Before the virtual instrument revolution, producing convincing keyboard-generated guitar parts was a rather hit-and-miss affair. Although it was possible to achieve some moderately passable acoustic and electric 'lead guitar' performances, given a decent source of sampled raw material and some appropriate outboard processing, it was usually at the expense of the finer details; those 'guitaristic' articulations and techniques that add an authentic feel of spontaneity and human interactivity. Altogether much harder to emulate were convincing strummed guitar parts. Two hardware MIDI products from the 1990s, Oberheim's Strummer and Charlie Labs' strap-on Digitar, made a brave stab at the job by analysing any chord presented at their MIDI input and producing a 'strummed' MIDI output, in an appropriate guitar voicing, to drive a target sound source. Of these, the Digitar allowed for true real-time strumming and was the more successful of the two in terms of realism; nevertheless the dark circles under my eyes still remain, testifying to the many editing hours spent bullying Digitar parts into submission. Yet even after all that work, they ended up being buried in the mix to protect their patently artificial nature from detailed examination!

Steinberg provided a groundbreaking solution in 2002 with the release of Virtual Guitarist, a software instrument based on time-sliced, sampled loops of real strummed acoustic and electric guitar performances that could sit prominently in a mix. The greatly expanded and enhanced Virtual Guitarist 2 followed in 2006. Virtual Guitarist 2 is nevertheless based upon a supplied library of rhythm styles which, despite being editable and customisable in a DAW, do not allow for real-time strumming performances.

Russian company Music Lab, in collaboration with Best Service, then raised the bar in 2004 with the first release of Real Guitar, the brainchild of Sergey Egorov. (For a more detailed low-down, see the head-to-head reviews of Real Guitar 2L and Virtual Guitarist 2 in the September 2006 issue of SOS.) Taking a different approach to Virtual Guitarist, Real Guitar is exclusively devoted to acoustic guitars, using discrete single-note multisamples taken at multiple velocities, driven by a dedicated engine that employs MIDI processing not entirely dissimilar to that found on Charlie Labs' Digitar. Chords played on a MIDI keyboard are re-interpreted to produce authentic guitar voicings which can then be 'strummed' in real time, using groups of trigger keys elsewhere on the keyboard. However, Real Guitar goes much further than that, offering a fully polyphonic Solo mode and four different Chordal modes, variously utilising numerous user-controllable 'guitar performance' tricks such as fret-slides, hammer-ons and tremolando effects, not to mention keyswitchable alternate articulations such as mutes, palm slaps and harmonics. At last, a highly convincing and playable 'acoustic guitar' that could be featured loudly and proudly in a mix without a hint of embarrassment or apology. Users fast became fans, and were almost immediately asking "will there be an electric guitar version?"

It's a reasonable assumption that in deciding to develop Real Strat, as opposed to 'Real Les Paul' or 'Real Tele', Sergey Egorov settled upon that particular guitar as being a quintessentially iconic, versatile and ubiquitous example of the genre. Unlike Real Guitar, which provides eight different acoustic guitars, Real Strat currently offers only the one sample set, although we'll have to see whether this is augmented in the future with Real Strat-hosted add-on guitar expansion packs (with alternative GUI 'skins' that match specific guitars?), or perhaps Real Strat is just the first of an ongoing series of 'Real' electric guitar virtual instruments.

Real Strat requires a VST/DXi host for PC, or a VST/AU host for Mac, and RTAS support is also available for Pro Tools 6/7 users with FXpansion's VST-to-RTAS Adaptor (which is available or both Mac and PC). A stand-alone version is also installed...