Ableton Forum

I got Ableton Lite 9 and got used to make drafts for the songs of my alternative rock band (drums, bass, guitar, vocals). It works perfect for song drafts but the sound of the guitars and bass guitars is easily synthetic. The instrument set is very restricted to just some guitars and even no bass guitars.

Now I want to make real production of songs in Ableton with realistic, natural sounding MIDI-drums, MIDI-guitars and MIDI-bass guitars. I actually want to simulate a band sound.

Is it possible to achieve this with one of the higher versions of ableton or alternatively with just a guitar and a bass guitar pack?

Or should I use external plugins like the native instruments bass and guitar VSTs?

Thank you!

I personally haven't found anything in Ableton, but I do believe that I've found some packs from random places online that work somewhat decently. Unfortunately, it'll probably be somewhat impossible to find sounds that perfectly replicate guitars and basses, or any instrument for that matter.

However, for basses I would suggest checking out Trilian's collection. Maybe listen to some demos on youtube or something before you invest. Little bit of a complex plugin, but definitely the closest I've found to real authentic basses.

For guitars I would take a look at Orange Tree Samples which runs under Kontakt. Agree with the above Trilian reference for bass...fantastatic stuff.

I think Ableton has a clean guitar sample that is useable with a vst like Guitar Rig or other guitar processor (there are some good free amp sims, depending on what you want.
Since you want both guitar and bass, I also recommend Sampletank 3 as an investment - I think their sounds are very, very impressive, with lots of variation in an all in one package.

I'm puzzled why you don't just play the guitar and bass parts? You are in a rock band, surely you've got some instruments knocking around.

It's far easier to play a rough part in on the instrument than try to get a "guitar" sample pack to be halfway decent.

If it's because you are traveling, perhaps one of those travel guitars like a Lapstick

Angstrom wrote:I'm puzzled why you don't just play the guitar and bass parts? You are in a rock band, surely you've got some instruments knocking around.

It's just because I want to compose the songs first note by note and be able to flexibly change the composition.It is also not so easy to make a decent sound with audio instruments with my home equipment... And another reason is typing MIDI notes is faster than recording audio instruments , at least for me

Concerninc Kontakt - can I integrate native Instruments within ableton, for example they sell many bass instruments but I could not find any info on how to integrate sush intruments wihtin ableton
Any ideas..?

anarchipur wrote:

Angstrom wrote:I'm puzzled why you don't just play the guitar and bass parts? You are in a rock band, surely you've got some instruments knocking around.

It's just because I want to compose the songs first note by note and be able to flexibly change the composition.It is also not so easy to make a decent sound with audio instruments with my home equipment... And another reason is typing MIDI notes is faster than recording audio instruments , at least for me

YOU CAN TYPE MIDI NOTES FASTER THAN YOU CAN PLAY NOTES ON AN INSTRUMENT?
i think i`m pretty fast too, but when i think how fast you can play notes on a guitar (for example)..... i cannot imagine that drawing midi notes could be faster

This is my process of writing songs with guitar/bass in Live

1. record me playing bass badly against drums
2. record me playing guitar against bass and drums for a long time, and badly
3. put the best of the bass clips on arrangement timeline and slice it up, and micro-edit every note and phrase so it sounds way better
4. get little snippets of the guitar and do the same thing
5. figure out what guitar and bass items are missing and record those into session(A slapped low E note, a discordant bend, a different chord voicing, whatever)
6. insert those new micro phrases/articulations onto the arrangement.

there's absolutely no way I'd contemplate doing this with a sample library. It would take far longer and sound much worse. How the hell would I do an Ernie Diddle guitar lick, or a surf guitar thrash in Kontakt? not possible.

Plus the more you practice on a real instrument, the better you get at that instrument and as a musician.

Short answer is it's not the samples, it's the sequencing. It's really hard to get a MIDI sequence that captures the essence of how those three instruments are actually played.

Drums typically fail when it comes to rolls and intricate cymbal/hi-hat work.

Bass can be very realistic but the ability to easily insert slides and hammer-ons doesn't exist unless you buy some pretty expensive sample packs.

Guitar...well this is even worse than bass because you have chording and fingerpicking styles to deal with.

My advice: get over the lack of realism if all you're trying to do is sketch out the parts to be played later on the real instruments.

Best way is either to learn the instruments or find someone that will play the parts for money or sex.

Otherwise go crazy trying to make something fake sound natural & not succeed. Guitar has too many nuances.

Native instruments stuff as kontakt "integrates" in to Ableton and other DAW's as Cubase using a plug in format called VST (or AU in Mac's). You just use them inside Live.

Applied acoustic systems also have a modeled guitar and bass virtual instruments.

For drums I like addictive drums but there are plenty of products.

I'm with everyone else that's steering you back to your real instruments.

Just plug a bass or guitar dry into your interface and use some simulators for demo-quality tone. Play too slow, play with bad timing; you can warp that shit right after. Just don't play too many notes or the wrong ones or you have to edit volume and pitch modulation too which is a different pain in the ass.

Get the damn song written and you can practice it later to re-track or just re-amp your dry tracks when the time is right.

I play bass and guitar myself, but my focus is on composing with ableton and on beeing flexible in changing the composition on the fly without recording audio again adn again, that's why I use MIDI.

So if I buy such a bass plugin from native instruments like this here
http://www.native-instruments.com/en/pr ... cker-bass/

I can use it in live directly?