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Old 10-09-2019, 01:48 PM   #33
Dork Lard
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Join Date: Jul 2018
Location: Pizza Hut
Posts: 284
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundGuyDave View Post
You're very welcome! That's what this forum is here for, after all... If you feel I was "talking down" to you, I sincerely apologize, that was in no way my intention. I always try to filter my responses on any forum such as this to be as simply worded, but with as much information as possible. I am a native English-speaker, but as this is an international forum, I can't assume anybody reading this is as well. As a result, I suppose it may seem like I'm "talking down" to someone. Again, my apologies!

I thought they might be relevant... Don't get too hung up on the specifics, but look for the generalities, and let your imagination run with what CAN be done. The main thing to take away from this is that the re-amping technique offers a clean-sheet approach to sound design, which is essentially what you're doing. Simply having a clean, unaffected track allows you to then fiddle with it to your heart's content. Don't think of it in terms of "recording a guitar part," think of it as "capturing the performance." Then, go back and start sculpting that performance into the sonic "shape" that you want.



Give the ReaTune thing a shot, and see what you think. Set up your normal guitar chain and feed a track with it. Add an instance of ReaTune, and tick the box for "Output MIDI note." Create a send from the guitar track to a new track, and on the dialog box, change "Audio -> 1/2" to "Audio -> None" and that should send only MIDI data to the new track. Drop a synth VST on the new track, and see how you like it. I *THINK* this will only work with monophonic sources, so I don't know if you can send a power-chord guitar recording to a synth and have it track.

Just as a poke, I think you're starting to see how powerful re-amping can be as a creative tool. If the "pre-recorded guitar take" in question had an associated DI track, you could use the DI to send to two different synth VSTs. Set up the chain like this: ReaGate-ReaTune-Synth. If you feed that chain with a clean DI guitar, you can play with the attack and release parameters of the two gates to alter how the synth reacts to the guitar. Synth 1 could be fast attack, short release, and suddenly that synth will only respond to the initial transient. Synth 2 could be slow attack (300mS?) long release, and now that synth will only respond to the sustain and decay portions of the guitar signal. Use a percussive hammer-hits-anvil sound added to your pick attack, and a deep, distorted cello sound for the sustained bit. This will work with the DI track, because the envelope of the dry guitar has a significant decay curve. With a distorted guitar, it won't (or at least won't nearly as easily) since the distortion flattens that decay curve drastically. Just look at a clean note and a distortion-guitar note in the track window and I think you'll see what I mean!

As another note, you can SERIOUSLY mess with the envelope shape with just ReaGate and ReaComp, and can get some really creative effects from them. Then, send that messed-with DI track to an amp (VST or real). You can also add synth layers to that as well (pre-FX send from the DI track gets you back to raw again!!). Another tip, particularly working with synth layers... Assuming ReaTune can't track polyphonic info, there are a couple of ways to handle that. Since most guitar chords are "power chords" (root+5th) in that genre, you can set up the a synth to play both the root and a 5th up, and feed it just the root note. In other words, one note in gives you that power chord out.

Another way to handle it is to build your "guitar part" string by string. Track one would be the E string, track two the A string, etc. Tedious, and requires a bit of a new approach to tracking, but after you edit it together and mix the six tracks, it'll sound exactly like a guitar. Mutt Lange did that with Def Leppard back in the day, and it sounds quite good by itself. The other thing it does for you is give you individual voices for each note in a chord, which can then be sent as MIDI data to a synth, yielding a polyphonic net result.
Like I said. I am mentally retarded when it comes to this sound engineering stuff so I don't mind being spoken to as such.

Yeah, the send thing sounds like a good idea, I'll try that and post results. As far as the power chord/monophonic issue I can just play the root note and then mess around to give it more body or wtvr.

Everything you're describing sounds super interesting reading it, but I've now got to actually get my hands dirty and try it.
Thanks for all the info, really appreciate it. Had no clue how to go about it, in my mind I figured just, record an amped gtr and like play some vst distorted synth and be really really thorough with the compressor and EQs. Possibly the drums give that NIN track a massive sound too, sometimes it's the setting around the gtrs, not the gtrs themselves that sound best.
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