As the title said, MusicLab seems offering more keyswitches for electric guitar techniques than other products (Ample Sound, Shreddage, Orange Tree) such as Bridge Mute, Pinch Harmonics, Tremolo, Trill, Reverse Bend, Fret Position, Violining, Feedback. So, I'm wondering if they also can do that.

 

Uhm, I don't know well enough the ones you mentioned but Electri6ity which is the one I eventually use can do those.

 

Yes, it has the biggest number of articulations. Although keep in mind that several of them are the same but processed in real time.

Of the ones you mention violining and reverse bend are perhaps the ones you can't find in, say, Shreddage ones. It has a full pick-scrape while most of the other virtual guitars have a few samples, though it's usually enough.

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2020

The Prominy libraries have pretty much any articulation an electric guitar is capable of doing, short of things that require an external force (i.e., E-bow, Gizomotron.) Wow, speaking of Gizmotron someone should do a library of that.

 

Yeah. Without looking, I seem to remember Prominy being the deepest.
I started off using MusicLab a good decade ago, got good with their products, but then discovered Prominy and Orange Tree; good results quicker with Orange Tree, but slightly more restrictive than MusicLab.
And then all the Ample Sound stuff.

i know all you who were guitarists originally as first instrument will be looking for the ultimate instrument, but just like orchestral strings, maybe we need a choice of guitar instruments to work from.

 

The strong point of Prominy libraries is that all the articulations are sampled. That means the chords, dyads, unisons are sampled, not two or more samples combined

But they still lack fret positioning (only have string selection), violining, tapping, reverse bend,...
Talking about V-Metal which I used quite a lot back in the day.

 

Thx! Could u tell which one require real time process? Did u find Shreddage offers more articulation than Ample Sound?

 

Prominy! I'll keep in mind.

 

Aha! Could u give me little bit more details of the difference between Orange Tree and MusicLab? I had hard time to understand to use Orange Tree stuff. So, I am curious how it gave you have quick results.
Plus, what do u think about Ample Sound? Do they have enough articulation? They seem offering pretty limited ones tho.

 

I use OTS and don't have issue's with RAM. I like the Shreddage Lite and use them more frequently for multiple tracks. I use an old i5 4th gen, never had problems with guitars and ram.

When it comes to Tremolo etc I use 3rd party plugs for whatever I need, most of the time I use DI for Shreddage and OTS and Amp Sims for the rest. THU/S-Gear etc... Even reverse bend I do through the DAW not Guitar sampling. I'm following thread now

 

Brilliant! This is the info what I wanted! Thank you!
Btw, do you think there are many differences between Shreddage 2 and 3? Ample Sound didn't progress so much except adding amp sims. As I guessed, Ample Sound has the least articulations. No wonder.
It's very interesting opinion. I've thought MusicLab is easiest to learn. I checked every Youtube walkthrough and had hard time to understand Ample Sound and Shreddage. There are not so many detailed walkthrough for Orange Tree and Ample Sound tho.

 

Last edited: Apr 21, 2020

My CPU is a Core2 Quad QX9650, released in 2008 and bought in 2010... 8GB RAM is the limit...

Yes, especially the new ones. The older ones have also some new articulations but these are also pre-processed from original samples. Typical example: making taping samples from Hammer-On/Pull-Off. Still, they sound great. They also added several features to program them that makes them very productive, at the cost of a bit slow GUI (again, in my Jurassic PC) and more RAM. And too big, it would fit all without having to buy a damned 2k monitor...
Also, the new ones are sampled on two or three pickup ositions.

Yeah, I don't know if the new ones (v3, like Shreddage) have more articulations but the strong point is the speed and incredibly good features for programming. Strummer, Riffer, Tab file player, exporting all the last three to MIDI... is a MIDI programming orgy. The effects are interesting along with the presets. Kontakt libs also have.

That's not usual, but it depends of your tastes and mindset. There's good videotuts in the same Ample Sound channel and the Impact sound Works Shreddage one. Oh wait, you should also check the HIFIMIDI YT channel for Ample Sound newest libraries.

 

Perhaps is because I didn't tweak it well. Also, it was the 8-String Dracus.

I forgot to mention that, the number of strings logically affects notably the RAM usage. Although they are variations Ample Sound and MusicLab are usually regular 6 string guitars, while Shreddage use to be 7-string (they just launched Hydra with 8). OTS had 6 and 8 string libraries almost from the start.

 

It's an interesting comparison but with sample libraries I think we're still well and truly at the stage of looking at the combination of ease of use, best sound and versatility rather than virtuosity. You still want the real thing there. We'll get there... one day.

If you're blasting them through some heavy settings then you can get away with a lot but the articulations become a little less important too. These things are fun to play with but, right now, the more realistic in terms of virtuosity you want the more momentous the data requirements. Personally I like Shreddage and OTS but as any guitarist knows (even awful ones like me) they take a lot of work to come close to sounding anything like something you can pump out with the real thing in minutes.

For non-guitarists with no access to talent (especially now) they could be great.
Regardless, I still really like em...

 

I'm noticed that MusicLab offers the best tutorials and Shreddage began to offer some decent tutorials. However, I haven't seen any good ones of Ample Sound. HifiMidi is one of my most watched channels, but it was not so intuitive like MusicLab's. I dunno. Everybody has different taste.

 

Well, I agree with you, especially the amount of articulation part for acoustic guitar, but electric guitar techniques many more than acoustic one. In order to make electric guitar sound real, those articulations are necessary.

 

I was a huge fan of Musiclab's stuff when it first came out. They're near-perfect for leads, mainly because of the variety of articulations. However, for rhythm guitars, they're not great, even though they can now do pickup switching, humanization and doubling (sort of). You still have to jump through hoops to switch from sustains to chords (which involves inserting actual MIDI CCs to flip from sustain mode to chord mode) and the doubling engine is extremely unwieldy. I wound up searching around for a better rhythm guitar and first settled on Electri6ity, which sounds great, except I've never been able to wade through the 8 billion settings to get a playable rhythm guitar sound.

Rule of thumb: I use Musiclab's RealStrat and RealLPC for leads, sometimes alternating with Orange Tree Samples' Rock Standard and Stratosphere (which actually sound more realistic than Musiclab's samples, but have different and sometimes less-varied articulations). I use Electri6ity for songs that require elaborate rhythm chord work, since it's a lot easier to articulate these chords than with other libraries. And for all around rhythm guitar (stuff that doesn't extend beyond regular power chords), I use any of the Shreddage 3 libraries, which are the simplest to use and can give you great rhythm guitar results fast. I've also heard some decent lead guitar stuff done with the Shreddage libraries. I also think there's a way to do more-elaborate chords with the Shreddage stuff, but I haven't really messed with that aspect of them yet.

 

I know that it's a bit out of topic, but did someone tested extensively physical modelled guitars like Xhun Iron Axe or Advanced Applied Acoustics Strum GS-2?

This because, no matter how the sample library is huge, I think that it's not possible to capture all nuances of a complex behaviour like that of a guitar.
Of course that's difficult also for a mathematical model, but if well programmed and with the aid of a good controller, it should be more convincing (IMO) and somtimes really impressive (like for SWAM).

 

That could be perfectly right, since I've never watched tutorials about MusicLab's. Now I get better the thing about the difficulty.