GET A GREAT GUITAR SOUND
Welcome to our new series aimed at guitarists wanting to explore the many software options out there, or complete non-guitarists wanting to create a perfect tone… without learning to play or even use a guitar!
Once spurned by electronic musicians, the guitar has seen something of a rebirth over the last decade. It has shifted from being a symbol of rock’s ubiquitous dogma, to becoming a creative paintbrush with which kaleidoscopic new sounds have been weaved via the use of software effects and samples, while the once restrictive price tags of highend amplification can now be replicated via a range of simulations. So, if you’re a traditionally equipped guitarist looking for new ways to explore your instrument with software, or even if you’ve never previously recorded, come along for a tour!
A very brief history
Across its many decades of life, the guitar has always been an instrument that its players have sought to wrangle new sounds from. The blues players of the Mississippi Delta back in the 1930s used bottlenecks to create characterful pitch glides, while the frenetic fuzz explosions of Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s and the backwards guitar experiments pioneered by The Beatles revealed that the instrument was something that could produce endless sonic possibilities. As the years progressed, effects pedal combinations began to play a big role in constructing the characteristic sounds of many of the instrument’s key figureheads, with tones further carved by personalised combinations of (restrictively-priced) amplifiers and cabinets.
For generations, expensive, branded amplifiers (typically Marshall, Orange or Vox) as well as effect pedal combinations (perhaps from Boss, Electro Harmonix or Digitech) were at the top of many a wish-list.
The ambition for bigger, better sounds was coupled with an insatiable lust for the hallowed tones and contours of axes from Fender, Gibson, Gretsch or Ibanez (a phenomena best evidenced by the 1992 film Wayne’s World, as its titular guitar-loving hero craves an endlessly out-ofreach 1964 Fender Stratocaster).
Prior to the 2000s, these big league sounds were only accessible to those with the fattest of wallets, and while a few early products promised accurate digital capture of some of these titanic amplifier tones (namely the SansAmp in 1989, designed by Tech21) the potential of software modelling wasn’t fully realised until the advent of the POD by Line 6 in 1999. Using then innovative new digital signal processing techniques, Line 6 were able to offer accurate models of the architecture of some of the world’s most beloved amplifiers and cabinets, within one small (stomp-able) hardware unit. While traditionalists scoffed at this apparent shortcut for budget guitarists, the POD would begin showing up in more and more home studios around the world. Further developments came from Roland, Fender and Blackstar, who would all integrate digital signal processing into their home amplifier brands, presenting new pathways for amateur enthusiasts.
As DAW-based music production environments became commonplace, so too have dedicated software guitar suites. Native Instruments’s Guitar Rig ushered in a mouthwatering age of software amp, effect and rackmounted hardware simulations, explicitly tailored for computer musicians. The carefully
constructed replications of pricey vintage gear in plugin form by the likes of Softube and Waves, and the ambidextrous tonal opportunities provided by IK Multimedia’s multibrand endorsed AmpliTube series bring us up to date – where the home guitarist’s prior restrictions are all but gone.
It’s not just guitarists who can enjoy the instrument’s wide-ranging sonic stamp; with sample libraries and characterful loops readily available (and performable via a MIDI controller keyboard) painstaking learning is no longer required.
Over the next few issues, we’ll look at the best ways to both understand how to work with or without a guitar and your computer, how to best mix guitar and how to experiment with more creative guitar sounds. So tune up and grab a pick… Or sit back and trigger a guitar loop with your MIDI keyboard – it’s your call!