Great videos! I agree with all of the points you made here, and I love the direction you're going with this channel. I think more people need to learn about these tools, what they are, what they mean for artists and how to use them. However pertaining to one thing you said, the shreddage libraries only have DI samples in them, the "processed" presets are simply using the built in effects that exist within kontakt, if you refer to the "console" tab in hydra where you find the pickup faders, to the righ there are a number of drop down inserts where you can build your own signal chain. I wouldn't necessarily use this feature myself, much like you I'd prefer DI into 3rd party effects. But it is definitely handy for people who don't have any 3rd part amp sims. I made the mistake of purchasing Solemn tones Odin ii as my very first plugin with absolutely no idea I needed an amp sim plugin, luckily logic pro had a decent amount of useful plugins.
A side note I did actually directly contact the owner of Impact Soundworks with a very long list of implementations, improvements, and future instrument sampling ideas (you would probably agree with like the Ibanez M80M). I went covered details of a bunch of different topics many aligning with the topics brought up in this video, like having an artist series of libraries specifically sampling artists (like tosin abasi) their instrumetns, their fingers featuring and accentuating their techniques. The owner responded and seemed grateful for the suggestions I made, theres a strong chance we may be seeing a lot of these ideas in the future.
Thank you for the kind words! Yes that was what I was referring to with the presets. It's nice to have but I'd rather the time and effort be put into the instrument vs the tone. I do understand that someone may not have the 3rd party amps or anything. I personally just don't see the need to try and be a jack of all trades unless we got that absolutely flawless midi guitar. I'm glad they seem receptive. I've only ever sent them an email with a song I made but I haven't considered opening up a line of contact. As someone trying to bridge that gap between guitarist and someone programming guitar, I'd love to try and work directly with them on something.
Hello. About individual tuning of strings there is a way in kontakt to change the tuning of them individually. What you have to do: 1. Open the instrument edit mode. 2. In kontakt’s sidepanel go to expert>groups 3. Then you can filter the groups by string and adjust their tuning. By the way, do not touch the noise groups. Hope this helps!
Thank you! I'll have to look into that because I had no idea. When you're doing that are you pitch shifting them individually or are there additional samples?
Damn the tones on those audio samples! I need to figure out how to get mine to sound that good, it mostly just sounds like muddy farts when im doing things like palm mutes no matter what ampsim im using
I appreciate the kind words. Thank you! My guitar tone is actually very thin and crispy sounding on its own. Basically just a wall of sound in the mid to high mid range. The bass does all the heavy lifting to get a heavy sound. For programming, I do velocity for mutes based on how long it has to be held. For example if it's a slow breakdown where the notes are spaced pretty far apart, I will set velocities between 45-59 to get the most out of them. For the quick or more choked mutes will go all the way down to 1-25. Sometimes up to 35. A lot of the muting where it's going between mutes and sustain notes constantly are 30-45 velocity. In real life I have a very heavy picking hand but that sounds awful in shreddage. So, I tend to program lighter than you'd expect. If you have any demos, I'd gladly take a listen to try and help out or even take a look at the midi if you'd like.
Thank you! I manually write in the midi notes for everything. I don't own any midi hardware unfortunately. I've gotten pretty quick with penciling in the midi manually.
@@HollowHeart-Studio thats sick, i like how the riffs that you make just make sense in a musical way, usually when i write riffs it doesnt feel quite right, like im doing something wrong, but anyways keep up the good work 👍
@@nicolaslima3724 Thank you so much! I am more of a composer/vocalist than anything but I do play guitar, bass and drums. Me mirroring my physical ability with midi has definitely helped me out a lot but it does limit me a little on the creative end. I have only just started understanding how to write riffs a little beyond what I can play. I checked out the track you have on your channel and it sounds really good musically. I've always thought Odin sounded like an HD version of old Doom Midi guitar but your composition is great. When I hear people using Shreddage, most of what I am hearing that leads to the "bad" sound is just a lack of using all the articulations available or humanizing the velocity in non human ways.
@@HollowHeart-Studio oh i see, that explains the musicality in your ideas, i think thats is my struggle since i dont play any instrument, i dont necessarily know how a guitarist thinks, also thanks for checking my video! i really appreciate it, and yeah i used to use odin a lot, and i agree with it kinda being an hd version of old doom midi guitar XD since compared to shreddage, odin is way more limited and robotic in some aspects, thats why i ended up switching to shreddage
@@nicolaslima3724 I would have never guessed that you don't play an instrument. I've worked with a few vocalists like that and it's always been very clear that they just don't understand how the instruments work. Obviously a tech savvy guitar player could make shreddage sing but someone who doesn't even play guitar making something that sounds good is really impressive. I hope you're writing and getting some stuff done with shreddage because I bet you've got some great ideas! I started with shreddage 2 and it was too complicated for me but also sounded bad. I went to odin because it was easy but it was basically a distorted piano. It takes some practice and some listening to actual guitar tracks to get an understanding of what real playing sounds like. That and learning to work with shreddage's strengths vs trying to make the weaknesses sound good.
agree with alllll of this. i would kill for a good riff maker that you can drag the midi to your daw. and i also want far more round robins samples. i am thinking it would be perfect to have a system like ez drummer and ex bass does, but for shreddage. auto humanization based on note inputs. if and when toontrack releases EZ Guitar, i think it will kill shreddage sales because of this. I think if shreddage want to continue to make sales, they need to be the first to bring this out because toontrack does.
I 100% agree with you. I'd even add Submission Audio to the mix. After purchasing their Eurobass III, I think they'd absolutely crush a guitar VST if they wanted to. Right now, shreddage really does it best. Ezdrummer really turned midi drums around. I can imagine they could do the same with bass. While I love what shreddage has done for midi guitar, I feel like it just needs another big push. I also feel the tutorials and audio examples put out by impact leave a lot to be desired. It comes across as being a product for oldschool rock riff guys..the same guys that would say music is all laptops these days and they miss real music lol.
Thanks so much for this video, as well as all of your Shreddage-related videos! I just found your channel today, and I've been working with Shreddage Hydra for about a year and a half, now. I basically gave up on it, though, and started using other guitar VSTs instead. I'm trying to get back into Shreddage, though, after seeing what you have done and what others have done, as they do seem like they have the most realistic guitar sounds, overall. But I'm curious to see what you think of any other guitar VSTs. I have MusicLab RealLPC, UJAM Iron 2, Ample Metal Hellrazer, Electric Mint, and Riffage: Metal as my main other electric guitar VSTs. Do you know how any of these compare to Shreddage in terms of "realism"? From what I've heard and read, none of them quite come as close. I'm mostly asking to see if any of them are worth trying to learn in addition to Shreddage. Like, are they worth investing as much time into them. Shreddage is also a HUGE beast on my system, so that has been another deterring factor for me, as virtually all other guitar plugins I have are nowhere near as much of a resource hog for my setup. UJAM Iron 2, for example is INCREDIBLY easy to use, pretty lightweight, and for some basic power chord type rhythm parts it gets the job done. Not sure if the quality is that great, though? Metal: Riffage is cool, but can be challenging to create bass lines for it, since it's just a recording of a guitarist and you really have no idea what the exact notes are. I've also just started messing around with importing Guitar Pro tabs into Ample Metal Hellrazer, too, because I had the idea that maybe I could add more articulations through Guitar Pro and then AMH could play them more realistically using it's built-in tab reader. Seems to work fairly well, so far... but to my ears still not quite at the same realism as Shreddage. Still kind of messing around with that idea. Wouldn't it be wonderful if ISW added guitar pro tab reading functionality to shreaddge, too? I think the riffer in AMH is cool, too, but can be pretty random and not always as musical as I'd like. Which is sad, because it was one of the main selling points for me to buy it. I'm overall a little disappointed in AMH. As a guitarist I can come up with riffs, but trying to program them as MIDI is a whole other world. I've been back and forth on how much time I want to invest in making these guitar VSTs sound real VS just using them "lightly" (like Electric Mint, for example, which has pre-made patterns that are fine for rhythm) VS just playing the guitar myself. I guess it depends on the style you're going, for, though, as I'm not strictly into metal and have more to learn in terms of being a metal guitarist/guitar programmer. I find the premade sample parts sound okay, but are, unsurprising a little boring. Anyway, your songs sound awesome! Keep up the good work. I look forward to more videos from you in the future.
Thank you for the kind words! As far as other guitar VSTs, I have heard Ample Metal Hellrazer sounding decent but I've not tried any of those myself. I would say out of all midi guitars, shreddage hydra is the best I've heard overall when programmed well. The Ample Metal Hellrazer has to be a strong 2nd to it. The fact AMH has that guitar pro feature is amazing. I feel like shreddage would benefit from it heavily with how much shreddage can do. I love the idea of the UJAM and riffage but they just fall flat for me. I personally have a really hard time programming things that I can't actually play on guitar but I also cannot tab for the life of me. So, basically tracking a quick rough for an idea with a real guitar and then copying it exactly with shreddage is my move. After about a year of really working with shreddage, I am FINALLY able to program some things outside of my wheelhouse. Just like making drums or bass midi sound real..it takes a but but I recommend practicing. Try programming what tabs are saying exactly and over time you'll get a feel for it. Yes..as someone who can play guitar..it takes so much longer than just trying to track it a few times lol. I normally use the midi to demo an entire song, get a rough mix and then get feedback on the track. Since I didn't record anything beyond maybe some rough takes..it's no hassle to just re-arrange parts or build. Then if it's something where real guitar will replace it, I just send the midi to my guitarist and have him learn the track. Sometimes I even record a vid of shreddage playing so he can just see and tab it out from there. I'm not sure what kind of rig you are working with but my old rig and even my current are really not that great. Good enough to run 1 instance of shreddage, an amp sim and getgood drums lol but that is about it. I use to write in a stripped down project file with almost no mixing. Then I would export all of the raw audio from that, put it into a new project and mix it as if I was getting all the raws. That way I wouldn't be running multiple virtual instruments. I am able to run a lot more now so it's no big deal but that was my work around for a while. I always thought shreddage was a really odd product because it requires the knowledge of a guitarist to get the most out of it but a guitarist would normally just play guitar. So it seems odd. However, I like not changing my strings, recording tons of takes, practicing parts for days on end just for a demo and so on.. I also struggle with tendonitis in both hands. So, shreddage really lets me still make music without needing to involve others. If it wasn't so time consuming and in depth, I'd love to take time to build off of the ISW tutorials they put out. It's not out of the question for me but with a full time job and 3 musical projects..it's a lot haha
@@HollowHeart-Studio Thanks for the reply. I suffer from tendinitis sometimes, as well. I'm also not a bad guitarist, but I'm also probably never going to be able to play the types of riffs and solos that I could program Shreddage to play, either! I only have a 6-string Fender Strat with a humbucker in the bridge, at the moment, so not really getting close to the same as what a 7, 8, or 9 string guitar can do with that, too. I also am extremely busy with work, and sometimes even just playing an un-amplified electric guitar can make more noise than using a mouse and keyboard would, when I need to be a bit quieter. Not to mention... I can also just program the guitar in from anywhere, be that my living room or in the car, at a hotel, whatever, without needing a guitar, cables, interface, pick, tuning, etc. So to me virtual guitars are really an amazing accompanying tool to use, and I think those that look down upon them might be missing the big picture. I don't think they'll completely replace a real guitarist by any stretch, either. But I didn't expect to get into virtual guitars until I found Shreddage, really, and now that I've taken them on they are something that I can't really stop trying to get better at, yet still find them incredibly frustrating at other times. I seem to have the best luck with them when I layer them in with a bunch of other instruments, whether real or fake, or when I use more effects on them such as delays, chorus, reverbs. I tend to actually use RealLPC a lot because it's pretty intuitive and versatile, but many people seem to say it doesn't sound realistic enough. To my ears it sounds "pretty good," but that makes me question my own judgement, i guess. 😬 The instrumental music I've created tends to be more of a "retro" style, in the sense that to me it usually comes out sounding like 90's pop punk, classic rock, 80's new wave stuff, and even my attempts at metal have come out more like 80's thrash, in my opinion. Not an expert on metal, though. I'm not here to promote my channel or music, honestly, but if you feel like having a listen to some of what I've made, then please do check out some of my songs on my channel. Earlier this year I put up a ton of music that use a mix of pretty much all of the guitar VSTs I mentioned as well as some of my own real guitar playing, in various styles but mostly in pop punk, metal and electronic. I didn't put which VSTs I used in the description of them, though, so if you're curious about any of them let me know and I can tell you what I used for a particular sound. I'm curious how you translate your actual guitar playing into Shreddage. Do you record a scratch track and then use the DAW to determine what notes were played? I ask because you mentioned you don't like to tab. I don't like tabbing either. Tabbing everything and trying to humanize everything has really been the biggest deterrent to fully-utilizing all of the electric guitar VST stuff, for me. I'm using an M1 macbook air which normally handles things pretty well, but I was dumb and didn't upgrade the RAM to 16 GB and only have 8 and am stuck with that. Yeah, when I use Shreddage it's pretty much just Shreddage + drums, and maybe 1-3 more plugins going at a time. The price you pay for the bigger library, I guess. I could talk about this stuff all day as I'm pretty much really wrapped up in a lot, lately. If i had any sort of social life I'd never be able to get any music done, haha. We'd all love to see more tutorial style videos from you, if you can find the time! There are a decent amount of videos on CZcams about these guitar VSTs, but it can be really hard to find one that really answers the exact questions I might have. But it's great that we can bounce ideas and tips off each other in the comments, at least. I'll let you know how the AMH + Guitar Pro tabs thing works out once I mess around with it some more. Thanks again.
@@decentviews sounds like you actually went the same exact direction as me with midi guitar and how you feel about it haha. I didn't intend on it taking over my playing or anything. If anything I had some money to spend while shreddage was on sale. I figured I'd try it out to just make some bad midi demos and I got sucked in haha. So same deal here. I think getting better with the midi guitar is more worth it to me. I'm fine at playing but I'm actually more of a composer/vocalist. Singing is my main thing and I just play guitar as a ways to get instrumentals to sing over haha. It does suck that midi guitar gets shot down more than any other virtual instrument. I've said it before and I'll say it again..some of my midi tracks sound more like real guitar than the stuff I've heard tracked by a real player live and then edited heavily. If we can edit guitars to the point that they are flawless, why not program them too? I'll definitely check out your stuff. I have been wanting to hear people's midi work or even cracking into the midi files to give feedback. If I had more of an active following, I'd ask people to submit their tracks for me go through in videos. Give feedback, make edits to the midi live and what not. Definitely would like to keep it light and just helpful because it's hard enough putting yourself out there. For going from guitar to the daw, I might be a bit odd or maybe it's because I play other instruments and sing as well. I normally just jam on real guitar directly into the daw. I let it record while I'm just playing to a click. If I like anything, I just midi it in by ear. If I hear a note, I can normally figure out what note it is. If I have my guitar still on me, I can figure out the placement of it too. Normally with shreddage I'll force the string to match what I am playing or can play. I try to not program things I can't play. Kind of like how you won't program drums where the guy would need 3 arms to play it. Sometimes the samples just don't sound good where they're suppose to be so I will override that realistic mindset for the sake of the sound. I'm not much of a computer guy but I do know I'm on a pc with 16gb of ram and there's no issue there but my CPU is getting slammed so hard that I can't screen capture what I'm working on. That's why a lot of my videos either don't have screen recording or it's from my phone lol. My best guess is you're probably needing more ram because of how big shreddage is. Unfortunately not much we can work around with that one. It's always good to chat with people about this stuff because it feels so niche to me. I am probably going to start with videos of me playing a riff live or an idea live and transferring that to midi. Then uploading the midi for everyone to follow along. Not exactly a direct tutorial but you could at least see how I'm going about the process. Everyone is in a different spot when it comes to their instrument, program, daw and music theory. Unfortunately, I'm a terrible teacher haha. It's much easier to answer a specific question relevant to my video. There's probably a handful of things that I could still learn or am doing wrong.
@@decentviews I honestly think your compositions are good. Your style actually reminds me of the menu music to feel good video games like the sims (love the sims) or something like Spyro. From a programming perspective you would benefit a lot from utilizing the articulations more. I can't tell what your midi looks like but I'm not hearing the subtle bends, slides, hand swipes, dead notes or rakes. It's hard not being more specific for you but if you haven't already. I highly recommend watching the tutorials ISW put out, get a very small section of an already existing song that has a lot of flair to it and practice recreating that with shreddage. As far as your writing goes, your composition is great and I wouldn't even make a suggestion.
@@HollowHeart-Studio I 100% agree with you about the bit where you said about editing guitars... Pretty much all musical recordings utilize some degree of manipulation to get the sounds we hear. Even using something like a guitar amp is essentially changing the "natural" sound of a guitar. To those that can be snobby, I say "it's just music," and you can like it or not. The Beatles put "Revolution 9" on the White album... I never listen to it, but some people probably do... You can probably tune a bunch of car horns and babies crying and cats fighting and make a beautiful song out of it, if that's your thing. haha. So why now be allowed to use what essentially is just REAL guitar that has been recorded meticulously over and over again, that was then put into a nice little program that some really smart computer-minded people put together? It's like a modern day mellotron. It's kind of like you said in your tips video, I believe: The virtual guitar (Shreddage) is just a really dumb guitarist that you have to tell EXACTLY what to play. The sound is still real guitar, though, to an extent. That work flows sounds like a good workflow. I'm pretty much working with midi first these days, but occasionally it's guitar first. Totally understand what you mean by wanting it to sound like a real person could play it. That's generally a great rule to follow. I wish I was better about matching things just by ear... it definitely makes it easier, I'd think. Thanks for taking the time to listen to and review one of my songs! That's awesome :) Do you know which song it was that you listened to? My songs are kind of all over the place so it's a little hard for me to apply what you said if I'm not sure what it was I was playing, haha. I can definitely agree and say that anything that I've used Shreddage on is certainly lacking in all of the minute details, like you said. I think my musical side of my mind is more focused on the overall composition and I can get a little overwhelmed when I try to "go big" on the guitar parts via programming. I've watched a couple videos from ISW, but I think the thing about those videos to me is that they don't really show it in a way that I'm looking for, exactly. It's hard to pinpoint why, though. for whatever reason it just "sounds" complicated to me when I watch them, even though i pretty much already know what they're saying. And then style of music they usually are using doesn't quite match my exact style either, so I kind of have to translate what they're saying or make a mental note of stuff that I'm probably not going to use as often as others. I think if I really felt inclined to make djenty/modern prog metal type stuff I could focus on it, but I'm not skilled enough in how a real guitarist does that yet. I made a playlist for that, though. For what I've always made musically and what I still do overall, I really just want a good realistic STRUMMING sound, mostly. Like some really expressive power chord palm muting that doesn't sound so robotic or grating and thin... and then, of course, leads and solos that sound amazing... but that definitely takes putting in the work! The virtual guitarist community is pretty niche, overall. Hard to find anyone to give feedback, so thanks again! Original music is very hard to have any success with these days. Thank you for the compliment on the composition portion :) I've listened to your songs and I think they sound great. The guitar is very realistic to the point that I would believe you if you said it was real. I don't listen to a ton of music in your style, but i can honestly say that I think it is good and the vocals sound great too. I love the mix of screaming and clean vocals. I have a couple songs that I sing on up, too... but I'm not much of a singer... I basically tried to do a Danzig/Elvis impression to get my "goth metal" voice for the songs i sing on haha. But yeah, I really couldn't offer much in terms of advice for "Human". Even the mix and production sounds great. My main suggestion.... release more songs :) :) And Shreddage videos. 🙃
a built in riff editor is sadly not in isw's interest, i've suggested it a few times in their server and they said it's likely not going to be added. shreddage also does not contain any double tracked samples. neither do most virtual guitars. what they do is take neighbouring round robins and pitch shift them around and mess with the phase to get that sound. shreddages main issues in my opinion is the lack of pick up and play. even with amping with external vsts, the built in patch sucks and straight up has attack built into each sample. i'd love to see multiple patches that already tune up what's inside of tact to sound better than to have to manually adjust it every time depending on the context i want to use. i just also want to mention how pointless the new shreddage 3 update honestly is... it added one new feature and that was midi keyboard mode where the fretting algorithm is ignored to be able to play on a piano. it just made the ui even harder to read and understand in reality
Man that sucks about the riff thing because they did drop a product that seems like they heard that request and wanted to do something. It just isn't really what you'd expect. Also sad to hear about the samples. I don't know anything about the inner workings but I really wanted to have 2 guitar sample pools that do not pull from each other or phase with each other. I 100% agree about the pick up and play. I feel like it would make sense to have people who use the product test it and help create patches like companies do for amp sims. I don't know how any of the inner workings operate. So, I'm just putting the wants out there. Maybe we'll see a different company take on virtual guitar at that level but try to fill in the gaps shreddage leaves. I've tried other midi guitars but they feel slightly behind shreddage 3. I try to keep to the positives because I understand there's real people who work really hard on these things. They're doing a lot that I couldn't even begin to understand and I really appreciate it. That being said, I don't like the new update either. I hate that I have to use the old version just to continue using it as I was. I followed their tutorials and advise for making the new update match the old but it completely broke for me. Nothing in there worked for me but I may be in the minority with how I program guitars.
@@HollowHeart-Studio the new update is... yea im not going to sugarcoat it... completely useless, awful, and pointless. i've never seen a single person actually use the strum feature once to this day even in the demos unless they were made by andrew versa himself. the entire engine's inner workings themselves is... i will put it as lightly as possible... questionable. they are byproducts of what is basically a century old programming engine that has no business or right to even be used yet due to ni's monopoly, kontakt will still be the prefered way. the only way i'd say... half these features maybe added is if they just abandon kontakt all together and just use juce from the ground up oh and fun fact, s2 compared to s3 is actually lacking in features. s2 is drop g, s3 is drop a. despite the fact there is a drop g sample in the original shreddage 2, it's missing in jupiter. same with legacy as well that's a whole other pathetic can of worms to open though considering just how bad legacy really just is with only half the original sample pool being used and then simply being stretched and manipulated in melodyne and a sample editor. it's a pathetic joke that's being sold for 100 us dollars. i like isw's products a lot, don't get me wrong. i literally bought every version of shreddage in a big summer sale. but their recent new products and updates are disappointing at best, and at worst scam worthy
@@snesmocha Other than myself, I haven't seen anyone using the strum feature either. It's really hard to get sounding right and I find myself continuously playing back the midi until I get a good take vs it being reliable. I think it's going to take some folks that care as much about midi guitar as the drum sample libraries we're getting now. The 3.5 update was useless for me and only introduced more issues. I've actually been wanting the telecaster because that's my favorite type of guitar but it's on that 3.5 update. I also ended up deleting shreddage abyss because it was the worst performing midi bass I've used. Still a fan of ISW but everything I've used feels so close but just not fully cooked.
@@HollowHeart-Studio just as a warning. telos frankly sounds more like a strat than a tele... it sounds way too twangy to be a tele. had to eventually pre eq the entire guitar by upping the bass by like 5db and then cutting the highs to make it remotely sound like a tele you can also directly force playback via turning on omni midi detection then using midi guitar mode which let you assign each string according to the midi channel. its how i get good results even with sucky engines like amples. though it's tedious, it's well worth the results as 100% accurate fret playback is better than the fret engine commiting death if it reaches too far from the string. abyss' only purpose is really that it has extremely low level control over the direct playback of the strings. it otherwise sounds frankly awful at times. it takes a lot of work getting it sounding good. which is possibly the main thing i've been especially disappointed with isw as of late. the time it takes to get something sounding remotely good with their products. i've had to learn their tact engine to fully grasp how to get a good guitar sound out of their shreddage lineup, i made dozens of preset performance presets only for them to be thrown out cause of the 3.5 engine.
Great videos! I agree with all of the points you made here, and I love the direction you're going with this channel. I think more people need to learn about these tools, what they are, what they mean for artists and how to use them. However pertaining to one thing you said, the shreddage libraries only have DI samples in them, the "processed" presets are simply using the built in effects that exist within kontakt, if you refer to the "console" tab in hydra where you find the pickup faders, to the righ there are a number of drop down inserts where you can build your own signal chain. I wouldn't necessarily use this feature myself, much like you I'd prefer DI into 3rd party effects. But it is definitely handy for people who don't have any 3rd part amp sims. I made the mistake of purchasing Solemn tones Odin ii as my very first plugin with absolutely no idea I needed an amp sim plugin, luckily logic pro had a decent amount of useful plugins.
A side note I did actually directly contact the owner of Impact Soundworks with a very long list of implementations, improvements, and future instrument sampling ideas (you would probably agree with like the Ibanez M80M). I went covered details of a bunch of different topics many aligning with the topics brought up in this video, like having an artist series of libraries specifically sampling artists (like tosin abasi) their instrumetns, their fingers featuring and accentuating their techniques. The owner responded and seemed grateful for the suggestions I made, theres a strong chance we may be seeing a lot of these ideas in the future.
Thank you for the kind words!
Yes that was what I was referring to with the presets. It's nice to have but I'd rather the time and effort be put into the instrument vs the tone. I do understand that someone may not have the 3rd party amps or anything. I personally just don't see the need to try and be a jack of all trades unless we got that absolutely flawless midi guitar.
I'm glad they seem receptive. I've only ever sent them an email with a song I made but I haven't considered opening up a line of contact. As someone trying to bridge that gap between guitarist and someone programming guitar, I'd love to try and work directly with them on something.
the DI idea 100
Hello. About individual tuning of strings there is a way in kontakt to change the tuning of them individually.
What you have to do:
1. Open the instrument edit mode.
2. In kontakt’s sidepanel go to expert>groups
3. Then you can filter the groups by string and adjust their tuning.
By the way, do not touch the noise groups. Hope this helps!
Thank you! I'll have to look into that because I had no idea. When you're doing that are you pitch shifting them individually or are there additional samples?
Wow, I never knew you could do that. I'll have to take a look into that myself as well!
@@HollowHeart-Studio i am sure it is just artificial pitch shifting
@@joly3771 ah I see. I can imagine there isn't a bunch of hidden samples haha. That's still really helpful information though.
@@HollowHeart-Studio No problem!
I really wish they could make it so you could use thw fretboard and click to hear and see which notes and it dump the keyswitch that way too.
Actually, I agree 100%. I love that idea. Sometimes being able to click the visual like in a drum vst is pretty helpful.
Damn the tones on those audio samples! I need to figure out how to get mine to sound that good, it mostly just sounds like muddy farts when im doing things like palm mutes no matter what ampsim im using
I appreciate the kind words. Thank you! My guitar tone is actually very thin and crispy sounding on its own. Basically just a wall of sound in the mid to high mid range. The bass does all the heavy lifting to get a heavy sound. For programming, I do velocity for mutes based on how long it has to be held. For example if it's a slow breakdown where the notes are spaced pretty far apart, I will set velocities between 45-59 to get the most out of them. For the quick or more choked mutes will go all the way down to 1-25. Sometimes up to 35. A lot of the muting where it's going between mutes and sustain notes constantly are 30-45 velocity. In real life I have a very heavy picking hand but that sounds awful in shreddage. So, I tend to program lighter than you'd expect. If you have any demos, I'd gladly take a listen to try and help out or even take a look at the midi if you'd like.
man your programming is so good, do you make all of these only writing the midi note by note? or do you actually play it using a midi keyboard?
Thank you! I manually write in the midi notes for everything. I don't own any midi hardware unfortunately. I've gotten pretty quick with penciling in the midi manually.
@@HollowHeart-Studio thats sick, i like how the riffs that you make just make sense in a musical way, usually when i write riffs it doesnt feel quite right, like im doing something wrong, but anyways keep up the good work 👍
@@nicolaslima3724 Thank you so much! I am more of a composer/vocalist than anything but I do play guitar, bass and drums. Me mirroring my physical ability with midi has definitely helped me out a lot but it does limit me a little on the creative end. I have only just started understanding how to write riffs a little beyond what I can play. I checked out the track you have on your channel and it sounds really good musically. I've always thought Odin sounded like an HD version of old Doom Midi guitar but your composition is great. When I hear people using Shreddage, most of what I am hearing that leads to the "bad" sound is just a lack of using all the articulations available or humanizing the velocity in non human ways.
@@HollowHeart-Studio oh i see, that explains the musicality in your ideas, i think thats is my struggle since i dont play any instrument, i dont necessarily know how a guitarist thinks, also thanks for checking my video! i really appreciate it, and yeah i used to use odin a lot, and i agree with it kinda being an hd version of old doom midi guitar XD since compared to shreddage, odin is way more limited and robotic in some aspects, thats why i ended up switching to shreddage
@@nicolaslima3724 I would have never guessed that you don't play an instrument. I've worked with a few vocalists like that and it's always been very clear that they just don't understand how the instruments work. Obviously a tech savvy guitar player could make shreddage sing but someone who doesn't even play guitar making something that sounds good is really impressive. I hope you're writing and getting some stuff done with shreddage because I bet you've got some great ideas!
I started with shreddage 2 and it was too complicated for me but also sounded bad. I went to odin because it was easy but it was basically a distorted piano. It takes some practice and some listening to actual guitar tracks to get an understanding of what real playing sounds like. That and learning to work with shreddage's strengths vs trying to make the weaknesses sound good.
agree with alllll of this. i would kill for a good riff maker that you can drag the midi to your daw. and i also want far more round robins samples. i am thinking it would be perfect to have a system like ez drummer and ex bass does, but for shreddage. auto humanization based on note inputs. if and when toontrack releases EZ Guitar, i think it will kill shreddage sales because of this. I think if shreddage want to continue to make sales, they need to be the first to bring this out because toontrack does.
I 100% agree with you. I'd even add Submission Audio to the mix. After purchasing their Eurobass III, I think they'd absolutely crush a guitar VST if they wanted to. Right now, shreddage really does it best. Ezdrummer really turned midi drums around. I can imagine they could do the same with bass. While I love what shreddage has done for midi guitar, I feel like it just needs another big push. I also feel the tutorials and audio examples put out by impact leave a lot to be desired. It comes across as being a product for oldschool rock riff guys..the same guys that would say music is all laptops these days and they miss real music lol.
Thanks so much for this video, as well as all of your Shreddage-related videos! I just found your channel today, and I've been working with Shreddage Hydra for about a year and a half, now. I basically gave up on it, though, and started using other guitar VSTs instead. I'm trying to get back into Shreddage, though, after seeing what you have done and what others have done, as they do seem like they have the most realistic guitar sounds, overall. But I'm curious to see what you think of any other guitar VSTs. I have MusicLab RealLPC, UJAM Iron 2, Ample Metal Hellrazer, Electric Mint, and Riffage: Metal as my main other electric guitar VSTs. Do you know how any of these compare to Shreddage in terms of "realism"? From what I've heard and read, none of them quite come as close. I'm mostly asking to see if any of them are worth trying to learn in addition to Shreddage. Like, are they worth investing as much time into them. Shreddage is also a HUGE beast on my system, so that has been another deterring factor for me, as virtually all other guitar plugins I have are nowhere near as much of a resource hog for my setup. UJAM Iron 2, for example is INCREDIBLY easy to use, pretty lightweight, and for some basic power chord type rhythm parts it gets the job done. Not sure if the quality is that great, though? Metal: Riffage is cool, but can be challenging to create bass lines for it, since it's just a recording of a guitarist and you really have no idea what the exact notes are. I've also just started messing around with importing Guitar Pro tabs into Ample Metal Hellrazer, too, because I had the idea that maybe I could add more articulations through Guitar Pro and then AMH could play them more realistically using it's built-in tab reader. Seems to work fairly well, so far... but to my ears still not quite at the same realism as Shreddage. Still kind of messing around with that idea. Wouldn't it be wonderful if ISW added guitar pro tab reading functionality to shreaddge, too? I think the riffer in AMH is cool, too, but can be pretty random and not always as musical as I'd like. Which is sad, because it was one of the main selling points for me to buy it. I'm overall a little disappointed in AMH. As a guitarist I can come up with riffs, but trying to program them as MIDI is a whole other world. I've been back and forth on how much time I want to invest in making these guitar VSTs sound real VS just using them "lightly" (like Electric Mint, for example, which has pre-made patterns that are fine for rhythm) VS just playing the guitar myself. I guess it depends on the style you're going, for, though, as I'm not strictly into metal and have more to learn in terms of being a metal guitarist/guitar programmer. I find the premade sample parts sound okay, but are, unsurprising a little boring. Anyway, your songs sound awesome! Keep up the good work. I look forward to more videos from you in the future.
Thank you for the kind words!
As far as other guitar VSTs, I have heard Ample Metal Hellrazer sounding decent but I've not tried any of those myself. I would say out of all midi guitars, shreddage hydra is the best I've heard overall when programmed well. The Ample Metal Hellrazer has to be a strong 2nd to it. The fact AMH has that guitar pro feature is amazing. I feel like shreddage would benefit from it heavily with how much shreddage can do. I love the idea of the UJAM and riffage but they just fall flat for me.
I personally have a really hard time programming things that I can't actually play on guitar but I also cannot tab for the life of me. So, basically tracking a quick rough for an idea with a real guitar and then copying it exactly with shreddage is my move. After about a year of really working with shreddage, I am FINALLY able to program some things outside of my wheelhouse.
Just like making drums or bass midi sound real..it takes a but but I recommend practicing. Try programming what tabs are saying exactly and over time you'll get a feel for it. Yes..as someone who can play guitar..it takes so much longer than just trying to track it a few times lol. I normally use the midi to demo an entire song, get a rough mix and then get feedback on the track. Since I didn't record anything beyond maybe some rough takes..it's no hassle to just re-arrange parts or build. Then if it's something where real guitar will replace it, I just send the midi to my guitarist and have him learn the track. Sometimes I even record a vid of shreddage playing so he can just see and tab it out from there.
I'm not sure what kind of rig you are working with but my old rig and even my current are really not that great. Good enough to run 1 instance of shreddage, an amp sim and getgood drums lol but that is about it. I use to write in a stripped down project file with almost no mixing. Then I would export all of the raw audio from that, put it into a new project and mix it as if I was getting all the raws. That way I wouldn't be running multiple virtual instruments. I am able to run a lot more now so it's no big deal but that was my work around for a while.
I always thought shreddage was a really odd product because it requires the knowledge of a guitarist to get the most out of it but a guitarist would normally just play guitar. So it seems odd. However, I like not changing my strings, recording tons of takes, practicing parts for days on end just for a demo and so on.. I also struggle with tendonitis in both hands. So, shreddage really lets me still make music without needing to involve others.
If it wasn't so time consuming and in depth, I'd love to take time to build off of the ISW tutorials they put out. It's not out of the question for me but with a full time job and 3 musical projects..it's a lot haha
@@HollowHeart-Studio Thanks for the reply. I suffer from tendinitis sometimes, as well. I'm also not a bad guitarist, but I'm also probably never going to be able to play the types of riffs and solos that I could program Shreddage to play, either! I only have a 6-string Fender Strat with a humbucker in the bridge, at the moment, so not really getting close to the same as what a 7, 8, or 9 string guitar can do with that, too. I also am extremely busy with work, and sometimes even just playing an un-amplified electric guitar can make more noise than using a mouse and keyboard would, when I need to be a bit quieter. Not to mention... I can also just program the guitar in from anywhere, be that my living room or in the car, at a hotel, whatever, without needing a guitar, cables, interface, pick, tuning, etc. So to me virtual guitars are really an amazing accompanying tool to use, and I think those that look down upon them might be missing the big picture. I don't think they'll completely replace a real guitarist by any stretch, either.
But I didn't expect to get into virtual guitars until I found Shreddage, really, and now that I've taken them on they are something that I can't really stop trying to get better at, yet still find them incredibly frustrating at other times. I seem to have the best luck with them when I layer them in with a bunch of other instruments, whether real or fake, or when I use more effects on them such as delays, chorus, reverbs. I tend to actually use RealLPC a lot because it's pretty intuitive and versatile, but many people seem to say it doesn't sound realistic enough. To my ears it sounds "pretty good," but that makes me question my own judgement, i guess. 😬
The instrumental music I've created tends to be more of a "retro" style, in the sense that to me it usually comes out sounding like 90's pop punk, classic rock, 80's new wave stuff, and even my attempts at metal have come out more like 80's thrash, in my opinion. Not an expert on metal, though. I'm not here to promote my channel or music, honestly, but if you feel like having a listen to some of what I've made, then please do check out some of my songs on my channel. Earlier this year I put up a ton of music that use a mix of pretty much all of the guitar VSTs I mentioned as well as some of my own real guitar playing, in various styles but mostly in pop punk, metal and electronic. I didn't put which VSTs I used in the description of them, though, so if you're curious about any of them let me know and I can tell you what I used for a particular sound.
I'm curious how you translate your actual guitar playing into Shreddage. Do you record a scratch track and then use the DAW to determine what notes were played? I ask because you mentioned you don't like to tab. I don't like tabbing either. Tabbing everything and trying to humanize everything has really been the biggest deterrent to fully-utilizing all of the electric guitar VST stuff, for me. I'm using an M1 macbook air which normally handles things pretty well, but I was dumb and didn't upgrade the RAM to 16 GB and only have 8 and am stuck with that. Yeah, when I use Shreddage it's pretty much just Shreddage + drums, and maybe 1-3 more plugins going at a time. The price you pay for the bigger library, I guess.
I could talk about this stuff all day as I'm pretty much really wrapped up in a lot, lately. If i had any sort of social life I'd never be able to get any music done, haha. We'd all love to see more tutorial style videos from you, if you can find the time! There are a decent amount of videos on CZcams about these guitar VSTs, but it can be really hard to find one that really answers the exact questions I might have. But it's great that we can bounce ideas and tips off each other in the comments, at least. I'll let you know how the AMH + Guitar Pro tabs thing works out once I mess around with it some more. Thanks again.
@@decentviews sounds like you actually went the same exact direction as me with midi guitar and how you feel about it haha. I didn't intend on it taking over my playing or anything. If anything I had some money to spend while shreddage was on sale. I figured I'd try it out to just make some bad midi demos and I got sucked in haha. So same deal here. I think getting better with the midi guitar is more worth it to me. I'm fine at playing but I'm actually more of a composer/vocalist. Singing is my main thing and I just play guitar as a ways to get instrumentals to sing over haha.
It does suck that midi guitar gets shot down more than any other virtual instrument. I've said it before and I'll say it again..some of my midi tracks sound more like real guitar than the stuff I've heard tracked by a real player live and then edited heavily. If we can edit guitars to the point that they are flawless, why not program them too?
I'll definitely check out your stuff. I have been wanting to hear people's midi work or even cracking into the midi files to give feedback. If I had more of an active following, I'd ask people to submit their tracks for me go through in videos. Give feedback, make edits to the midi live and what not. Definitely would like to keep it light and just helpful because it's hard enough putting yourself out there.
For going from guitar to the daw, I might be a bit odd or maybe it's because I play other instruments and sing as well. I normally just jam on real guitar directly into the daw. I let it record while I'm just playing to a click. If I like anything, I just midi it in by ear. If I hear a note, I can normally figure out what note it is. If I have my guitar still on me, I can figure out the placement of it too.
Normally with shreddage I'll force the string to match what I am playing or can play. I try to not program things I can't play. Kind of like how you won't program drums where the guy would need 3 arms to play it. Sometimes the samples just don't sound good where they're suppose to be so I will override that realistic mindset for the sake of the sound.
I'm not much of a computer guy but I do know I'm on a pc with 16gb of ram and there's no issue there but my CPU is getting slammed so hard that I can't screen capture what I'm working on. That's why a lot of my videos either don't have screen recording or it's from my phone lol. My best guess is you're probably needing more ram because of how big shreddage is. Unfortunately not much we can work around with that one.
It's always good to chat with people about this stuff because it feels so niche to me. I am probably going to start with videos of me playing a riff live or an idea live and transferring that to midi. Then uploading the midi for everyone to follow along. Not exactly a direct tutorial but you could at least see how I'm going about the process. Everyone is in a different spot when it comes to their instrument, program, daw and music theory. Unfortunately, I'm a terrible teacher haha. It's much easier to answer a specific question relevant to my video. There's probably a handful of things that I could still learn or am doing wrong.
@@decentviews I honestly think your compositions are good. Your style actually reminds me of the menu music to feel good video games like the sims (love the sims) or something like Spyro. From a programming perspective you would benefit a lot from utilizing the articulations more. I can't tell what your midi looks like but I'm not hearing the subtle bends, slides, hand swipes, dead notes or rakes.
It's hard not being more specific for you but if you haven't already. I highly recommend watching the tutorials ISW put out, get a very small section of an already existing song that has a lot of flair to it and practice recreating that with shreddage.
As far as your writing goes, your composition is great and I wouldn't even make a suggestion.
@@HollowHeart-Studio I 100% agree with you about the bit where you said about editing guitars... Pretty much all musical recordings utilize some degree of manipulation to get the sounds we hear. Even using something like a guitar amp is essentially changing the "natural" sound of a guitar. To those that can be snobby, I say "it's just music," and you can like it or not. The Beatles put "Revolution 9" on the White album... I never listen to it, but some people probably do... You can probably tune a bunch of car horns and babies crying and cats fighting and make a beautiful song out of it, if that's your thing. haha. So why now be allowed to use what essentially is just REAL guitar that has been recorded meticulously over and over again, that was then put into a nice little program that some really smart computer-minded people put together? It's like a modern day mellotron. It's kind of like you said in your tips video, I believe: The virtual guitar (Shreddage) is just a really dumb guitarist that you have to tell EXACTLY what to play. The sound is still real guitar, though, to an extent.
That work flows sounds like a good workflow. I'm pretty much working with midi first these days, but occasionally it's guitar first. Totally understand what you mean by wanting it to sound like a real person could play it. That's generally a great rule to follow. I wish I was better about matching things just by ear... it definitely makes it easier, I'd think.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to and review one of my songs! That's awesome :) Do you know which song it was that you listened to? My songs are kind of all over the place so it's a little hard for me to apply what you said if I'm not sure what it was I was playing, haha. I can definitely agree and say that anything that I've used Shreddage on is certainly lacking in all of the minute details, like you said. I think my musical side of my mind is more focused on the overall composition and I can get a little overwhelmed when I try to "go big" on the guitar parts via programming. I've watched a couple videos from ISW, but I think the thing about those videos to me is that they don't really show it in a way that I'm looking for, exactly. It's hard to pinpoint why, though. for whatever reason it just "sounds" complicated to me when I watch them, even though i pretty much already know what they're saying. And then style of music they usually are using doesn't quite match my exact style either, so I kind of have to translate what they're saying or make a mental note of stuff that I'm probably not going to use as often as others. I think if I really felt inclined to make djenty/modern prog metal type stuff I could focus on it, but I'm not skilled enough in how a real guitarist does that yet. I made a playlist for that, though. For what I've always made musically and what I still do overall, I really just want a good realistic STRUMMING sound, mostly. Like some really expressive power chord palm muting that doesn't sound so robotic or grating and thin... and then, of course, leads and solos that sound amazing... but that definitely takes putting in the work!
The virtual guitarist community is pretty niche, overall. Hard to find anyone to give feedback, so thanks again! Original music is very hard to have any success with these days. Thank you for the compliment on the composition portion :) I've listened to your songs and I think they sound great. The guitar is very realistic to the point that I would believe you if you said it was real. I don't listen to a ton of music in your style, but i can honestly say that I think it is good and the vocals sound great too. I love the mix of screaming and clean vocals. I have a couple songs that I sing on up, too... but I'm not much of a singer... I basically tried to do a Danzig/Elvis impression to get my "goth metal" voice for the songs i sing on haha. But yeah, I really couldn't offer much in terms of advice for "Human". Even the mix and production sounds great. My main suggestion.... release more songs :) :) And Shreddage videos. 🙃
a built in riff editor is sadly not in isw's interest, i've suggested it a few times in their server and they said it's likely not going to be added. shreddage also does not contain any double tracked samples. neither do most virtual guitars. what they do is take neighbouring round robins and pitch shift them around and mess with the phase to get that sound. shreddages main issues in my opinion is the lack of pick up and play. even with amping with external vsts, the built in patch sucks and straight up has attack built into each sample. i'd love to see multiple patches that already tune up what's inside of tact to sound better than to have to manually adjust it every time depending on the context i want to use.
i just also want to mention how pointless the new shreddage 3 update honestly is... it added one new feature and that was midi keyboard mode where the fretting algorithm is ignored to be able to play on a piano. it just made the ui even harder to read and understand in reality
Man that sucks about the riff thing because they did drop a product that seems like they heard that request and wanted to do something. It just isn't really what you'd expect. Also sad to hear about the samples. I don't know anything about the inner workings but I really wanted to have 2 guitar sample pools that do not pull from each other or phase with each other. I 100% agree about the pick up and play. I feel like it would make sense to have people who use the product test it and help create patches like companies do for amp sims. I don't know how any of the inner workings operate. So, I'm just putting the wants out there. Maybe we'll see a different company take on virtual guitar at that level but try to fill in the gaps shreddage leaves. I've tried other midi guitars but they feel slightly behind shreddage 3.
I try to keep to the positives because I understand there's real people who work really hard on these things. They're doing a lot that I couldn't even begin to understand and I really appreciate it. That being said, I don't like the new update either. I hate that I have to use the old version just to continue using it as I was. I followed their tutorials and advise for making the new update match the old but it completely broke for me. Nothing in there worked for me but I may be in the minority with how I program guitars.
@@HollowHeart-Studio the new update is... yea im not going to sugarcoat it... completely useless, awful, and pointless. i've never seen a single person actually use the strum feature once to this day even in the demos unless they were made by andrew versa himself. the entire engine's inner workings themselves is... i will put it as lightly as possible... questionable. they are byproducts of what is basically a century old programming engine that has no business or right to even be used yet due to ni's monopoly, kontakt will still be the prefered way. the only way i'd say... half these features maybe added is if they just abandon kontakt all together and just use juce from the ground up
oh and fun fact, s2 compared to s3 is actually lacking in features. s2 is drop g, s3 is drop a. despite the fact there is a drop g sample in the original shreddage 2, it's missing in jupiter. same with legacy as well that's a whole other pathetic can of worms to open though considering just how bad legacy really just is with only half the original sample pool being used and then simply being stretched and manipulated in melodyne and a sample editor. it's a pathetic joke that's being sold for 100 us dollars. i like isw's products a lot, don't get me wrong. i literally bought every version of shreddage in a big summer sale. but their recent new products and updates are disappointing at best, and at worst scam worthy
@@snesmocha Other than myself, I haven't seen anyone using the strum feature either. It's really hard to get sounding right and I find myself continuously playing back the midi until I get a good take vs it being reliable. I think it's going to take some folks that care as much about midi guitar as the drum sample libraries we're getting now.
The 3.5 update was useless for me and only introduced more issues. I've actually been wanting the telecaster because that's my favorite type of guitar but it's on that 3.5 update. I also ended up deleting shreddage abyss because it was the worst performing midi bass I've used. Still a fan of ISW but everything I've used feels so close but just not fully cooked.
@@HollowHeart-Studio just as a warning. telos frankly sounds more like a strat than a tele... it sounds way too twangy to be a tele. had to eventually pre eq the entire guitar by upping the bass by like 5db and then cutting the highs to make it remotely sound like a tele
you can also directly force playback via turning on omni midi detection then using midi guitar mode which let you assign each string according to the midi channel. its how i get good results even with sucky engines like amples. though it's tedious, it's well worth the results as 100% accurate fret playback is better than the fret engine commiting death if it reaches too far from the string.
abyss' only purpose is really that it has extremely low level control over the direct playback of the strings. it otherwise sounds frankly awful at times. it takes a lot of work getting it sounding good.
which is possibly the main thing i've been especially disappointed with isw as of late. the time it takes to get something sounding remotely good with their products. i've had to learn their tact engine to fully grasp how to get a good guitar sound out of their shreddage lineup, i made dozens of preset performance presets only for them to be thrown out cause of the 3.5 engine.