Is it possible to reamp MIDI guitars?

    A friend of mine is a prize winning composer and keyboarder almost on the level of Harold Faltermeyer.
    He wants me to substitute some of his guitars to give the songs a little bit more of an organic feel. So far, so good.
    The things is: i cannot improve on perfection. He played the guitar parts - although on keyboards - so well and with all
    those guitarist's tricks that i cannot match their perfection. I pondered a while and here is my solution, but i have never
    done this. So, please comment if some of you have experience with this. Why not reamp those perfect tracks?


    • Why not take the perfect MIDI-guitars and reamp them?
    • I would take the four MIDI-guitars and give them the cleanest VST guitar sound i have.
    • Export those files as waves.
    • Send those waves via S/PDIF to my Kemper. Search for the sounds.
    • Re-record the tracks.
    • Send them to my friend for remixing. Done.


    The question is: can this be done at all. Can this sound good if well done? Thanks for comments! :thumbup:

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

    I don't recommend to take this approach.
    You were asked to play guitar by a keyboard player, because the keyboard player perfectly knows that what you call perfection is actually the biggest flaw when mimicking a guitar by keyboards.


    Conclusion: Play it again, Sam. Play it loud, dirty and your way. Play it like a guitar player would.

    I agree with what Ingolf said.
    But to answer your question-technically it should be no problem. The Profiler does not care about the source that is being send from the DAW to the SPDIF input. You could even reamp a vocal track if you wanted to.

    When arranging songs for my band in Ableton Live, I often import tracks written in Guitar Pro as a starting point. Mainly to get the rhythm and tempo changes right, but also to provide a context for recording the first couple of (real) guitar tracks.


    For the latter purpose, I sometimes run those midi tracks with clean guitar VSTs through Peavey Revalver. It definitely works on a technical level, so I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem with the Kemper either.


    Of course, Guitar Pro tracks are extremely rigid and artificial -- we use it for tabbing and exchanging scores only and don't bother trying to make it sound more natural. But the timbres are ok. If your friend really played those MIDI tracks as convincingly as you say, and you can make them sound like a real unamplified guitar by using a VST instrument, reamping them with the Kemper could work, especially if the guitars don't play too prominent a role in the songs.


    But I would concur with the others here: the imperfections of real guitar playing are probably precisely what he's looking for to create that organic feel.

    Haha! LOL! Thank you for your comments. As enlightenig as always. I love you guys.
    Because you - unknowingly - openend my eyes and nailed the thing.
    My friend maybe said that he wanted a little bit of organic feel, but i am afraid what he actually meant is:
    Nail those parts down as precisely as you can, watch every single phrase, but provide those parts in the back with a monster sound.
    Well, okay then. Glad to hear that reamping those parts is possible. I will provide him with the best of both world then:

    • Reamp HIS tracks the way they were played. Exactly and to the point.
    • Play something slightly different in the style of Geraldo ...
    • ... and see what he likes best, but this whole thing of precisely copying a MIDI guitar became tiresome.


    Thank you very much indeed. Problem solved, case closed until further notice. :thumbup:

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.

    Quote from Karl

    Hi bro, I tried to do this and tbh results were mixed and mostly of poor quality. I recommend playing the parts best you can tbh

    Yup, Karl, results were surprisingly bad. I'll try again, but it did not sound like reamping a clean guitar. So, while possible, it seems to me, too:
    Human or MIDI, no mixture, no reamping needed. I'll play as tight as possible. Done.



    cheers

    My occupation: showing teenagers the many hidden secrets of the A-minor chord on the guitar.