Carlos Santana’s Fingerprints
Vagabond Synth Nerd’s Journal Vol. 133 - In Memory of Ryuichi Sakamoto Special Part 2: Melodic Approach in His Keyboard Solos and Compositions

I Tried Out Using AI to Reproduce the Guitar Sound of My Favorite Song!

2023-04-30

Hello everyone!
My name is Shion Yodogawa, and I play guitar and sing in a solo band called True Story!
In this article, I'm going to try out using AI to reproduce the guitar sound of my favorite song!

How do I reproduce it?

Have you heard of a name called ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence developed by an American company called OpenAI, and it can interact with people in a natural way.
This time, we used it to successfully reproduce the guitar sound using the following procedure!

Input the guitar and equipment you will be using, the name of the artist and song you want to reproduce into ChatGPT, and generate an English prompt.
Input the prompt generated in 1. into ChatGPT to get a detailed response.
Have ChatGPT translate the response you got in 2. into Japanese.
Set up the amp based on the information you got in 3.

Please note that ChatGPT is created by having the AI learn from websites, news articles, books, etc. as of September 2021, so if the song was released after that, there will be no documents and it will be a complete guess.
However, even if the settings are guessed based on the title and artist name alone, if it sounds good, I will consider it OK for this time. Let's try to verify it!

Generating English Prompts

First, I will generate an English prompt by entering the equipment to be used and the name of the song to be reproduced in Japanese!
The reason why I input English first is that, looking at the world, there are more English speakers than Japanese speakers, so the number of information samples that ChatGPT can learn from is naturally larger for English than for Japanese.
With this in mind, I thought that I would probably get a more accurate response if I asked in English, so I am going to put English first, this time!

Let's try it out!

The Prompt I Actually Used:

Hello! I would like to ask ChatGPT about the guitar amp settings for the song “△△” by “〇〇” in English.
What kind of prompt should I use in this case?
The equipment I will be using is a Les Paul-type guitar, Marshall JCM800, and Marshall 1960A.

And this is the response I got!

Answer:

Hello! You asked about setting up a guitar amp. Here is an example of an appropriate prompt in English;

"Hi ChatGPT, I have a Marshall JCM800 and a Marshall 1960A cabinet, and I'm trying to achieve the guitar tone for the song '△△' by artist〇〇. I'm playing a Les Paul-type guitar. Can you recommend the optimal settings for the amp to achieve this sound?"

By asking questions like this, I can suggest the best amp settings for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Ask a Question with the English Prompts

Next, I'll use this to ask about the guitar sound of this song, which I really like!

The Prompt I Actually Used:

Hi ChatGPT, I have a Marshall JCM800 and a Marshall 1960A cabinet, and I'm trying to achieve the guitar tone for the song 'サマータイムレコード' by じん.
I'm playing a Les Paul-type guitar. Can you recommend the optimal settings for the amp to achieve this sound?

Answer:

Sure, I can definitely help you with that!To achieve the guitar tone for "サマータイムレコード" by じん using your Marshall JCM800 and 1960A cabinet with a Les Paul-type guitar,here are some suggested settings:

Start with the volume at around 6 to 7 (out of 10) on the JCM800, and adjust it as necessary to achieve the desired loudness.
Set the bass at around 5, the mids at around 7, and the treble at around 8 on the amp to get a balanced tone with some brightness and clarity.
Set the gain at around 5 to 6 to achieve a moderate level of distortion.
Optionally, you can add some reverb to the tone by setting the reverb knob on the JCM800 to around 3 to 4.

These settings should give you a good starting point for dialing in the desired tone.From there, you can make further adjustments to suit your personal preference or to better match the tone in the song.

Let's have it translated into Japanese!

Prompt used in the actual conversation:

Thank you! Can you translate it into Japanese?

Answer:

Yes, of course! I'll suggest the optimal settings for your amp to reproduce the guitar tone of “Summer Time Records” using your Marshall JCM800, 1960A cabinet, and Les Paul-type guitar. The following are the suggested settings:

Start with the volume at around 6 to 7 (out of 10) on the JCM800, and adjust it as necessary to achieve the desired loudness.
Set the bass at around 5, the mids at around 7, and the treble at around 8 on the amp to get a balanced tone with some brightness and clarity.
Set the gain at around 5 to 6 to achieve a moderate level of distortion.
Optionally, you can add some reverb to the tone by setting the reverb knob on the JCM800 to around 3 to 4.

I think this is a good answer, don't you? Let's try setting it up!

Test playing

I don't have the actual amp, so I'll try setting it up using the Zoom G1 Four multi-effect processor!

I felt like the gain and master volume needed to be tweaked a little more, but the equalization was usable as is!

Next, I'll try a song released in 2022, which there shouldn't be any reference material for!

Prompt:

Hi ChatGPT, I have a Marshall JCM800 and a Marshall 1960A cabinet, and I'm trying to achieve the guitar tone for the song '海になりたい part.3' by Base Ball Bear.
I'm playing a Les Paul-type guitar. Can you recommend the optimal settings for the amp to achieve this sound?

Answer:

Hello! I'll do my best to help you achieve the guitar tone you're after.

To get the guitar tone for "海になりたい part.3" by Base Ball Bear with your Marshall JCM800 and Marshall 1960A cabinet, you can start with the following settings:

Set the EQ controls to the following: Bass: 6, Mid: 7, Treble: 5
Set the preamp gain to around 5 or 6
Set the master volume to the desired level

With these settings, you should be able to achieve a good starting point for the guitar tone. You may need to adjust the settings slightly to suit your playing style and the tone of your Les Paul guitar.

You can also experiment with using different pedals to further shape your sound. For example, a booster pedal or an overdrive pedal can be used to increase the gain and add more distortion to your tone.

Remember that the tone of the guitar will also depend on the playing technique, so be sure to adjust your picking and fretting hand technique to get the desired tone.

I hope this helps you achieve the guitar tone you're after!

Let's get a Japanese translation of this too!

Prompt:

Thank you! Can you translate it into Japanese?

Answer:

Of course! Here is an example of the amp settings you can use to achieve the guitar tone in “Umi ni Naritai part.3”.

Set the EQ controls to the following: Bass: 6, Mid: 7, Treble: 5
Set the preamp gain to around 5 or 6
Set the master volume to the desired level

Remember that the tone of the guitar will also depend on the playing technique, so be sure to adjust your picking and fretting hand technique to get the desired tone.

I hope this helps you achieve the guitar tone you're after!

Wow, the direction of the sound is pretty much similar to the original... I don't know how it figured out the mid-range sounds, but I'm surprised that it can actually be used too.

Conclusion

So, this time I tried out using AI to reproduce the guitar sound of a favorite song!
I think sound creation is a point that people get crazy about, and also a point that is difficult for beginners to understand, but using ChatGPT in this way, I found that it was able to pick up on things nicely!
I hope you'll try it out too when you want to get that sound from a particular song! Thank you!

The “sound & person” column is made up of contributions from you.
For details about contributing, click here.