Great Free VST Acoustic Guitar Plugin - Sine Factory Strand - How to play chords

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Orchestral Tools just released a new instrument in their awesome Sine Factory series of free VST instruments. This time it's a free acoustic guitar called Strand.

As you would expect with Orchestral Tools, the quality is great as always. Playing around with the guitar is really fun and it is easy to combine single plucks and strummed chords.

The sound is very clear and close and makes you feel like someone is really playing a guitar right in front of you.

Steel and Nylon 

One nice surprise is that there are actually two Guitars. A steel string guitar and a nylon string guitar. The nylon guitar comes in very handy when you need something a bit softer and sounds very lovely as well. 

Both of these come with 4 different articulations and 3 variations for playing with both hands. These are in detail:

1. Single Notes 2. Strummed Chords Combined 3. Strummed Chords Longs 4. Strummed Chords Shorts 5. Strummed Chords Combined Two-Handed 6. Strummed Chords Longs Two-Handed 7. Strummed Chords Shorts Two-Handed

How to play chords?

One thing that was not really clear to me, when I opened one of the strummed chords patches at first, was what chords I am actually playing.

In the Sine Player itself is no indication, so I quickly checked the website. There it simply says "sustained and damped strums in typical chord voicings". After playing around a bit more, I got a feeling for how it is supposed to work.

You get one octave of notes on the left and one octave of notes a bit higher and a strummed chord is triggered each time you press a single key.

All the major chords seem to be on the left side and the minor chords are on the right side. So if you want to play a typical progression like Am, F, C, G, you have to press the A key on the right side and the F, C, and G key on the left side to change between major and minor.

The two handed patches basically just double up the notes and spread them over the keyboard over 4 octaves to make it easier for you to play with both hands.

First Octave is major, second octave minor, third octave major, and the fourth octave is minor again.

With the strummed chords shorts the sound is stopped right away, while the longs are left to ring out. The combined ones seem to be a combination of both as you can imagine.

It would have been cool to be able to change the tempo of the strumming or have an option for continuous strumming as long as you hold a note or something like that, but it is a free plugin after all so there have to be some limitations. Overall I think it is a really nice plugin, so check it out!

You can get the Strand Acoustic Guitar here: https://www.orchestraltools.com/sinefactory

If you would like to have a bit more control, you might also like the Ample Guitar M Lite, which is also free and gives you a bit more options. https://www.amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=7

And if you would like to get some more unique guitar like instruments you should have a look at the Spitfire Labs collection. Here you will find instruments like a Dulcimer, a Charango, a Mandolin, guitar pads and more cool stuff. https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/


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