Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
BlackLotusLuke
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Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by BlackLotusLuke » Mon Jul 16, 2012 12:21 pm

has anybody successfully been able to make their guitar sound sound eastern/like a sitar at all? id love to do this. not sure how though :?

doghouse
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by doghouse » Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:27 pm

A sitar bridge is designed so the strings hit it when vibrating, that's what creates the buzzing. Try stuffing a matchbook cover under the strings by the bridge.

heavensdaw
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by heavensdaw » Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:33 pm

Never have tried it,, but you could try putting a chorus, frequency shifter and a resonator or two as an effect chain.. see where that takes you..

The thing about the sitar is that a very large part of it's sound is the vibrating 'sympathetic' stings that vibrate to the main plucked strings pitch..

Experiment and have fun! :)

Hd

pepezabala
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by pepezabala » Mon Jul 16, 2012 3:10 pm

I would try open tunings, so you can play melody on one string while strumming additional notes/strings that add a chord-drone. A 12-string guitar will help.

Angstrom
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by Angstrom » Mon Jul 16, 2012 3:34 pm

After using resonator devices to emulate the sympathetic string turnings ( which you can probably obtain from the net), the other thing is the physical playing style which is very different from a guitar lead style.

Firstly you should play as many notes as possible on one string, not across the fretboard as you might usually. Use only use two fingers (index and middle)' you use the index as the main finger and slide it from fret to fret, upa and down as a base to operate your middle finger off for the alternate notes.
Oily fingers is a great help.
The good players are constantly using giant multi semitone bends in unusual ways.

Also, try getting hold of a Mizrab / Mezrab to get the distinctive back forth picking style. The main stroke of a mizrab is usually up, as opposed to the main plectrum stroke which is usually considered to be down.

For the emulated tone: If your guitar has a transducer bridge you'll be better off using that rather than a pickup, the natural sound of a sitar sting without any sympathetic resonance is actually quite like any twangy gourd instrument. The unique shaping of the bridge profile adds that buzz and the relative tunings of the other stings add the harmonic interest, without that and a masters fingers it's quite a plan sound. So initially I'd try getting the basic piezo bridge sound and then try various tuned resonators.

Oh one last thing, you don't transpose or key change on a sitar. The frets are bound in position for a particular mode, and take a little time to change. You can modally shift (like from c maj to a minor), but you aren't going from c maj to d maj , it can't do that.

Disclaimer: I am no expert, I have a sum total of about 6 months of sitar lessons taken about 20 years ago.

heavensdaw
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by heavensdaw » Mon Jul 16, 2012 4:00 pm

great points Ang!

Also on the 'production' side of things.. as the sitar has basically two instrument sounds in one ie.. plucked notes and symp string harms.
It may be worth recording onto 2 tracks and focusing on the individual aspects, then mixing them together?

Hd

BlackMath
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by BlackMath » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:28 pm

Electro Harmonix Ravish Sitar is pretty cool

BlackLotusLuke
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by BlackLotusLuke » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:16 pm

wow so many replies!!!1 :D thanks guys im def gonna try and do these techniques. im not much a player (anymore, used to be a metallica addict :) ), but my partner in our music group is really good, and our style is kinda flying lotus? mentioning him cos we go across genres like he does. mainly experimental hip hop. and were trying to get some live mount kimbie sort of vibe for some of our songs but would LOVE to do some sitar stuff live. so i should of mentioned this before but we wanna have real time effects to emulate a guitar. it seems the playing technique is also crucial which i will look into!

yur2die4
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by yur2die4 » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:45 pm

Probably practice by loading up a proper guitar loop or playing a suitable guitar pattern off a sampler while adding appropriate audio fx. Then you can fine tune it with guitar connected. (I say this because a. Messing about while holding guitar is a pain, and b. will save your guitarist time standing around while you try to figure out where to start). So it'll give you some ideas for a good starting point.

I actually want to try this idea too haha. I'm sure it'd have other applications (use it on piano or voice sounds?).

heavensdaw
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by heavensdaw » Tue Jul 17, 2012 2:28 pm

IK OBIK wrote:You can create some unique sounds with AMPLITUBE 3.We have summer specials going on at http://www.ikmultimedia.com/
errm ... I think the OP was how to create in Ableton.. not looking for some 3rd party option..

Hd

heavensdaw
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by heavensdaw » Tue Jul 17, 2012 9:56 pm

IK OBIK wrote:
heavensdaw wrote:
IK OBIK wrote:You can create some unique sounds with AMPLITUBE 3.We have summer specials going on at http://www.ikmultimedia.com/
errm ... I think the OP was how to create in Ableton.. not looking for some 3rd party option..

Hd
errrrrrm...he never said "in" live, the subject says "through" ableton...which Amplitube 3 does. I forgive you :-)
It's ok salesperson... no worries ;)

Hd

littlepig
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by littlepig » Wed Aug 01, 2012 10:37 am

I thought of another way to do this but you would need a pitch to midi connverter.

Set up an audio track and a midi track.

Process your straight guitar sound through the audio track.
On the midi track set up scale device > a sampler. Cinfigure the scale device so that only the notes you want to represent the sympathetic strings will sound and choose the appropriate sample to play. Maybe sample yourself on the guitar.

I don't have a pitch to midi converter but I tried this using a guitar sample played on a midi track instead of a guitar audio track. It seemed to work quite well.

3dot...
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by 3dot... » Wed Aug 01, 2012 12:12 pm

littlepig wrote:I thought of another way to do this but you would need a pitch to midi connverter.

Set up an audio track and a midi track.

Process your straight guitar sound through the audio track.
On the midi track set up scale device > a sampler. Cinfigure the scale device so that only the notes you want to represent the sympathetic strings will sound and choose the appropriate sample to play. Maybe sample yourself on the guitar.

I don't have a pitch to midi converter but I tried this using a guitar sample played on a midi track instead of a guitar audio track. It seemed to work quite well.
worth to say about using audio to midi...
this is for monophonic sounds...
there is no polyphonics(chords) in any realtime audio>>midi scheme AFAIK..
Image


heavensdaw
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Re: Guitar through ableton- anybody emulated a sitar before?

Post by heavensdaw » Wed Aug 01, 2012 1:12 pm

Nice link! ,,, here's where it lead me.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi4QA_XR ... ion_623600

God I'm dreaming now!!

I very nearly bought a half sized sitar a while back.. I had a fantastic sarod from India.. but it got burnt in fire along with all my stringed beauties :cry:

I watched this guy once live in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton once... What a fantastic trip!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KXYHPXo ... re=related

Hd

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