hz. When VG is used within a complex mix, the optimal position is somewhere between 9 and 10 o´clock. In higher positions the sound will become pretty thin and artifi- cial, however we’ve provided this option for creative sound design.