Hope this is the right place.
 
Not a guitar player--keyboard instead--and it has occurred to me that with setting up an overlapping keyboard split, a person could play two "fake guitars" at once, playing the chord in the middle of the keyboard (where the 2 splits overlap) and having that chord play a strum pattern (a la RealGuitar or Amber) on the left side of the keyboard (lower octaves), and "picking" on the right (again, a la Realguitar where the upper octaves can play String 1, String 2,...patterns.  Following?  (If so, feel free to steal this idea).
 
What are live keyboard players using to set this kind of thing up.  Are you plugged into a laptop?  I've heard of "black box" setups that you can load VSTs into.  What are you using for software and pedal setups (my voice is starting to fail me--I'm old--and I could use some Telicon-ish pitch help, for instance)? 
 
Thanks in advance!  And if there is some other place I should be looking for advice--live music, in particular--I'd appreciate any info you have.
 
Jerry

Cantable the pro version does all kinds of cool stuff. It's a little pricey but has lots of support and a good following. They have a free version you can try out. I would check that out.
 
Some here build computers on a smaller chassis and take those to the gig or buy gamer laptops. The company  that once specialized in stand alone hardware called RECEPTOR for vst playback seems to have stopped making the hardware.
 
All depends on what you aim to do. For a simple on stage setup any vst daw host will do. Mac users like Mainstage.
If I were seriously going into stage work using vsts I would probably be looking at AKAI VIP 3.1. It hosts ANY vst which can the be called up live in milliseconds. Native Instruments has Komplete Kontrol. It's designed to host NI vst. That isn't a bad thing because they have a lot to offer. That setup is probably used mainly in studios though.
 
If you want something that plays background music for you I would look into accompaniment keyboards. Yamaha and Korg have some nice ones with lots of styles to choose from.
 
Lots of things you can do. All depends on what your goal is.
 
 

I think the setup you describe, with two guitar vst's or two instances, being played by two keyboards? Is that it? I think that would sound kind of but not really like a guitar, and possibly more like kind of two guitars.
 
And people would look for a guy, or guys, playing those guitars, and they would see you with two keyboards, and they would wander off or out, confused as to what the dickens the world was coming to.
 
But it just . . . Might . . . Work! In what setting would you do this, a restaurant, a subway?
 
Cheers,
Tom
 
 

Actually--whether it's a good idea or not--I was describing two guitars on ONE keyboard, with a key split such that the middle octaves were for playing the chord and the lower octaves for one guitar VST and the upper octaves for another.  Not a guitar player so...not really much choice for me if I want to play guitar music.  :-) 

Cantabile Pro is great for playing virtual-instruments live.
Virtual-instruments are organized like a virtual Rack of Hardware Synths.
You can create whatever advanced splits/layers necessary.
CPU use is very efficient; only the virtual-instruments used in each patch ("Scene" IIRC) are actually running.
 
Another application to check out for playing live is Ableton Live.
Don't dismiss it thinking it's only for triggering loops.  It's *FAR* more advanced than that.
Watch a few YouTube videos of what keyboard players are doing with Live.
It's pretty amazing.  Seamless patch-switching (between advanced splits/layers), advanced click-tracks, etc.
We use Ableton Live for triggering keyboard parts and samples at gigs (using two small MIDI controllers).
Amazing flexibility, quick/easy to rearrange set-list, and rock-solid...