Ableton Forum

hey, just wondering what everyone thinks is the best approach to sample an electric guitar.

do you mean sample individual notes, or chords, or licks etc.

there are plenty of examples of sampled guitar for free at http://www.freesound.org/

Or some examples in EIC/EIC2 or Tension (physically modelled, not sampled) if you have Live Suite or boxed versions (EIC/EIC2) of Live 6/7/8

Depends what kinda of sound you want.
There are a million aspects that go into the sound of a guitar...

Player
Pick/Fingers
Strings
Frets
Nut
Body wood
Neck wood
fingerboard wood
Hardware
Pickups
Electronics
Cables
Amp
..more cables
Cabinet
Speakers
<room size/shape, acoustic treatment>
Microphone
Microphone placement
...more cables
I/O

Being a guitarist, I never use samples because of the complexity of it and being able to spot a sample 99.99% of the time.

However, the freesound project has a lot of acoustic and electric guitar samples (many repeated at close intervals for multisampling) for free which you can further manipulate and process.

well im not looking to download any free samples or anything like that, I am just looking to making my own samples of licks/riffs/notes, then loading it up with effects. A Daft Punk ideal you could say.

i enjoy just playing guitar and recording the noodlings, and then chopping it up.

or slicing to midi track, and putting it in a drum rack.

how i record the guitar depends on how lazy i am:

DI into soundcard via FX pedals and Sansamp into Waves Guitar Solo is pretty much the easiest way for me.

harder way is setting up my amp with a mic in the other room, and scaring the cat.

So just do it - like the last poster said, it can be fun recording a few 4/8/16 bar loops, riffs, solos and the chopping them up, messing with FX etc. Done that myself plenty.


That is quite creative in it's own right and is nothing new. Jimmy Page's solo in Heartbreaker came as a result of chopping up over 15 takes, engineer Jimmy DOuglass and Page spent a whole night recording and chopping up with razor blades.

Do a variety of recording methods - mic up a amp/cab, record DI, use FX, etc. I like Native INstruments Guitar Rig but this is just one of many great FX choices and you can rack up FX nicely in Live anyway.

am wrote:i enjoy just playing guitar and recording the noodlings, and then chopping it up.

or slicing to midi track, and putting it in a drum rack.

how i record the guitar depends on how lazy i am:

DI into soundcard via FX pedals and Sansamp into Waves Guitar Solo is pretty much the easiest way for me.

harder way is setting up my amp with a mic in the other room, and scaring the cat.

Yeap, just continue what you're doing.