Is it just me, or do the guitar programs sound horrible?

[curtiscee]

First things first...I LOVE my Korg Kronos X 88-key keyboard. It's the gift that keeps on giving, and I'll NEVER be able to use all of its features. It's a beast, and the keyboard I have always wanted all of my other keyboards to be. I play the keys quite well; but I can't play guitar. I own guitars, and try to use them, but I suck. They just sound great. I wish I learned guitar more than keyboards quite frankly because they're so much more personal sounding and immediate to me. The great thing about the Kronos is that I'm able to play and use the effects etc. in such a way that sounds "smaller" and natural, just the way I like it. With that said, whenever I search for a guitar, meh. Nothing has that sound of me connecting a real guitar to it and "playing it." Are there effects that will take these piano-esque "guitar" sounds and make them sound more like guitars, or am I just getting something wrong? I know playing guitar is much different from playing keys, and one would have to replicate that on a keyboard. But if they don't even sound like guitars in the first place, what's the point? They sound like broken poor pianos to me. So anyone have any tips or suggestions? I know it's a complex thing to capture guitars, but sheesh, to my ears, they don't even come close. The acoustic are better, but the electric sound fake and cheesy. I *think* there's a solution somewhere buried in KARMA and effects, but I don't know what to do to fix these sounds. Has anyone come up with any workarounds? Or am I just insane in thinking that the guitars are the weakest part of the Kronos? Thanks in advance.

[LZ]

I've never heard any guitar sound in any keyboard sound good, so it's a little unfair. That said, generally clean sounds, if voiced and articulated carefully can sound good. The amp sims suck. There, I said it. Extremely weak point that carries over to EP and organ.

[curtiscee]

Sigh. You're right. The Kronos probably sounds great in comparison to other guitar sounds on other keyboards. Oh what to do!?!?!? TIME TO LEARN GUITAR!

Thanks for putting it in perspective for me. My inner voice knew this already, but I thought maybe building it, it would come!

[firstlovedan]

Actually the Motif XS has some believable sounds, and so does Roland. They are achievable, but you need better amp simulations, and a good playing technique to pull it off.
In my sequences on the Kronos, I spend a lot of time tweaking the amps and effects. But I am praying someone will really knock out some great guitar patches!

[Bugra Ekuklu]

Even MOX6 has better guitar sounds (especially nylon guitar) than Kronos.

IMHO, you may achieve great electric guitar sounds in Kronos. I recently play Clapton's Layla and it sounded perfect (Kronos onboard guitar amps are impressing). Just needs little tweaking, and perhaps some playing technique.

One more thing, if you can play guitar at beginner level, you can easily pull the guitar chords with correct octavings.

-B.

[DanHolland]

I recognise the lack of good guitarsounds. I play keys in a rockband and sometimes I just like to support the guitar with some extra licks (with guitarsounds offcourse).
The only acceptable solution to me are 3rd party sample libraries because it al starts with the basic guitarsamples (which are NOT OK in KRONOS of any other synth). I use Native Intsruments Kontakt to make use of some nice 3rd party libraries. Orange Tree Samples 'Electric Guitar Strawberry' offers some nice sounding electric guitars. Only thing is you have spend a lot of time converting the libraries if you want to transport and use it in your KRONOS.

[afr]

I agree, guitar sounds are not the strongest point in Kronos, yamaha does better

[DanHolland]

And offcourse.....sound is allways a matter of taste !!!!
My opinion is also based on integration in a bandmix. Standalone, a couple of guitars sound pretty good, but in the mix, KRONOS loses the battle against 3rd party sounds.

[NuSkoolTone]

It's not just you. The guitars in the Kronos aren't "weak", they straight up SUCK. HARD. They don't sound much better than the guitars from a Trinity IMO.

I also play guitar, so I know how to "Play guitar" on keyboard. The Motif XS has one of the better Guitars I've heard on a workstation, particularly the acoustic guitars. The electrics are the first I've heard in hardware to be "Passable" for some things, but even still they get grating and static after awhile.

The Kronos would benefit GREATLY from a good electric guitar library. One that has the oversight of GUITARISTS who know what good Tone is and to play for recording of the samples. I've been trying to find time to make my own sample library for over a year, but things keep getting in the way.

[R Brenon]

You might be able to get away some good sounding cleans if played properly but when it comes down to it (I play guitar too) digital distortion just plain and simple SUCKS. Everybody wants to record a guitar clean and run it through digital amp modelers and distortion. Some of it's o.k. as long as your playing a real guitar through it, but from a keyed standpoint there would be way too many circumstances where advanced programming would have to be done controlling all perimeters and modulation and to tell you the truth it would be too much to program. Ask our KARMA programmer, he should know. Even the top software developers virtual guitars sound like ass compared to a cheap real one. If you bend a note on a guitar going through a real amp, so many things change with sound throughout that little process you'd need a very good physics professor who knows programming to try to emulate that process. So far, if they virtually can't come close to real distortion, the rest is gonna sound like crap too. Kemper has come a long way with modeling and I believe they're the closest yet but software has a long way to go.
My advice on guitar sounds is every sound has a sweet spot you could use while playing on a keyboard. Record it with real good old fashioned analog distortion and put simple effects on it later. It's more convincing that way. Not perfect, but better. You can come close to fooling people with the single note cleans (I have on my guitar forums ) but no way on the distorted ones or strumming either way.

[Link]

Yamaha is not alone; Roland also has very good, very believable guitars. And not just samples, I think their amp modelling sounds better, than what Yamaha has. And I have not even tried SuperNatural guitars yet.

What comes to sampled guitars, Korg is not in the same league. But then again, Korg has the string modelling engine. I have not properly tried it personally, and I have not heard very 'realistic' sounds from it, but if copying guitars exactly is not a top priority, I would give Korg some points for having the engine. I am dreaming of making patches with it, that might not sound 100% real guitar, but what would still behave very expressively. The string engine is one of the many reasons, why the Kronos is so much higher in my shopping list, than Yamaha. (Although, as the reason, that has been keeping me from buying the Kronos is the budget, the Roland is doing damn good job in making my decisions more difficult with the FA).

[kbrkr]

If you want to hear killer guitar sounds in a keyboard, check out the Yamaha Tyros 5. I know, I know, It's an arranger and most synth players twist their nose at it, but they have a new DSP section built on Vintage Amp modeling that takes the core samples and creates unbelievable emulations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQnyEKqNV7Q

I wish my Kronos had some of those tasty samples/dsp combinations.

[ricciolino]

that's a demo I made few weeks ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0FvsabO3pA

I started to work on STR-1 angine just for fun, I did not expect to reach this result, it's true is a mostly clean guitar, but ther's some gain from AMP emulator (U.K. '70 tweed cabinet obviously) and a compressor for a very dynamic sound. Like every engine on board you have to experiment with a lot and results are always surprising. I'm going to work even on distorted guitars in this piece, and let you know, anyway the guitar patch is avalaible on my fb page

[GregC]

that's a demo I made few weeks ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0FvsabO3pA

I started to work on STR-1 angine just for fun, I did not expect to reach this result, it's true is a mostly clean guitar, but ther's some gain from AMP emulator (U.K. '70 tweed cabinet obviously) and a compressor for a very dynamic sound. Like every engine on board you have to experiment with a lot and results are always surprising. I'm going to work even on distorted guitars in this piece, and let you know, anyway the guitar patch is avalaible on my fb page

nice work. I thought your guitar programming was convincing. And excellent ear for capturing Gilmours Strat lead

[NuSkoolTone]

If you want to hear killer guitar sounds in a keyboard, check out the Yamaha Tyros 5. I know, I know, It's an arranger and most synth players twist their nose at it, but they have a new DSP section built on Vintage Amp modeling that takes the core samples and creates unbelievable emulations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQnyEKqNV7Q

I wish my Kronos had some of those tasty samples/dsp combinations.

Some of those samples are indeed tasty, Especially the mildy overdriven stuff. I can tell where they're using the "Amp modeling" on clean samples though. Still pretty weak against other guitar amp modelers IMO. You can still tell right away it's a keyboard. Nonetheless that's still head and shoulders above the Kronos!

Here to me is the current "Holy Grail": Real Guitar plug-ins and Keytar Jeff. Not only he's a bad ass player, but this is some of the most convincing keyboard guitars I've ever heard played Live without sequences and tricks.

Some examples: (KeytarJeff on youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beObNQy ... iuthR9GNyQ

EDIT: Somehow I posted the same link twice. No time to find the other link, but it was showcasing the LPC library. You have to go through the whole video(s) as he often showcases several different models. Not all of it is great, but on certain things it's really Eye Opening. Enough so that I would do 2nd guitar on a gig in front of my friends with it and not be embarrassed!