The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hey everyone, I'm new here and I'm hoping to enter the Fight sometime soon. But, theres' just one problem -- I can't play guitar. I can do everything else for a song, except for that. So, I'm wondering what the policy is for using pre-recorded loops for the guitar? I'm guessing no, but I can't find that anywhere on the site.

If not, can anyone suggest an alternative method?

You could always fake the guitar using a VST instrument on your computer. I do this a lot. Personal favourites are Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist and Music Lab's Realguitar (and realstrat looks tasty, tho' I haven't got that yet). Throw an amp sim (like Native Instrument's Guitar Rig or Line6's Gearbox Plugin) in there as well and it's not too difficult to get something usable.

It's probably OK. The loops/samples thing is a bit of a gray area, in terms of what's considered plaigirism and what's not.

On the other hand, nearly everybody here plays guitar, so you could always post in the Collaborations thread to see if anyone can help you out. If you've got the chords/parts all worked out and can provide some way of telling people as specifically as possible what you're looking for, you could probably get somebody to send you some tracks pretty quickly.

I don't know if this helps, but you can simulate electric guitar pretty easily using FruityLoops. I don't play guitar either but you wouldn't know it from hearing some of my songs. ^_^

A song doesn't have to have guitar.

Starfinger is an excellent Songfight artist whose tracks seldom feature guitar, and those that do are (usually) sampled.

His Twin Kiss uses a very well-done sampled guitar track. He'll have to tell you where he got the samples, but I remember him saying he ran them through guitar rig. He does get points taken off for the horn patch, though.

By the way, Craig: I've always liked that line "Can he feel my pain like I can feel his joy?"

I've done songs with loops and nobody complained. However what I usually do is to not listen to the loops ahead of time, and grab a new set when I am ready to do a fight. These are loops from Tapegerm, one of my internet supergroups.

Yes, you can synthesize or whatever. Get some VSTi plugins, there are many free ones out there. Assuming you can also get a VST host. Fruity Loops might be a good place to start.

Also, collaboration is good. Give that a try!
-bill

92% of Octothorpe songs have no guitar* That's not including bass guitar. It drops to 78% if you count bass.

Guitars? We don't need no stinkin' guitars.


*All figures are made-up approximations. Marcus, fluffy, mico saudad, Patrick Clayton, and Jeff Williams have contributed guitar from time to time. Hey, I just remembered, I played guitar on Blueberry Hassle, and I don't even play guitar.

You might try using a free vsti soundfont player. There are some fairly decent free guitar soundfont packs on the web. I play guitar and have never used this technique on a song, but I have experimented around with them and have got some convincing guitar sounds from them.

Sober wrote: Starfinger is an excellent Songfight artist whose tracks seldom feature guitar, and those that do are (usually) sampled.

I actually got a real guitar at some point, so the guitar on the more recent entries (for example, "Smoke Right" and "Exclamation Point") is real.

On "Twin Kiss", I used Kontakt 2's Akoustik Guitar patch, run through guitar rig.

What's wrong with my horn patch!

By the way, Craig: I've always liked that line "Can he feel my pain like I can feel his joy?"

thanks!

-craig