Best way to emulate a Rock or Metal Guitar with Sonar X3?

I own Sonar X3 Producer which includes already Dimension Pro and Rapture.
Is there already a good way to Emulate a Rpck or Metal guitar via a Synth or better a Sampler?
I know that Dimension Pro already has some Rock-Guitar Patches but how can i emulate palm muting?

stortbo
....how can i emulate palm muting?

Feed the dim-pro through a gate with a short hold/release time to chop off the end of the notes, turn down the high frequencies.

Karyn

stortbo
....how can i emulate palm muting?

Feed the dim-pro through a gate with a short hold/release time to chop off the end of the notes, turn down the high frequencies.

Ha! Nice.

+1-- Being mainly a guitar player, that's been my approach to keyboards and drums. I just started playing them and over time I've gotten good enough to make music in real time,,, I hate the idea of "constructing music... to me that's not enjoyable and can never sound like real music...then use Sonars tools to make me sound even better. 
 

One thing when planning a guitar emulation with synths is to remember and accept that you're faking.
Don't expect to get realistic and impressive sounds, settle with somewhat impressive and very usable.  Pick a decent guitar sound, even a dry one, from some synth, and start playing with amp simulators and FX. Don't put it too much on the top, because it's weaknesses are then too audible. When the part sounds at its worst, hide it a little into the accompaniment or distract the listener with a cymbal or something, and push the best parts gently forefront.

CakeAlexS
Almost anything that goes through the Overloud TH2 effect sounds like a rock guitar IMHO. Find the right guitar patch and off you go. As far as performance is concerned, well that's another matter :). I tend to wear a wig when playing...

Exactly and it is, from what I've seen, a somewhat known technique with about the best results you can get for synth based "rock" guitar. You treat it like you would a regular guitar signal. Find the cleanest, most realistic sounding guitar synth patch you can then run it through a GOOD amp sim. Just like plugging a real guitarist on a nice guitar into a good amp or stomp box into a clean amp or guitar into an amp with an effects processing loop.
 
That's why I brought up AAS Strum. I haven't used it because... well guitar has been my life for the past 25 years so I don't need it, but it has a crapload of controls and from what I've seen on some of the vids it is about as realistic as you'll get out of anything in Sonar. A lot of it is acoustic sounds but there are some more electrical clean sounds in there that would definitely be a useable clean signal emulation that could be easily processed by a good amp sim like TH2. Even still if you have ever plugged an acoustic guitar into a high gain amp or with a stomp box into an amp the tone is freaking delicious. It's the damned feedback that causes problems.
 
I used to have a semi hollow body es-335 clone that had a lot of acoustic characteristics that I would use heavily distorted and it was AWESOME... until I tried to get to stage volume. Then the feedback was just too much to deal with... not to mention all the other metal skids would make fun of me for my grampa guitar, lol... but screw them.
 
The point is that AAS strum was designed to have as much human characteristics as possible which is the most problematic part of creating realistic sounding guitar parts with synths. I could see it being quite effective at at least giving you some good quality metal gallops and heavy power chords if you a) chose the right clean sound from AAS, b) learned how to fiddle with all the humanizing functions in it, c) wrote the part like it would be play on a guitar (which should be easy as it has a fretboard input and you can punch in chords and choose from different fingering variations... I think, which is VERY important to specific tones) and d) ran it through a good quality sim.
 
Still it is NOT going to be as good as a real guitarist but for what's within the program I'm guessing it is probably about as close as you'll get.
 
I'd be interested to see how this turns out. In fact I may try some tests of this myself.
 
Cheers.

Cactus Music
I'd rather hear a badly played real instrument than a phony baloney guitar..But that said, some metal guitar sound are so far from the sound of a guitar that it might not matter...:) 

Agreed. There is a big difference between something like Necrophagist where some of it is so processed and clean it might as well be a synth and Iron Maiden where you can almost hear the meat and sweat of it all.
 
Considering he asked specifically about palm muting though I kind of assumed a more human touch was desired... and frankly lends to a much more interesting discussion I think. I actually really want to try out the AAS plus TH2 thing but I should actually be finalizing some bass tracks today. I've already wasted my morning with an epic meatworld failure.
 
Stupid non behaving weatherstripping. Urgh.

Well I just tried out the AAS/TH2 combo. Granted I didn't really fiddle much but I load an Addictive Drums metal beat, inserted AAS (first time I've opened it) as an SIT and put TH2 in the FX bin then set it to the first metal preset. I programmed some power chords in the PRV and that sounded alright and with some fiddling I think I could get it to sound rather realistic but then I tried to do some chugs/gallops/low E rides and nope... sounded like total arse. Just WAY too mechanical and I don't think any amount of fiddling could really get it sounding "real".
 
So nice fat power chords, yes. Definitely workable. Chuggy riffs? I don't think so.
 
But as I said... I only screwed around with it very briefly.

Thanks to all the replies and answers.
 
The video suggestion from user Hemul shows the answer.
Its very Simple, just use Dune CM (i've tested some other, this seems to be the best for this) and run it through TH2 or GuitarRig. Works very good for me.
 
Btw. i can play guitar and would be able to play it direct but its not always possible or handy at all.

I used to love teaching back in the days when students believed they needed you, We had 50 students a week.  It slowly died out in the mid- 2000's.  Now they get it all for free with U-Tubes. But the danger there is no one to correct developing bad habits. 

I'm surprised Craig Anderton hasn't chimed in on this thread. Seems like it'd be right up his alley.
 
Doesn't DimPro have a muted patch? I know with Slayer you can just dial it in with automation. 

Steve_Karl

Jim Roseberry
IMO, Trying to emulate a guitar can be more tedious than actually learning to play one.   
 
Consider getting a guitar and start by playing/recording simple things in short bits.
As you get better, you'll be able to play more consistent and more complicated parts.
Otherwise, I'd take Beep's advice and collaborate with a real guitar player.
 
 
 

Hey Jim, Good to see you here.

Check this out. It's pretty amazing.
http://www.vir2.com/instruments/electri6ity

Hey Steve,
 
Good to see a long-time familiar face!  
Yeah, I agree that electri6ity is quite an accomplishment.

 
When my old roommates used to play it I would be the grumpy guy on the left. I got pretty much the same reaction.

2 Words..... Theodore Krueger.
 
He was able to produce some incredible sounding (and very realistic) metal guitar tracks using Sonar's PRV (really old version of Sonar), Kontact and a free library called Yamaha Pacifica.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODJcDbQIB5c
 
Better yet, see this lesson on how it does it with a different library... still on an old version of Sonar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKzupdeJNMo
 
The sounds are available even if people don't believe they are.... but it's not easy to catch the feel via midi. Learning to program the PRV the way he does would likely take longer than learning the instrument.