Xref: utzoo comp.music:3406 rec.music.misc:70986 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!stanford.edu!csli!jkiparsk From: jkiparsk@csli.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan Kiparsky) Newsgroups: comp.music,rec.music.misc Subject: Re: Guitar Sounds (Guitarists read this...) Message-ID: <19669@csli.Stanford.EDU> Date: 5 Jun 91 01:23:41 GMT References: <1991Jun4.104901.1@dev0d.mdcbbs.com> Followup-To: comp.music Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U. Lines: 33 In article <1991Jun4.104901.1@dev0d.mdcbbs.com> pirk@dev0d.mdcbbs.com writes: >The Guitarist I play with tells me >I will *NEVER* get my keyboards to sound like a "real" guitar. You probably won't. Look at it this way: in the course of a given solo, I'll hit the strings with a pick, my fingers and my fingernails, I'll be snapping the strings with my thumb and fingers, I'll be playing the strings at different places, from the bridge up to the fret I'm playing, to bring out different harmonics, and, I'll be changing pickups, adjusting the tone, and changing the phase on my pickups. Each of these adjustments gives a different tone, and that's only the options with the fretting hand- you've still got another hand and a foot to step on things with. I guess this is sort of extreme, but, when you play guitar, you are constantly making small adjustments to the sound, even if it's only things like playing near the bridge to get more treble, or spiking the volume to get more crunch. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't do that on a keyboard. > It would seem to me that what we are looking at is a signal. Be it from >a guitar or a keyboard, the signal is what gets processed into the 'groovy' >guitar sounds. Exactly- and the raw signal from a guitar is quite different from that out of a keyboard. I'm not cutting down keyboards, I've been playing them quite a bit lately, but they just won't sound like a real guitar- now matter how much processing you put them through. > I guess the missing parts are the >mechanics of the guitar, ie: the natural vibrado of the string and how this >affects the output of the pickups. Among other things, yes. -jon