Guitar strumming

[herbert]

Hi Paolo,

To get reasonable sounds, you need to do a lot of midi editing. There are several good books available on this subject. Percussive and strummed or plucked string instruments need attention at the very least, to spread out the instruments’ attacks of each note.

When you play several percussive instruments (strings) with the attack of each note not exactly at the same time, most people hear distinctive separate notes, if they are played more than 5 msec apart. If you play a chord on the guitar, you are likely to play first the lowest note, followed by the higher notes in sequence. Separating notes slightly in time, will give you a full round sound. Separating the notes much further apart will give you an arpeggioated chord.

The smallest amount of time you can vary a note is one tick. Composer has 480 ticks for each beat. If you play a song at 100 beats per minute, each beat is .6 seconds long. This amounts to 1.25 msec per tick. If I separate the attack of notes by one or several ticks, I will get a fairly round sound.

I use frequently a double bass and an acoustic guitar as part of the rhythm section. I set the double bass in this case to -4 ticks (-5 msec), The lowest string of the guitar remains at 0 time. The next higher string is set to +4 ticks and the next one to +8 ticks or 10 msec. You can change the timing to your preference.

Midi editing is very time consuming. Perhaps Composer will have some functions in the Future, to reduce the work load.


Best Wishes,

Herbert