Neuro, Nobody should laugh at you bro. This is a subject that many musicians (myself included) have wondered about for quite awhile now. But up until just a few years ago there really wasn't anything capable of producing realistic sounding virtual guitar. Simply due to the difficulties in emulating guitar with software, even with good samples, the tone itself is almost unimportant. There are so many different guitar tones you could cultivate, it really doesn't even matter if what you use sounds like a synth. What DOES matter, very much so, is that you have the means of articulating the tone that makes it sound like real guitar playing. The simplest sounding guitar riff can be almost impossible to mimic with samples or software, because it's not just straight notes. Playing guitar involves many things taking place between the picking or strumming hand and the fret board hand. The notes are articulated in particular ways involving velocity, pressure and a mutlitude of techniques like hammerons, pulls offs, down picking, up picking, alt pick, fast strum, slow strum, sweeping, sliding, vibrato, tremelo, portamento, pitch bends, pinch harmonics, normal harmonics, tremolo arm action, and the list goes on. The good news is there are some extremely impressive virtual guitar programs available now. Bad news is they are not cheap. And then there's the matter of learning how to use them. Your problem is obvious. The freebie software downloads unfortunately aren't in this group. What your using is good for nothing more than adding cheesy guitar sounds to notes. What your wanting to do is possible, or at least you can get some pretty impressive results with the right vst. If your willing to invest some time and money into this I would recommend looking at a couple of vst's from Impact Soundworks. I have researched and sampled pretty much everything out there and Impact Soundworks' scripting/engine is for me the best in terms of playability, response and authenticity, especially when you team it up with a top shelf amp simulator like Guitar Rig or Amplitude. Word to the wise, be willing to drop some dime and spend some time to get something close to reality. If you decide this is outside the realm of possibility I would suggest picking up a few good guitar sample packs and learn how to manipulate them in your DAW to suit your needs. Heres a few links for you to check out. Best of luck.

http://impactsoundworks.com/products/guitar-and-bass/archtop-hollowbody-electric-guitar/

http://impactsoundworks.com/product/shreddage-ii-absolute-electric-guitar/

Rhythm guitars are totally different problem and there are very few guitar VIs that do rhythm guitars convincingly, but if you are willing to roll out strums in piano roll and possibly use a few noise samples from other VIs you can also do with Prominy (Shreddage has awesome scripting and automatic double-tracking but it might sound too heavy). Indian instrument VSTs are quite hard to come by, especially the free ones This is why I put together this list of the 8 best free ones I could find. Let’s get straight to it Acoustic Indian Dhol Lite by RDG Audio Available for Windows and Mac. Acoustic Dhol is a sample based Indian Dhol Instrument. It has been Best 9 Free Indian Instruments VST/AU Plugins Read More ». BJAM is a Strat electric guitar rompler. Blue Jeans and Moonbeams (or BJAM for short) is a sampled S-Type (Strat) electric guitar designed for those familiar with the playing techniques idiomatic to the instrument, and the signal processing techniques used to shape their output. Sampled S-type guitar with 3 mixable pickups. Noizefield – Warrior – Free Wavetable VST Synth. Layers is a free orchestral VST instrument, and an easy way to add orchestral sounds to your compositions and productions. MCharmVerb is a great sounding lush algorithmic reverb based on the MTurboReverb engine.

If you’ve been producing music for a while, you probably know that a lot of the commercial guitar VSTs or libraries out there are pretty expensive and not always easy to use. Although I own a few commercial guitar libraries, I also wanted to see what free guitar VSTs and sample libraries are available these days. I have to admit I was surprised by the number of interesting instruments I found. So, I’ve put together this list to talk about the best ones.

For this article, I looked at both acoustic and electric guitars but left out guitar amps and other effect plugins (I will cover these in an upcoming article).

Free Acoustic Guitar Plugins

Ample Sound: Ample Guitar M II Lite

Rewire Vst 64 Bit Free

Format: AU, VST, AAX, RTAS / 32 bit + 62 bit
OS: Mac, Windows

Audio examples:

Ample Sound is a Beijing-based company that has been creating guitar and bass VSTs since 2011. The Ample Guitar M II series aims “to bring the Martin D-41 Acoustic Guitar sound to your studio.” Luckily for us, the company also released a free lite version of the instrument, which comes with a reduced sample rate, fewer articulations and features and a lower sample count than the original (by now, version III has been released already).

This doesn’t prevent Ample Guitar M II Lite from being the best sounding (non-Kontakt) acoustic guitar in this list, though. The samples sound full and lively and can be triggered directly through MIDI (or your DAW) as well as through a built-in sequencer, the “strummer.”

The strummer makes it super easy to build patterns out of single notes, up and down strokes and mutes. Additionally, there are a bunch of effects and features available to change the tone. One of my favorite features is the doubling switch, which adds width to the instrument in an instant.

Another particular useful feature of Ample Guitar M II Lite is that it shows you which string corresponds to the note you’re playing. This quickly helped me create more realistic arpeggios.

If you also use Guitar Pro Tab, you can even import your tabs into Ample Guitar M II Lite. Note that you are limited to the first four frets of each string when you’re using the lite version.

There are so many fully functioning knobs and switches in this free plugin that I didn’t manage to get to all of them in my 45 minutes of playing around with it. What more can you ask for in a free guitar?

You can get Ample Guitar M II Lite on the Ample Sound website.

This is a quick introduction to the instrument:

DSK Music: Dynamic Guitars

Format: AU, VST / 32 bit + 64 bit
OS: Mac, Windows

Audio examples:

This guitar VST has gotten a lot of attention lately, especially since the release of LifeStyleDidIt’s video “I FOUND THE BEST FREE GUITAR VST” (see below). DSK Music is a project by a Spaniard named Víctor who has been making hundreds of free virtual instruments since 2002.

DynamicGuitars contains three different instruments: an acoustic guitar, a nylonguitar and a steel guitar. It also offers control over the envelope of thesamples as well as the dynamic range and the voice mode (poly, mono, legato). All the included guitars feel smooth, warm andthick but could use a little EQ action for clarity.

In this video, you can see the plugin in use:

You can download DSK Dynamic Guitars here.

Pettinhouse Free Acoustic Guitars

Pettinhouse is a project by Andrea Pettinao. The company sells a wide variety of guitars and also offers a handful of free guitar sample libraries. Let’s take a look at them!

FreeAcousticGuitar

Format: Kontakt 3 and higher (full version required!)

Audio examples:

Free AcousticGuitar is a simple but well-recorded and programmed acoustic guitar Kontakt library. The samples are loaded as a multi and are separated into attack+ sustain, releases and fret noise sounds and come in different velocities. The samples are well mixed and sound wonderfully natural.

FreeClassicGuitar

Format: Kontakt 5 and higher (full version required!)

Audio examples:

When you open the free version of Pettinhouse’s Classic Guitar, you’re getting a multi consisting of two instruments: classic guitar and noises. These work well together and offer a realistic and nice warm sound.

Yummy Beats: Modest Guitar

Format: Kontakt 5 and higher (full v

Vst 64bit Free Rythym Guitar Electric