A few thoughts on virtual electric guitar . . .
I play both rhythm and lead guitar and have been doing this for decades; but a few years ago I switched to using virtual electric guitars.
Over the past few months I have devised a new perspective on arranging, where the focus is on tones, textures, and what I call the "New Modern Orchestra", as a prototype name.
This happened while I was writing Volume 10 of my ongoing series "The Art of Digital Music Production" and in no small way initially was a matter of not wanting to get lost in trying to explain what one might call "traditional arranging", which for example is what George Martin did when he arranged and composed the double string quartet for "Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles) at Paul McCartney's request, with the somewhat disturbing aspect being that George Martin is not credited with being a composer for the song, even though most of the music was done by George Martin, and Paul McCartney only composed the lyrics and melody. This was the way things were done at the time, and it continues to be the general rule, which includes not giving Quincy Jones composing credit for his stellar work on "Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson).
I suppose the distinction is that "songwriting" apparently is not the same as "composing". . .
Call it "lazy" for not wanting to attempt to describe and explain the nuances of
Baroque,
Big Band,
Orchestral,
Polka,
Country Western,
Ska,
K-pop,
Metal,and other musical genres; but (a) I tend to do everything "by ear", which is the way I taught myself how to play lead guitar and (b) I think that if you listen to music over-and-over and study what is happening, then you naturally develop an intuitive sense of what needs to occur when doing "traditional arranging".
You might not know or understand the logic and rules for
Big Band arranging; but you can listen to Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman songs to develop an intuitive sense of how they arranged brass and woodwind sections.
Rollback the clock several decades or longer, and doing everything musically required musicians and real instruments, even when the instruments were synthesizers.
Everything was different conceptually in those days; and the general rule was that doing anything elaborate was restricted to famous musicians and singers, well-funded record labels, or at minimum to wealthy folks who could afford to hire studio musicians, orchestras, and recording studios.
This changed about two or so decades ago when personal computers became ubiquitous; and today it's possible, practical, and affordable to produce your own version of an album like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club" (Beatles) using Fender Studio Pro 8, a nice assortment of VSTi virtual instruments, VST effects plug-ins, a BLUE Snowball USB microphone, and an Apple MacBook Pro while sitting inside a Volkswagen in a snowstorm when there is enough power in the car battery or you can run the engine.
Connect a few dots, and it's not only possible but also practical and affordable to have a vast collection of virtual instruments from all over this world in more musical genres that an expert music historian and theoretician could list or imagine, which makes it a bit
mind-boggling.
Instead of trying to identify and delineate all the rules for arranging a
Baroque double string quartet, I decided to focus on what happens when one is doing digital music production, which specifically at a high-level is focused on
tones and textures.
Here in the sound isolation studio, there are 12 notes, 10 octaves, and a virtual cornucopia of tones and texture, which at present I am calling the "New Modern Orchestra (NMO)" and has tens of thousands of virtual instruments available as desired.
For reference, my motivation for this post is to respond to the various conversations regarding whether Fender Studio Pro 8 somehow is focused solely on Fender electric guitars and Fender guitar amplifiers, especially the stellar Fender Custom Shop Dual Professional Amp, but also a Marshall Half-Stack, with both of these being vacuum-tube amplifiers.
I have the skills and equipment to do electric guitar with real stuff; but with the exceptions of {string bends, glissandi, and whammying with a Fender Two-Point Tremolo}, it's easier and faster to do it with virtual stuff, which is what I usually do these days and have been doing for several years, as was the way I did my original song about "Flying Saucers" after reading news about UFO's being seen off the coast of Alaska, which being a science fiction aficionado and writer was too good not to inspire a SCIFI song.
As a subtle but relevant aside, it's a bit like the "James Bond Theme" (Monty Norman), "Born To Be Wild" (Steppenwolf), "Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson), and "Like A Virgin" (Madonna) essentially being the same song, at least for the definitive four-note phrase.
[
NOTE: This is mixed for headphone listening (SONY MDR-7506 headphones). All the instruments are virtual, including Realivox Blue (RealiTone) my favorite virtual female soprano.]
