In the second part of Guitar Amp Simulators 101, we looked ways of using different amplifier, cabinet and microphone models, as well as some of the more advanced amplifier settings, to achieve specific goals in designing a guitar sound. In this third part, I’m going to guide you through some slightly more complex virtual guitar rigs, focussing on blending sounds and using more advanced cabinet and speaker modelling to achieve more realistic sounds.
As before, the focus is on Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig though, this time, I’ll include some 3rd party cabinet and microphone models, too. So grab your guitar, fire up your DAW, and let’s dive in!
Depth and Texture
It’s probably fair to say that most rock and pop recordings make use of multiple, distinct guitar sounds, whether discretely and in specific applications, for example, producing distorted sounds with a big 50 Watt half-stack and clean sounds with a vintage Vox AC30, or by blending tones throughout all or part of a song. Of course, in bands with two or more guitarists (or, at least, arrange songs for two distinct guitar parts), this blending happens naturally, though even there, there is potential to blend sounds by using multiple cabinets and microphones for each guitar.
The point being that, unless you’re aiming for a very raw, uncomplicated sound, you’re almost certainly going to achieve better results by blending multiple tones.
As we saw in the last part of this series, cabinets and microphones can have as much or even more to do with the overall sound than the amplifier itself. You’ll remember that we blended the warm, rich tones of a Marshall Plexi model with a brighter sounding 2×12 Fender style cabinet model, and further tweaked the tone by blending two distinct microphone sounds. By extending this principle to encompass blending whole, distinct set-ups, we can achieve the rich, thick textures and vibrant sounds we hear in professional recordings.
To hear this principle in practice, try listening to some of your favourite recordings while rolling the balance control between hard left and right. As you do this, you should be able to pick out multiple distinct guitar tones. It’s not uncommon, especially with hard rock and metal, to be able to discern that the overall guitar sound is actually a blend of two or more sounds which, on their own, sound too extreme – too bright, dark, distorted, clean, etc. – but the sum of them is just right, and much richer and more interesting than anything you could produce with only one tone.
These are the principles that this tutorial is based on, so let’s work through them one at a time.
Horses for Courses
The most basic application of our basic idea is using distinct amplifier models for specific tasks. We could roughly divide common guitar applications into the following, potentially overlapping categories:
- Clean
- Overdriven
- Distorted
- Rhythm
- Lead
So far so obvious, but the point is that each is an individual job and may best be served by different tools. Since, with modelling software, we have near limitless options, there’s no reason to make the sort of compromises that most of us have to make in a live situation, so we can go ahead and use as many amps as we like to get a rich complement of sounds.
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