GTSS (Guitar SuperSystem) is a tool that allows you to create somewhat realistic-sounding guitar tracks from midi files. It is mainly optimized for metal guitar playing, so it may not sound as natural through a clean amp.
- Download the latest release here.
- Extract it, keep gtss-x86_64.AppImage in the same directory as the guitar_samples directory if you decide to move it somewhere else.
- Run gtss-x86_64.AppImage
- Click 'Open Midi File' to load a midi file, or 'Configure' to bring up the configuration menu.
- Select the number of guitar tracks to render, and the midi instruments to read notes from for each track.
- Render and wait for it to complete. Each track will be rendered as a .wav file in the same directory as your midi file.
GTSS currently supports 3 articulations: open plucking, palm mute plucking, and tapping.
In order to use these, you must place keyswitch notes in your midi alongside the melodies that you create.
The default keyswitches are:
- Note 0: open
- Note 1: mute
- Note 3: tap
These can be changed in the configuration menu. If you are confused about how this works, examine example.mid in your midi sequencer, and try to render a guitar track from it.
- Articulation Keyswitch notes: Changes the midi note used to set the current articulation as described above.
- Reset period: Changes the frequency at which the record of selected samples is discarded during the sample selection process. Increasing this will lead to a greater diversity of samples used in your tracks, but may result in longer waiting time for the process to complete.
- Attack cut: The amount of time to cut off the start of all samples in addition to the regression-based attack cutting already done, in milliseconds. Increase if the picking sounds too harsh, decrease if the picking sounds too soft.
- Spectral centroid tolerance: The amount that the spectral centroid of a given sample is allowed to differ from the previously selected sample, in Hz. Increase if you want a more diverse selection of samples, decrease if it sounds like the guitarist is jumping all over the fretboard.
- pre-keyswitch pitch shift: Amount of semitones to shift all midi notes by immediately after import. Change this if your keyswitches don't work and all the notes are a higher or lower pitch than they should be. This will happen with some DAWs that export MIDI at a higher pitch than normal. For example, LMMS exports midi at an octave higher than it should be, so the pre-keyswitch pitch shift should be set to -12 when loading a midi exported from LMMS.