Reference Guide Virtual Guitarist AMBER

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Style Bar

In the Style Bar, you choose a STYLE (selection of phrases) and a KEY. It also contains the CHORD display.

STYLE

A STYLE in Virtual Guitarist AMBER is the counterpart to a particular phrasing style that you ask your guitarist to play. Styles are the “rhythmic vocabulary” of Virtual Guitarist AMBER, which is why we have included over 50 of them. You can select styles by either clicking the small arrows to skip to the previous/next style, or by clicking the name of the current Style to bring up the full list.

                                                                     

Every style is a set of eleven phrases that you can access via the Style Phrases area of the Interactive or MIDI keyboard.
In most Styles, Phrases are ordered by intensity/density from left to right.

KEY

 

This parameter lets you define a Key (scale). With a pre-selected Key, Virtual Guitarist AMBER offers a reduced chord selection consisting only of chords that work well in this key.

 

This parameter lets you define a Key (scale). With a pre-selected Key, Virtual Guitarist AMBER offers a reduced chord selection consisting only of chords that work well in this key.

CHORD

CHORD is not a parameter but a display. It shows the chord corresponding to the keys you play (see also Fingering Sheme).

Interactive Keyboard

Interactive Keyboard

The interactive keyboard is both a display of received MIDI notes and an actually functional on-screen keyboard. The left side of the keyboard doesn’t make any sound by itself. Here, you control the performance of the guitarist by switching between 34 different phrases. 11 of these phrases are set by the style, the rest are always available.

Common Phrases

The lower left of the MIDI keyboard (C#1 – B2) is reserved for a collection of so- called “Common Phrases”. These phrases are “hard-wired” and won’t change with the STYLE selection. Common Phrases complement the Style Phrases by phrasings that are more generic and applicable to multiple contexts. Phrases are what you make of them. Virtual Guitarist AMBER lets you switch phrases in realtime without interrupting the performance. That’s a great way to create dynamic and interesting phrasings of your own. For example lead from abridge to a chorus with the build-up Phrases 19 and 20.

Style Phrases

Keys in this area select phrases of the currently selected Style. Phrases in the Style Range start with the lowest density/intensity on C3 and get more agitated as you move towards Bb3.

You could generally work your way through a song going from left (intro, verse) to right (chorus), but of course this greatly depends on the style and your song. Just know you always have 11 different rhythms plus the common phrases at your immediate disposal.

The highest key of the Style Range – B3 – is the Stop key. In Latch mode,
pressing this key will stop playback (whereas the Silent Key (C1) will keep
playback going, just with an empty phrase.

Chord Range

Keys in the Chord range function almost like a regular musical keyboard: You start and stop the guitarist’s performance and you determine the chords played. It’s like playing keyboard, except that instead of playing notes you select the chord the guitarist will perform as a phrase.

Virtual Guitarist AMBER features a built-in chord recognition that makes it very easy to play even complex chord progressions. You can play major chords with just one finger and other chords using two or three. The following paragraph will tell you exactly which chords are supported and how to play them.

Fingering Sheme

The schematic on the next page shows you which chords you can play with Virtual Guitarist AMBER.
Here’s how to read it:

• A black dot on the stylized keyboard means “required”, a grey dot means “optional” (for example, if you use the MIDI file of a synth pad to control Virtual Guitarist AMBER)
  
• Chord displayed: The resulting musical chord as displayed by Virtual Guitarist AMBER

Perfomance Control

Performance controls let you adjust the musical performance of Virtual Guitarist AMBER to your song’s feel and tempo. 

Perfomance Control

Latch

When Latch is activated, once you press a key in the Chord range, Virtual Guitarist AMBER will keep playing until you press the Stop key.
When Latch is off, Virtual Guitarist AMBER only plays as long as you hold at least one key in the Chord range. Latch is convenient when testing or setting up sounds, and is more practical if you build a track by manually entering notes into your MIDI track.

You can use an optional Sustain Pedal as a temporary Latch. Lifting the sustain
pedal unlatches any notes that are no longer held, even if the Latch switch is still on.

Speed

The Speed switch lets you halve (0.5x) or double (2x) Virtual Guitarist AMBER’s tempo relative to the song tempo.

This way you can extend the style range to 4th- or 32nd-note-based, or have Virtual Guitarist AMBER styles play at normal grooves even if you use extremely low or high song tempi.

Swing

This function, often also called “Shuffle”, delays the off-beats. Virtual Guitarist AMBER will automatically switch the Swing resolution to 8th or 16th note depending on the selected Style. 

At maximum position, the off-beat will have the same timing as the last note of a
triplet. Use this control to match the timing of Virtual Guitarist AMBER to a shuffled or triplet-based song. 

• Not all phrases contain 8th or 16th note off-beats. In these cases the Swing control has no effect.

Feel

You can tweak the feel of your guitarist’s performance either towards relaxed or rushed using this control:

• As you move the slider to the left, the player will play off-beats slightly earlier, leading to a rushed or driving feel.
  
• In the opposite direction, off-beats will be slightly delayed, creating a laid- back or relaxed feel.

Feel has a stronger effect when listened to against other tracks. If you’re not sure what it does, try playing a drum loop along with Virtual Guitarist AMBER and tweak the control. You will notice that the off-beats will play earlier or later than the off-beat drums (usually Hi-Hats or snares) as you turn the control.

To create advanced doubling, create two instances of Virtual Guitarist AMBER, pan both extremely left and right, set different TONE and SOURCE settings and set the FEEL slightly differently.