I am a bassist producing music with Logic Pro. I want to produce some Rock/Metal/Visual Kei tracks, but the guitar synths in Logic Pro are terrible. I plan to buy a guitar VST but I have no plan what to buy there.
I want something which can play the different techniques of a guitar with a price preferably under 100€.
Any recommendations?
2 Likes
My personal favourite is Archetype: Gojira but if you are to buy just one, I believe Petrucci could be the best choice feature-wise. Too bad you didn’t ask this question just a few days ago… they had all their plugins -50% and some even -60%.
Edit: I misunderstood your question, sorry for that. If you want an actual metal/rock guitar replacement in a form of a VST, I’m afraid I can’t help. I honestly doubt you’ll find anything usable though ^^"
3 Likes
Your link still was a nice discovery who knows maybe I will buy someday one of those virtual amps.
Probably parallax
I am about to buy a Guitar VST
now my problem is that I don’t have enough references for clean sound for Shreddage Hydra so I don’t know if I should buy it or Stratus
I want to create heavy Djent songs as well as bossa nova.
Native Instruments has a handful of different guitar virtual instruments, each geared towards somewhat different uses in their Session Guitarist series of plugins. ELECTRIC MINT for example is their Strat, and Electric Sunburst Deluxe is sampled from a Les Paul.
Shreddage is pretty specifically focused towards heavy sounds, and likely doesn’t have a lot of good samples build into it’s velocity layers for really good clean tones. Stratocasters in general tend to be very versatile guitars. While Stratus probably doesn’t go as low in tuning as Shreddage, it will do a decent job for both heavy and cleaner tones. Most guitar VI’s however will be generally geard towards one specific style, or a few closely related styles, rather then having the full breadth bewteen super low-tuned bouncy djent tones and laid-back bossa nova sounds. Simply based on what I’ve seen, something like that would certainly be way above the 100 euro budget.
All that said: since you’re a bass player, have you considered getting a used guitar? Knowing bass means you have an understanding already of a lot of the fundamentals of guitar, and realistically you will be able to get more fluid and fun sounds out of a real instrument, even if you edit it very tightly. Guitar is one of those instruments that’s REALLY hard to do convincingly in the VI world, there’s just SO much nuance that goes into playing the instrument that changes the timbre, tone, timing, and feel. Even micro-shifts in the angle we hold our pick can have drastic effects. Imo if you invest in a decent beater guitar, like some kind of SuperStrat (basically any Strat copy with two humbuckers, bonus points if it has a single-coil in the middle and the humbuckers are splittable), for not that much money. Investing the time into both the instrument and in learning how to effectively dial in even Logic’s build-in amp sims would in my opinion be a great choice.
2 Likes
I bought once a cheap used guitar, but I am very bad in playing it and won’t get anytime soon to a level that I can use it for the songs I want to make.
Chords are a horror to me lol.
But thank you for your help I will see around for your other recommendations.
2 Likes
Fair enough! In that case, at least out of the two that you mentioned above, Stratus I think would be the most versatile to start off with. And then down the line, you could add Hydra to add extra flavors of specifically heavier tones.
It looks like either one of them would require Kontakt Player to run, but that shouldn’t be a problem since that’s the free version of Kontakt, and looking at the bottom it has a big “Made for Kontakt Player” badge so it shouldn’t time out on you for any reasons 
1 Like
Not sure how much you’re able to drop in terms of budget, but if you’re wanting versatility, I’d recommend something from Fractal Audio. I have an FM9 and it lets me have a lot of wiggle room for crafting and tone-chasing, but it might be a steep price to pay imo
1 Like
okay I looked for it, and it sounds really promising. only thing that still makes me unsure is, this seems to be really preset loop oriented, am I able to create complete own rhytmics myself or can I just alter this presets?
You can write your own MIDI entirely with it! Most virtual instruments modeled after real life instruments like guitars or drums will include a number of loops and grooves, since a lot of people who use these sorts of instruments are producers who don’t actually play guitar/piano/drums/whatever the instrument is. So having some pre-made loops based on a guitarist’s playing will help guide those people into making realistic-ish sounding parts. For those producers, having the grooves/loops in the plugin and being able to drag it right into their piano-scroll in the DAW is a very fast and easy way of working.
But you should have no problem writing your own parts in MIDI and having the plugin trigger off of that There will be a lot that goes into making it sound realistic (definitely get used to using articulation change keys to switch between things like down-picking and up-picking, palm mutes, downstrums vs upstrums, etc), but the world is your oyster to write whatever parts you want!!
1 Like
I have now bought Electric Mint, For now I have the problem that I seem unable to turn off the loops and produce completely own rhythm. any idea what I need to do now.
(Also thanks for your help so far)
1 Like
I don’t have the software myself so I did a bit of a quick search, and it seems like you get two versions of the Kontakt library when you purchase it? A ‘Pattern’ version and a ‘Melody’ version. Seems like the ‘Pattern’ library is where it houses loops and things to let you try and use/edit the premade MIDI loops, and then the ‘Melody’ library is where you can start programming and playing in your own parts, at least going off of this video. So I’m assuming the move is to load up an instance of the ‘Melody’ version in Kontakt, and then you can start putting in your own MIDI
And of course, my pleasure! The only way I’ve been able to further my own music production abilities over the years has been with the help of others, so it’s only natural to pass that on when I’m able to
1 Like
Thank you so much I will look again
Okay it works now, thank you a lot
1 Like
YAAAY so glad it’s working for you
When you have stuff ready and you feel comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear the music you end up writing!!
1 Like
I will do for sure~
I will upload my songs here
maybe I do also someday some Demo here to demonstrate the sound of the electric mint more concrete.
2 Likes