Note: I don’t play the guitar, but I put together the following from research. When I tried it in my DAW, the results were much better than what I’d gotten before. So, I’m putting this here to record/share it. I’m only going to discuss triad chords here (or more broadly “open” chords on a guitar, I think), since I’ve only tried this with them. The principles seem pretty broadly applicable, although I don’t think they would make it possible to emulate barre chords—those might have to be a feature provided by your plugin.
Obviously, I’m very open to feedback from people who actually play guitar ;) .
The notes of a triad chord are the same on a guitar as on a piano. However, guitars are built differently from pianos, so in some ways their behavior differs. This impacts what you do with the notes in MIDI in a number of ways.
Order/Timing
To begin with, you would typically play a piano triad by pressing all 3 keys simultaneously. On a guitar, you are strumming the strings, so
Since you are strumming the strings of a guitar, the amount of force you apply to the strings will tend to be highest at the beginning of the strum and lowest at the end. This means that you may choose to adjust the velocity of the notes so that it is highest for the first note and lowest for the last note in order to reflect this.
Here is an excellent video that covers the timing/velocity components of the above; the use of the chord chart was my own idea for finding the note order:
Obviously, I’m very open to feedback from people who actually play guitar ;) .
The notes of a triad chord are the same on a guitar as on a piano. However, guitars are built differently from pianos, so in some ways their behavior differs. This impacts what you do with the notes in MIDI in a number of ways.
Order/Timing
To begin with, you would typically play a piano triad by pressing all 3 keys simultaneously. On a guitar, you are strumming the strings, so
- The notes occur in a particular order.
- To find the appropriate order, have a look at a guitar chord chart for the chord you're trying to play (Here's a tutorial on reading chord charts.). Here is a free library of chord charts to which you can refer. Also, this chart showing the notes on a guitar might come in handy.
- A chord chart is basically a diagram of a guitar neck. For a vertical chart, the top is toward the nut/head and left line is the highest-pitched string; for a horizontal chart, the left line is toward the nut/head and the bottom line is the highest-pitched string.
- When strumming, you will be playing the strings from one side to the other in one of two directions (“down” or “up” as you’re holding the guitar). This means you’ll be moving left to right or right to left on a vertical chord chart, or bottom to top or top to bottom on a horizontal chard chart. The appropriate order for the notes is the order in which your fingers would play them as they move across the strings.
- Note that some chords have particular notes played more than once. For example, one voicing for C major plays the chord as C-E-G-C-E. On a piano, you would only play 3 notes; on the guitar, you play C and E twice. This is important to realize, because it means you have additional C and E MIDI notes after G, and it sounds very different and more characteristically “guitar” than having C-E-G alone.
- Note also, particularly if you don't play guitar yourself, that these repeated notes are in different octaves. If you examine the chart showing the notes on a guitar, you'll see that, in standard tuning, within the grouping of 5 frets shown on a chord chart, the six strings cover a note range of over two octaves. (For example, starting from the open E string, the notes rise to A at fret 5, which is identical to plucking the neighboring A string when it is "open" (has no fingers on it). The notes on A and subsequent strings then rise and wrap similarly until we eventually reach the upper E string, which is 2 octaves higher than the lower E string. E itself then has 5 further notes within the first 5 frets.) This means that, as you follow the notes shown in a chord chart from one side to the other, you are in fact constantly rising in pitch (or falling in pitch, if you're going in the opposite direction).
- Note also that there can be multiple “voicings” for a chord. (For example, here is a listing of chord charts for different voicings of the C Major chord.). These are basically different ways of playing the chord. This is probably obvious to a guitar player, but I expect you may want to try these different voicings to see if you like the sound of one or another better. Even if the pitches are the same, the order of the notes will be different, and this would affect the overall sound.
- To find the appropriate order, have a look at a guitar chord chart for the chord you're trying to play (Here's a tutorial on reading chord charts.). Here is a free library of chord charts to which you can refer. Also, this chart showing the notes on a guitar might come in handy.
- The notes occur at a slight delay from each other, rather than simultaneously.
- Since you are strumming your fingers across the strings, you won’t hit all of the notes at the same time. So, you will want to delay each MIDI note a bit in order to reflect that all of the notes aren’t starting at once. A tutorial video I watched (below) recommended setting this delay somewhat at random to make it more natural; as a guideline, I personally found results I thought were decent by delaying the notes by 1/64 note.
Since you are strumming the strings of a guitar, the amount of force you apply to the strings will tend to be highest at the beginning of the strum and lowest at the end. This means that you may choose to adjust the velocity of the notes so that it is highest for the first note and lowest for the last note in order to reflect this.
Here is an excellent video that covers the timing/velocity components of the above; the use of the chord chart was my own idea for finding the note order:
