The guitar synth

A fretted track plays through Stab Strings unless you choose otherwise: Stab’s own guitar synth. It isn’t a set of recordings. Each string of the track is modelled as a string, so a new note on a string stops the one ringing there, as on a real guitar, and a chord rings as long as its strings do.

Stab Strings, the guitar synth

Available on every platform.

What it plays

The techniques you write are played, not imitated with another sample:

Palm mutes and dead notes are damped on the string; a muted chug thumps, a dead note scratches.
Hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides change the pitch of the string that’s already ringing, with only a light tap of energy.
Bends, vibrato and whammy curves move the pitch continuously.
Harmonics ring at the harmonic’s pitch.
Strums roll across the strings in the pick’s direction, and each pick has its click.
The sustain pedal lets lifted notes ring on until it comes up.

See Techniques for writing them.

Choosing it, and the instrument it models

A track’s sound button chooses Stab Strings, SoundFont or Stab Synth, or a sampled instrument: the button on the track’s strip in the Mixer, or on its Source in the Sound pane. The track’s menu (right-click its header) has the same under Sound.

The track’s menu also has Instrument: what kind of guitar or bass the strings are. Stab Strings changes its tone with it:

Nylon Guitar and Steel Guitar: acoustic, with a body’s resonance.
Jazz Guitar, Clean Guitar, Muted Guitar (always palm-muted), Overdriven Guitar and Distortion Guitar: electric, through a pickup.
12-String Acoustic and 12-String Electric: a twelve-string guitar, each string doubled (the 12-String Acoustic and 12-String Electric, Jangle presets below). Choosing another guitar here makes the strings single again.
Acoustic Bass, Finger Bass, Pick Bass, Fretless Bass and Slap Bass.

Choosing an electric guitar also brings its amp, if the track had none or still had the old instrument’s: Clean for a clean guitar, Jazz for a jazz guitar, Crunch for an overdriven one and Hi-Gain Rhythm for distortion. Choosing any other instrument (an acoustic, the muted guitar, a bass) takes that amp away again. An amp you chose or changed yourself stays. See Amps and cabinets.

For a new 12-string part, choose Add Track › 12-String Guitar from the track’s menu (or the empty Mixer’s Add Track): a guitar in standard tuning, its strings doubled.

Its controls

The Source band in the Sound pane shows its controls (the whole set in Patch mode’s panel, or an Inspector pane):

Sound: the track’s sound button again.
Pick › Attack: how the pick strikes, from round (the string’s own shape) to bright (a burst).
Strings › Courses: Single, or 12-String: each string doubled as on a 12-string guitar, the four lowest with a thin string an octave up, the two highest with a second string in unison, each pair a few cents apart. The pick meets the two strings of a pair one after the other, the octave string first on a downstroke. The tab stays six strings: you write one note per pair.
Fretting Hand › Fret Mute: damps each chord just before the next pick, for tight, fast playing. At 0 the old note rings into the next pick.
Fretting Hand › Fret Noise: the fingers squeak along the wound strings as the hand moves up or down the neck. Off at 0.
Feel › Humanize: each note a little early or late, a little softer or harder. Off at 0.
Feel › Swing, and Swing On Eighths or Sixteenths: 50 % is straight, about 66 % a triplet swing, 75 % dotted.
Takes: One Take, Double-Tracked (the part played again, on the other side) or Quad-Tracked (two takes each side). Width spreads them apart; Take Timing and Take Detune set how loosely the extra takes follow the first. Smaller values are a tighter, more modern double.

Double-Tracked is also a switch on the Sound pane’s Source band, and in the track’s Sound menu.

Presets for the whole chain

The Sound pane’s Presets has guitar chains that set the Source and its devices together, such as Metal Tight, Doubled or Metalcore Tight, Quad-Tracked, which turn up Fret Mute and tighten the takes. 12-String Acoustic and 12-String Electric, Jangle (clean and compressed, the bright chime of a twelve-string electric) turn on the 12-string’s courses. See Presets.

When it isn’t Stab Strings

Tracks on the SoundFont play General MIDI sounds, through their own chain of devices like any track. Keys tracks play the SoundFont, the Synth or a sampled instrument, not Stab Strings.