I used the chorus from the excellent free Kjaerhus Classic collection. To give a final gloss I added a touch of chorus to the master track. To my ears it sounded best at 2.2k, but this is something you could experiment with. For #1 I set the type to “low pass” and then experimented with the cut off point. This is a four band EQ but in this case I’m only interested in having a simple low-pass filter so I disabled 2 thru 4. For this I used the bundled ReaEQ plugin. Whilst we can’t totally get rid of this, we can tame it to a certain extent, by EQing the signal before it goes into the pitch-shifter. This is both a basic flaw in the way pitch-shifting works but also because we’re affecting the B and E strings. I set the level of the “Octave up” track to be about -12db, just so it subtly underpins the raw guitar.Īt this point it is starting to sound like a 12 string but, with this pitch shift, particularly in the higher registers, there is a harsh an unpleasant squeakiness that has been introduced. I set this to shift the pitch up my one octave. On the “Octave Up” track I added one of Reaper’s bundled VST plugins called “ReaPitch”.

On the “Raw Guitar” track I clicked on the “io” button, and added a new send, to route this signal to the “Octave Up” track. I then set up a second empty track which I called “Octave Up”. For this I used the neck pickup on my Hohner G2T, plugged into a Line 6 Pod XT Live (because it happened to be handy). So my first step was to record a single track of plain 6 string guitar. The B and E have an identical string tuned in unison.

The E, A, D and G all have a second string that is tuned one octave higher. It set me thinking about whether you could mimic the sound of a 12 string in post-production, using Reaper and some of the free VST plugins that I have installed.īefore we dig into the steps I followed to do this, lets just take a minute to look at the way a 12 string is tuned. If you listen to it in isolation is is far from perfect but, especially when put into a mix, it is definitely usable.

Now I have a Line 6 Variax, as does one of the other contributors and the Variax does a half decent job of simulating a 12 string. As we’ve been sharing out the various tasks and jobs somebody mentioned that they didn’t have a 12 string guitar. The song chosen is Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” from The Wall. On the Six String Bliss forum I’ve got involved in a collaborative recording project where we’re going to document a lot of the background discussions and processes that go on, both so that we can find out more about how each other works and to pull together a “how to” guide (no doubt with elements of “how not to” as well).

Are plugins for reaper free