Home > Steinberg > Music Production System > Steinberg Studio Case VST Instruments Operation Manual

Steinberg Studio Case VST Instruments Operation Manual

    Download as PDF Print this page Share this page

    Have a look at the manual Steinberg Studio Case VST Instruments Operation Manual online for free. It’s possible to download the document as PDF or print. UserManuals.tech offer 523 Steinberg manuals and user’s guides for free. Share the user manual or guide on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

    Page
    of 478
    							ENGLISH
    2
    Virtual Guitarist Electric
    Edition SE 
    						
    							VST Instruments
    2 – 22 Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    About Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE is your own personal rhythm gui-
    tarist, letting you choose between 6 guitar players, each of which is a 
    perfectionist: perfect sound, perfect timing, and the ability to flexibly 
    adapt to suit most musical styles.
    Using Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE you can easily add profes-
    sional-sounding rhythm guitar tracks to your songs, without the need 
    for a real player, and get a perfect take every time. Even if you use real 
    guitarists in your music as well, Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE 
    has the big advantage of enabling you to experiment with rhythm gui-
    tar parts at any time, and in any place, without the need for special re-
    cording equipment. You could even be laying down tracks on your 
    laptop computer while flying to Mongolia.  
    						
    							ENGLISH
    VST Instruments
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE 2 – 23
    How do I use Virtual Guitarist?
    Using Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE is simple, especially if you 
    think of the plug-in as a real rhythm guitar player – tell them what to 
    play and they will play it. The playing is precise and the guitarist won’t 
    complain, which, aside from the clever programming, is a worldwide 
    first in itself!
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE is used exactly like any other VST 
    Instrument:
    •Prepare a track and load Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE.
    •Select a player from the menu.
    •Use a MIDI keyboard to trigger Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE or, alterna-
    tively, manually add the chords to a MIDI track via the sequencer’s editor.
    •Swap guitars, throw in fills or long chords, and improve your guitar track until 
    you’re happy with it. You can change any parameter at a later time, and, in 
    contrast to recording “real” guitars, you can change the key of the song at any 
    time without having to repeat the whole recording session!
    What is Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE ?
    Technically speaking, Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE is a VST in-
    strument containing a variety of rhythm guitar styles. Each style is rep-
    resented by a player, and is ready-to-go with the correct guitar, micro-
    phone or amp.
    Musically speaking, Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE plays itself, 
    and all you have to do is play the chord and key progressions via a 
    MIDI keyboard. You can control the phrasing, sound, and play para-
    meters, using either the mouse, or by triggering them in real time by 
    using a MIDI controller. This enables you to adapt the rhythm guitar to 
    seamlessly work within your song, and in any given musical style. 
    						
    							VST Instruments
    2 – 24 Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    How does Virtual Guitarist work ? 
    To clear up a common misconception, Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition 
    SE doesn’t use common single-note samples or synthesis to imitate 
    guitars. The result would be extremely artificial, and if you’ve ever tried 
    to simulate guitar playing on a MIDI keyboard, you’ll know exactly what 
    we’re talking about.
    Perhaps surprisingly, the Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE concept is 
    actually much simpler and is based on a huge library of audio tracks re-
    corded by real living and breathing guitar players. This means the result 
    really is a genuine guitar recording – and not an artificial approximation.
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE’s ground-breaking approach 
    makes it possible to select from these recordings in real time when 
    you change a chord or any other parameter. Tempo changes are no 
    problem as the guitar recordings have been processed in a way that 
    enables all the beats to be triggered individually.
    What you can and can’t do with Virtual 
    Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE has many advantages when com-
    pared with a real guitar player:
    •The virtual guitar players are convenient and available at any time.
    •Using a virtual guitarist is cheap and easy, especially since you won’t need a 
    studio to record in.
    •You can save time because there’s no setup, tuning, preparation, microphone 
    positioning, or audio recording.
    •Virtual guitarists don’t play wrong notes and there aren’t going to be any timing 
    problems.
    •You can work with several guitar players simultaneously.
    •You have complete control over the sound and phrasing of the guitar.
    •Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE supports your creativity, allowing you to 
    experiment as much as you want, and giving you the possibility of creating 
    tracks that couldn’t be played on a “real” guitar.
    •It’s possible to make alterations at any stage, even after recording or during 
    the mixing process. You can change the instrument, phrasing, and sound 
    without having to recreate the chord data from scratch. 
    						
    							ENGLISH
    VST Instruments
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE 2 – 25
    Despite all of these advantages, it’s important to remember that Virtual 
    Guitarist Electric Edition SE is a computer program and will inevitably 
    have some disadvantages when compared to a real player. It would be 
    impossible for Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE to provide everything 
    a real guitarist might theoretically be able to offer, although the included 
    virtual players do cover a broad range of musical styles capable of suit-
    ing most needs.
    First test
    At this point, you’re probably itching to get your hands on Virtual Gui-
    tarist Electric Edition SE, so:
    1.Activate Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE (as described in the sec-
    tion “Activating VST instruments in Cubase SE” on page 19) and load 
    a player. In the Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE window, click the 
    “Latch On/Off” button to activate this parameter.
    2.Play a chord or note on your MIDI keyboard, and Virtual Guitarist Elec-
    tric Edition SE will start to play. Because we activated the “Latch On/
    Off” button, playback will continue when you release the key(s).
    3.If you have a sustain pedal connected to your MIDI keyboard, press it 
    to stop Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE.
    If you don’t have a sustain pedal, you can assign the “stop” function to 
    a note on your MIDI keyboard. For more information about this, check 
    out the section “Remote keys” on page 32.
    The MIDI LED in the Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE window lights 
    up when the instrument receives MIDI events. 
    						
    							VST Instruments
    2 – 26 Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    How to play Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    There are several ways of playing Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE:
    •You can play chords and vary the expression using keyboard velocity, MIDI 
    controllers, the sustain pedal, and program changes.
    •If you’re not familiar with a keyboard, you can enter chords and other MIDI 
    events using one of the editors provided by your software sequencer. 
    •You can use Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE to dub the chord tracks of ex-
    isting songs and MIDI files to improve the way they sound. Many commercial 
    MIDI files include special chord tracks, although duplicating a typical “Pad 
    sound” track (such as strings) with Virtual Guitarist will usually produce good 
    results. 
    Multiple Virtual Guitarists
    You can use as many versions of Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE 
    simultaneously as your host application and computer allow. There’s 
    nothing wrong in using two rock guitar tracks at the same time with 
    different phrasing, and then throwing in an additional riff from a third 
    Virtual Guitarist instance here and there. 
    						
    							ENGLISH
    VST Instruments
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE 2 – 27
    Players
    In Virtual Guitarist terminology, a player is a guitarist with a unique style. 
    However, more than just a style or rhythm, each Virtual Guitarist player 
    refers to particular guitar, sound (amp, speaker, etc.), and dedicated 
    playing style.
    Selecting a player
    •To select a player, click the small downward-pointing arrow on the 
    Virtual Guitarist’s plug-in window, and choose from the pop-up menu. 
    The loading status is indicated in the control panel, see below. 
    •You can also use the left and right arrows window to switch between 
    players, but this isn’t recommended because of the long loading times.
    After loading, a picture of the original guitar used for the recording is 
    visible in the “sound hole”.   
    						
    							VST Instruments
    2 – 28 Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    Parts
    Each player offers up to four different parts. A part is variation – varying 
    in rhythmic phrasing, note structure (e.g. single notes, chords, octaves) 
    and effect setting. You can either play the same part all the time, or 
    switch parts while playing to add variation to a track.
    Selecting parts
    You can select a part by clicking one of the two part selection arrows 
    in the Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE window.
    Switching parts in real time
    You can switch between parts while you play without any glitches, and 
    one way of doing this is to send a MIDI program change message (from 
    one to four) from a MIDI keyboard. The program change number corre-
    sponds to the part number. 
    Alternatively, you can switch between parts using certain notes on your 
    MIDI keyboard.  
    						
    							ENGLISH
    VST Instruments
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE 2 – 29
    Chord recognition
    Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE contains an intelligent chord recog-
    nition system, which always plays the correct chord based on the MIDI 
    input from a sequencer or MIDI keyboard in real time. The MIDI input 
    can consist of a complete chord or simple one-finger notes – you don’t 
    need to make any special settings because Virtual Guitarist Electric 
    Edition SE will always know what to do.
    The chord set
    The chords provided in Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE are the six 
    most common chords in most musical styles:
    •Major, 7, maj7, minor, sus4, sus2.
    If you play a chord that’s not included in this set, Virtual Guitarist Elec-
    tric Edition SE will automatically select the most appropriate replace-
    ment chord.
    Playing chords
    If you play a complete chord (for example, the notes C, F, and G for a 
    Csus chord), Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE will automatically 
    recognize it. 
    •For the best possible chord recognition, all the notes of a chord must be 
    played. Playing three notes is sufficient for major, minor or sus4 chords, 
    but for the other supported chord types (maj7, 7 and sus2) you need to 
    play all four notes.
    Chord inversions
    In most cases, it doesn’t matter what inversion of a chord you play. 
    However, there is one exception where the bass note has to be the 
    root or tonic note:
    •+5 chords (A+5 uses the same notes as C#+5 and F+5). 
    						
    							VST Instruments
    2 – 30 Virtual Guitarist Electric Edition SE
    One-finger chords
    For the chord types major, 7 and minor, you don’t actually need to play 
    all the notes in the chord. Although playing a single note always indi-
    cates a major chord, you can indicate a different chord type by playing 
    an additional key.
    Chord display
    The chord display shows the currently playing or pre-selected chord. If 
    the chord you play can’t be found or is missing in the chord set, Virtual 
    Guitarist Electric Edition SE will automatically choose the most appro-
    priate replacement chord (indicated in the chord display).
    Players and chords
    You’ll soon discover that the selection of available chords depends on 
    which player you have selected. Some players only offer neutral 
    chords. But it’s no problem to control this type of player from a MIDI 
    track containing more complex chords – Virtual Guitarist Electric Edi-
    tion SE automatically selects the most appropriate chords from the 
    available selection.
    Additional key Chord
    None major
    Next left white key 7
    Next left black key minor  
    						
    All Steinberg manuals Comments (0)

    Related Manuals for Steinberg Studio Case VST Instruments Operation Manual