Keytars & AX Synths

how to create a split distortion guitar patch?

27 May 2010, 06:35

I'm newbie in using ax-synth editor, spent hours last night, but couldn't find a good sound.

I want to create a metal distortion guitar patch with split tones on the keyboard. First 17 keys are palm mute clean electric guitar, and the rest 32 keys are clean electric guitar with dual tone: bright string (if key pressed strongly) and muted string (if key pressed softly). Then the patch is triggered to MFX amp simulation Metal 5150 or else.

My problem is:
1. I couldn't find a good tone for palm mute clean guitar from the preset tones. Also couldn't find a good tone for bright/mute clean electric guitar just like the one available in my Juno-G preset (Searing COSM?).
2. Is it possible to add more preset tones to the AX-Synth Editor? Or add patch from Juno-G/Fantom?
3. How to set the split point? The keyboard can be transposed to 3 octaves up/down, so where should I put the split point for this case?
4. I noticed that most of AX-Synth preset guitar tones setup only using Left channel of the individual tone, and using only 2 to 3 tones for a patch. Why they were not made in stereo?
5. In my case, what is the good approach to the patch creation? When to use all 4 tones ? and when to use different stereo presets in a tone to enrich the patch?

Many thanx in advance for your suggestion.

Re: how to create a split distortion guitar patch?

15 Jul 2010, 10:55

Hi, I'll try to answer your questions one after one :

2. You can fully program the AX-Synth with the software editor, but you can't add new samples

3. When editing a program, you can set the keyboard and velocity ranges for each of the four parts. I guess that the default tranpose setting gives a keyboard range from C2 to C6. But you can easily check this with the editor.

4. Maybe because a guitar is basically a mono instrument... In order to have a stereo tone, there must be two samples with litte differences. That works well for pianos or strings, but guitars are not very suitable for this use. But you can program a big stereo guitar with only two parts by taking a sample A + a sample B on the left and right sides of part 1, and sample B + sample A on the left and right sides of part 2. If you detune part 2, you'll have a stereo effect with both samples A and B.

5. Do as you want, you don't have to use all four parts cause if you want fat sounds, chorus and delay effects are a good solution, too.

My sound generators : Roland V-Synth GT & AX-Synth, Alesis Fusion 8HD & 6HD, Korg Z1 & WS EX & CX-3 & EMX-1, Kawai K5000S, Toontrack Superior Drummer, EWQL Silver Orchestra.

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