Re: Real Strat/LPC 3 Suggestion, Probably Too Late ...

[curtisgraham]

Agreed the new GUI is much better... Just wanted to send my compliments on the website as well... Worth the wait...

Cheers

Curtis

[Armageddon]

Unfortunately, the .pdf user's manuals are from version 1(?), so I couldn't tell for sure in detail what's actually new and what isn't.

[Armageddon]

Unfortunately, it appears one of your rivals has implemented both a "humanization" feature and something called "Double", which simulates a double-tracked rhythm guitar into their series of VIs. Based on the demos, the instruments themselves are nowhere near as articulated as your VIs, though the humanization feature and the "Double" feature are based on differing the samples themselves, as well as the timing. Note that there is also no way to record both sides of a "Doubled" guitar in any 3 of their VIs as their own mono tracks, which makes the feature almost useless:

http://www.amplesound.net/en/index.asp

[Armageddon]

I messed around with Ample Guitar demos, and beyond their humanization/start time/"double guitar" functions, the instruments themselves are pretty crude by comparison to the Real VIs. I even attempted to use an instance of RealLPC on the left-hand side and an instance of Ample Guitar P on the right-hand side, and while Ample Guitar's humanization feature worked really well (giving me a lot of hope for this feature in the v3 Real series), the articulations and overall sound quality just didn't do it for me. Plus, bafflingly, like most other guitar VIs/sample sets, the scrapes in Ample Guitar were awful, leading me to have to use a second instance of RealLPC and more tweaking than I wanted to do just to get decent scrapes. As for the "double guitar" feature ... there would be no way to record the left and right channels independently, meaning, this function is pretty much unusable unless you want to record your guitar in stereo and use a single stereo amp simulator (with stereo in and out). Again, the main thing I got from the Ample Guitar stuff was their great humanization feature, which seemed to work pretty well.

[Armageddon]

Ooops, just checked your new Version 3 User's Manuals ... guess humanization isn't going to be a feature ...

[Armageddon]

Any progress on the humanization front? After we'd spoken on and off the forum, the possibility that you'd be implementing a humanization engine seemed like a very real one. I've held off on upgrading to version 3 of the Real VI series, mainly because I've been doing extensive work with the previous versions and because humanization seemed like the only real new feature I'd need for now, until I upgrade to a 64-bit system.

To an extent, this feature actually existed in the 1.1 versions of RealStrat/RealLPC, though I was unaware of it until researching how other guitar VIs were doing "double-tracked" rhythm guitars. As it turns out, a fair amount of humanization can be achieved by simply doing this:

1) Open two instances of RealLPC/RealStrat (to verify the humanization of two instruments playing the same MIDI track, it's important to have two instances of the same instrument, though you can switch one to a different Real electric guitar VI once you've finished). In your DAW's mixing board, pan them hard left and right, as you would a pair of real rhythm guitars.

2) Duplicate your MIDI guitar track and route the duplicate track to the second instance of your Real electric guitar VI.

3) Play both MIDI tracks through the Real VIs. For the most part, you should be hearing a mono rhythm guitar image in both speakers/headphones. You'll hear slight variations, mostly in your palm mutes and repetitive notes, because ...

4) ... the Alter (Samples) function defaults to 2 samples. Set this in both VIs to 5. You'll now hear perfect doubling in any repetitive notes, such as palm mutes or up and down repetitive strums. In fact, what you'll hear is a perfectly-doubled track followed by a sudden collapse of your stereo image, particularly in parts with long-held open chords. Make note of each part of the MIDI track where this "collapse" happens.

5) Pick one of the two tracks to act as your "doubled" track (I usually pick the right-hand side, but it's a matter of taste).

6) In that "doubled" track, go section by section to the parts where the stereo image suddenly collapses. After a lot of trial and error, I've found (in Digital Performer) that you can select just those parts and apply Humanize with Onset set to 0/008 bars, Duration set to 3% of current duration and On Velocity set to 4% of current value, which will (in theory) cause those parts to match up with the parts where the Alter Samples is already producing humanization. You may need to add a little more or less (easy to tell if you hear your newly-humanized parts either collapse in relation to the Alter Sample parts or suddenly sound wider), but between the Alter Samples and this little bit of humanization, you rhythm guitar parts will sound discrete without being so far out of relation with each other that they're not playing together as a whole.

[Armageddon]

Still struggling with this minor stumbling block! I suggested this to Sergey directly, but in lieu of creating an elaborate humanization engine, especially based on what I did in the last post, why not just extend "Alter Samples" to non-repetitive notes? You could have a switch next to "Alter Samples" that allowed you to change it from just repetitive notes to all notes, and you could control the amount of "doubling" simply by adjust the "Alter Samples" number. As I stated above, everything already affected by "Alter Samples" is actually doubled perfectly -- introducing a complete round robin scenario would likely do the trick.

Until and unless that happens, I'm also experimenting with automating the pick position on one of the two guitars rather than completely screwing up the MIDI track with humanization. Up or down by one number on the notes/chords that aren't affected by "Alter Samples" could be just enough to separate the two.

[Armageddon]

Incredibly proud to see a rhythm-doubling feature as part of RealGuitar 4 and RealStrat 4 (and soon for RealLPC 4, I hope)! I can't wait to take everything for a test drive and see how it works!