In recent times, virtual instruments are getting extremely close to the authentic sound of an electric guitar. Various companies spend hours and hours on recording and capturing the characteristics of electric guitars, and they transfer this to the software realm. Find out more.
Virtual Guitarist IRON by UJAM
One of those instruments that we came across recently is definitely Virtual Guitarist – Iron by UJAM company. In the next tutorial, I will guide you through its interface. Additionally, I’ll present some practical examples.
As usual, let’s start by dropping a fresh instance of Virtual Guitar – Iron to a newly created MIDI channel within SoundBridge.
Characteristics
Even though IRON is dedicated to Rock, Metal but it can also produce Pop like guitar sound as well. In its core, it is a six-string electric guitar with the option for “Drop D” tuning. It possesses a riff generator which are live/real performances made by guitarists. In addition, it is also possible to change tempo, key and you can play pretty much any chord you want to. You can play a chord with one hand and adjust the style phrases with the other hand. What’s more, It also has a wealth of DSP processing under the hood, which allows you to alter the tone and timing as well as other aspects of the guitar playing.
Presets
First of all, at the top of the interface, we can enter the drop-down preset menu, which incorporates a significant amount of presets — ranging from Alternative & Punk, Rock, Funk & Soul, to many other styles.
Style
The second section below presets is reserved for style altering, and again it is packed with a lot of presets. Ranging from Mutes, Steady 8th`s, Rough Reggae 16th`s, to mention a few. As you can see, there are a lot of styles which you can see from the picture below.
It is important to mention that the style presets are ranged from C1 up to C4 on octaves on the keyboard. By pressing a certain key within this range, you will alter the style sequence.
Octave range
Next, to the style section, there is a section marked in blue keys. This is actually an octave range where you can play and hear the tones on the keyboard. As you can see from the picture below, the upper part of this section will show you exactly which cord are you playing; in this case, it’s A 7.
Altering speed
The last section in the upper part of VG-IRON interface offers the controls for altering the speed of the sequence by 0.5*, 1* and 2*, as well as faders for swing and altering the feel of the guitar sequence.
DSP processing
Once we got to know the upper part of the VG-Iron interface, it is time to dedicate some time to the middle and lower part. It is reserved mainly for the DSP processing, which is also a crucial aspect of this remarkable virtual instrument.
Firstly, from the left, we can see the “Thrust” knob. The “Thrust” essentially adds sweet harmonic chunk sounds, which are particularly evident when you chose a muted guitar sequence, for example. After that, we have a switch control which sets the style of the guitar. If you want your sequence style to be fat, soft, bite, or twang, this is where you set it. On the opposite side, there is an amp style switch, ranging from clean and crisp to metal. Lastly, in this line of the interface, we can see a drive knob which is one of the essential characteristics of an excellent sounding electric guitar.
The bottom part of the VG- IRON interface holds controls for overall volume, reverb, and chorus, delay (with sync switch) as well as buttons to engage doubling and drop d.
After introducing you to this fine virtual instrument, I think it’s time that we finally hear how it sounds. So, here are some practical audio examples ranging from soft, pop-sounding guitar, to more brutal sounding guitar genres like metal.
~VG – IRON – Sequence 1
~VG – IRON – Sequence 2
~VG – IRON – Sequence 3
Feel free to download the project here.
