This is mostly a brainstorming thread and might be a waste of time, but I've been playing with the idea in my mind of trying to do some kind of project that would keep the aesthetic of metal but replace electric guitars with different instruments of an electronic nature. Because I am clueless on electronic music, I am asking here if you have any examples or opinions on interesting sounds that could, together with the rest of the instrumentation of bass and drums, achieve a similar feeling to a metal aesthetic, not necessarily replicate it. Examples of tracks that display the sounds that come to your mind would be great.

I'm mostly looking to design some kind of sound to be played in a keyboard by MIDI, not really programmed. I have tried hammond and rhodes samples, both through super distorted guitar amplifiers, and while I enjoyed the sound, it still seemed a bit "pad-y" if that makes any sense, with too much sustain. Good for atmospheric pieces, but not staccato enough for stronger rhythms. I guess I could actually manually dampen the envelope in whatever synth I am loading the samples in.

I have also tried using some kind of cello samples but the attack is too slow (because they are bowed).

 

Last edited: Oct 27, 2024

Run a synth lead patch (e.g Nord Lead) into a high gain amp head --> cabinet --> x1 or x2 mic it.
Or, run it through an AXE FX or a HELIX or maybe some racks w/ tubes. I think that's a good start. Mind you, you won't get that feedback of standing in front of a live cab or the cab waves hitting the pick-up effect. idk, you gotta experiment until you meander through experimentation until you hit the right formula. I've always liked the concept of layering guitars with tracks of synths and melting them into one sound. There was once a time when electronic music despised the guitar, but now we have lower noise floor, better front-end, better pickups and virtual modeling. But now 'dirty' cab, dirty analog, dirty sounds are welcomed back into this clean digital canvas.

 

Wouldn't plenty of dubstep satisfy your criteria, like...

 

There are entire Kontakt libraries of nothing but guitars transformed into various synth-like instruments. They can be anywhere from just slightly effected to as far as ambient and drones. You could take some guitar samples and turn them into wavetables you can import into Serum, etc.

You could use a transient designer on the front of your samples to get some additional attack, or layer something. A trick for your guitar with too much sustain, is to also use a Transient Shaper/Designer plugin on that track. Most of them will have either a hold, release, sustain, decay or some version of those parameters; but they all deal with the tails. Lower the values of them and you can kill that sustain/reverb you mentioned about amps. You can shorten anything to make more clean space between hits, with usually more control than using a gate.

 

Not entirely sure where you want to go with this, but in argent metal, guitars are almost always at least augmented and sometimes completely replaced by synths. Argent metal is kind of industrial, video game, riff heavy, production focused metal. The Doom 2016 and 2020 soundtracks are on most platforms if you want to have a listen.

 

There are tons of dubstep-with-metal-guitarz!! tracks out there, have been for a while (even Infected Mushroom used distorted guitars in psy-trance 25 years ago).

And every couple of years young people "discover" this music and shit their pants.

I find it boring af.

 

I did some similar experiments with both guitar and bass amps using a midi keyboard and rhodes samples, hammond samples and piano samples. These are the ones I mentioned in the OP. I liked them but theyfelt more like sustain instruments which would work better as pads. Didn't actually try plain synth patches. Do you have any suggestions in regards those? I have omnisphere installed on my machine and it's the source of the samples I use for these experiments.

That Aphex Twin track fits what I described perfectly, from 3:52 we can clearly hear that sound and it's glorious.
I think the dubstep sound has that wobbly feel to it that makes it sound too unlike an actual instrument with a transient ad a sustain phase, like hitting a string. While it is distorted and sound uneasy, it's probably a different kind of flavor from what I want to xeriment with. Anyways, that Aphex Twin track will be super inspiring for me t start trying to figure out how to get a sound like that.

I was mostly talking about using something instead of a guitar to fulfill the guitar role instead of trying to turn the guitar itself into a synth sound. I also do a lot of transient shaping on distorted guitar tracks, I developed this weird method where I use an expander to recover the attack/transient on the already distorted guitar track (which is mostly clipped because that's how high gain amps sound). I use the DI to trigger it, so I sidechain the expander to the raw DI track which still has the original transients untouched. My goal with that technique is to be able to distort it a lot to get the weird harmonics that make it sound more dissonant but get back some of the transients that are inevitably lost in distortion. I find it helps breathe new life into the distorted tracks but it certainly sounds different than what we might be used to hear in big metal productions, which is a flat-lined wall of guitar with mostly constant volume. It's a subjective thing, so not better or worse, I'm sure that for many people it sounds worse. Here's a example of a metal record with unusually dynamic sounding guitar tracks, but in this case they just ended up sacrificing the gain and made the guitars less distorted, I just try to get a bit of both worlds (maybe unsuccessfully):

 

Last edited: Oct 27, 2024

Well it depends on what sort of sounds you are after.

This is one done by Ronald Jenkees

Here is his video with description of the sound (Hard Ramp AS1&2) on the Motif XS8.

I've used guitar sounds from Omnisphere and played a bit in Kontakt with Impact Soundworks Shreddage, but there are so many out there these days

 

To me those mostly sound like computerized "djent" guitars, which is not what I want, but it is a coherent answer with what I asked in the OP so thanks for taking the time to share it.

"Electronic music + guitars" is really not what I am looking for. What I am looking for is mostly "I want to write stuff that sounds metal but I am not allowed to use guitars. What can I use to fill that role, at least partially?".

 

Thanks for sharing that example. I'm not really trying to play guitar with a keyboard otherwise I can just play my actual guitar. I'm trying to remove the guitar and replace its role in the arrangement with something else.

 

Last edited: Oct 27, 2024

I like the way Add N to (X) does it, analog synths with proper riffs distorted but with live drums and tweaking the shit outta their gear.

 

Thanks, this is a great example!

 

A DI guitar has a pretty sharp attack, a specific decay phase (drops quickly a lot and takes longer to disappear completely) and only a few harmonics. If you reproduce this with a synth you should get pretty close.
B3s are useful if you make use of the volume pedal, which every good keyboarder does anyways with this instrument.

 

I used to do this all the time and almost anything through a fuzz box or dirty amp will sound awesome (remove long decays and reverb before fuzz). And I did a project recently using organs and electric pianos to replace guitar. Think Traffic, Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.

 

Aphex Twin "Come to Daddy" - 1997, and it still beats everything out there.

 

As others have mentioned. Dubstep genres can lend some ideas. I would check out newer sub genres, like riddim, featured here

Distorted Acid Synth is a big one. Check here at around 1:20

Also as some others have pointed out, Guitars, just bit crushed, distorted, chopped, re-pitched, just wrecked. Take inspo from Atari Teenage Riot featured here, or Prodigy even.

Methwitch, one of my all time favorite artist. Its just metal, but its crazy AF, another example of where guitars become something else. They are still guitars, but the extreme MB compression on the master, and the distortion / fx, turns the end user listening experience to something other than just metal.

 

Attack is very important (as a guitarist AND electro guy) as @No Avenger said.

Not all synths can be "punchy".
And you need some "organic" part (acoustic like) characteristic to NOT sound like a mechanical synth.

For effect :
I advice freeware OhmForce Ohmicide
https://www.ohmforce.com/plugins

And freeware Kombinat (both versions)
https://www.audiodamage.com/pages/free-and-legacy

With that, you go into the industrial sound easily.

For synths, try a bunch of freewares ;D

 

Try some NAM distortion and fuzz pedals ... https://tonehunt.org/models?filter=pedal

 

Thanks for the advice everyone, I really appreciate it. I'm going to keep studying to see if I can recreate something that has a similar vibe to a clean guitar DI sound and only work on the distortion part afterwards. I do have a huge dual rectifier that I use for my real guitars and I want to experiment with it before resorting to ITB distortion boxes.

I've been playing with the envelope filters for the amplification and I think I managed to get the transient right and decay close. I also added a pitch envelope that very slightly increases the pitch on the initial transient, like plucking a string, but made it almost unnoticeable. I also added a low pass filter that enters into effect after the transient, so follows an envelope as well.
I haven't yet managed to go from a synthesized sine to something that has the overtone series that sound "real". I tried adding the first three overtones of the series as harmony notes in the +12, +19 and +24 half-steps positions at really low volume, but it still sounds ultra fake.

I think I'm going to try to study a bit about physical modelling of plucked string sounds t see if I can get some ideas.

 

Last edited: Nov 2, 2024

I'm interested in this too. Keep us posted.
I experimented a bit some time ago but I quickly hit the wall @No Avenger and others have mentioned. The characteristics of DI e-guitar and its change after passing a metal-style amp are huge and complex. The palm mutes are a great example.

I guess most of us take it for granted, but remember your first time hearing a metal guitar DI. I think I was like 22 at the place of a friend who was a beginner guitarist. After 5 years of listening metal. I was like "WTF is this shit"?