Drummers writing full songs using Guitar Pro?

ssdaven

Member
Hey everyone,

I've got a pretty unrealistic goal of one day writing a song in full, including guitar parts and maybe some keyboard, etc. I'm curious if anyone's got experience doing this - specifically I'm curious about using software to do the guitar parts. I've learned a little about Guitar Pro software - can it be used to create studio quality sounding guitar tracks, or is it more of a learning tool for guitar players?
 
To clarify - I'm talking about a drummer with 0 experience playing guitar creating the guitar tracks entirely in software, no actual guitar involved.
 
Depending on your musical ear, it can be easily done using the Garage Band software from Apple.

You can create a song played by a complete band (any instrument you want) all by yourself.

The forum member by the name of New Tricks knows how to do this.



.
 
Depending on your musical ear, it can be easily done using the Garage Band software from Apple.

You can create a song played by a complete band (any instrument you want) all by yourself.

The forum member by the name of New Tricks knows how to do this.

.

Thanks Jim. I'm hoping for a Windows freidnly solution here (I should have stated that in my original post).
 
With midi, everything is a keyboard part. Bass, drum, guitar, strings.. it's all the same, and it's wonderful for a composer to be able to sit down, lay down, and hear back his ideas. It's a perfect writing tool, and GP does a great job. It's nice to be able to communicate a part with a guitarist that may exceed your/his ability to convey using standard musical notation.

The down side:

Understand that a synthetic guitar sounds as much like a guitar to a guitarist as synth drums sound like drums to a drummer. That is to say... not at all. You might as well use a kazoo. It's the same for the other instruments as well.
 
With midi, everything is a keyboard part. Bass, drum, guitar, strings.. it's all the same, and it's wonderful for a composer to be able to sit down, lay down, and hear back his ideas. It's a perfect writing tool, and GP does a great job. It's nice to be able to communicate a part with a guitarist that may exceed your/his ability to convey using standard musical notation.

The down side:

Understand that a synthetic guitar sounds as much like a guitar to a guitarist as synth drums sound like drums to a drummer. That is to say... not at all. You might as well use a kazoo. It's the same for the other instruments as well.

Precisely - I'm looking for something that uses actual sampled guitar sounds, much like the quality VSTs for e-kits like Addictive Drums.
 
You need to research a recording program that has guitar samples available. The ones on Garage band aren't much like real guitars. I have no idea what else might be available.

I always write around bass or keyboard parts because I can't play a lick of guitar. Actually, I can't play a lick of anything but drums. I had zero experience until 3 years ago. It only took a short time to learn the basics and start writing.

Once you have your recording program figured out, all you do is get a midi controller keyboard (most new inexpensive keyboards have this function via usb) and start writing.
 
FLStudio will do this plus much more. They have a free demo you can try out as well.

I used FLStudio for this about 7-8 years ago.
 

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Me and a friend have written an entire album in Guitar Pro. It's a great tool for writing, especially since you can hear what you've witten. But don't expect it to be of "studio quality." It's MIDI.

It does have a thing called Realistic Sound Engine (RSE), but I find it even worse than MIDI.

Band in a Box has a good version of GP's RSE called RealBand, but I'm not sure you can really compose with it. Not as easily as GP anyway, and it doesn't do proper drum music I think. I don't know BIAB too well, so perhaps someone else could chime in on that one.

I can send you a guitar pro file from the album if you like, to give you an idea of what can be done.

Trout.
 
Don't expect to find anything halfway decent that comes included with a DAW. Serviceable synths, maybe, but realistic guitars, not so much. You should look at virtual instruments.

My friend has both RealGuitar and RealLPC by MusicLab and they both sound pretty believable. Way, way better than any midi or synth or non-sample based instrument that I've heard. There's other good ones out there too but those are the only ones I've played with personally. Also he has gotten them to work in LMMS, which is a free DAW.

If you're going for a realistic electric guitar sound, you should also check out the lepou virtual amps (free) and some sort of convolver for cabinet impulse responses. I use NadIR (free) and I got a HUGE wad of cabinet IRs from redwirez...for free. Free stuff is cool.

Alternately, make friends with a dirty guitar player. Even if he has a crap rig and you can't afford a decent mic and pre, you can just get a cheap guitar-friendly interface and record the guitar directly, and then use cool free virtual amp stuff. It will sound better than some dirtass solid-state combo with the basement buttmic special job. A lot better. You may also have to learn how to properly set up, intonate, and tune his guitar for him, but it will be worth it.

All of this is personal experience.
 
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