Electric Guitar Online with an Amp and Pedals

A recorded note can only start. Everything a guitarist does after picking the string — bend, vibrato, slide, hammer-on, muting — changes a string that is already ringing, and a recording cannot do that: it can only be sped up or replaced with another one. Here the string is a physical model, so a bend really shortens the ringing string, and two notes through distortion produce the difference tone you hear from a real amp. The model was checked against recordings of a real guitar: tuning, the decay of every overtone and the response of the pickups.

Distortion mixes sounds: from two notes it also makes the sums and differences of their frequencies. For a fifth (a power chord) the difference lands exactly an octave below the root, so the chord gets thicker. For a third the differences fall between the notes of the scale and sound like mud. That is why rock and metal use power chords at high gain and full chords on clean or crunch tones. You can hear it here because the sum of the strings is distorted, as in a real amp, not each note on its own.

You need an audio interface with a guitar input or a guitar USB cable. Open "Plug in your own guitar", allow access to the input and pick it in the list. The browser's voice processing — echo cancellation, noise suppression, automatic gain — is turned off, because it ruins a guitar signal. Listen in wired headphones. If the guitar hums under high gain, raise the noise gate threshold.

The tool shows the audio output delay in the settings: usually 10–30 ms on a computer, more on a phone. Bluetooth headphones add the most — 100–200 ms — so use wired ones for playing. Closing other tabs that play sound helps too. With a real guitar the input delay of the audio interface adds to this; its value is shown after you connect.

Digits 1–8 are chords from the current key; the "Power / Full" switch above the pads picks their type. Hold Shift for palm muting, like the edge of your hand on the bridge: a short, tight chug. The down and up arrows strum the last chord down and up, Space bends the last note. Single notes are on the letter rows: in the "Chords and scale" layout every key is in the chosen scale.

Drop D is standard tuning with the sixth string lowered a whole step, from E to D. A power chord on the three low strings then takes one finger — grunge, pop punk and nu metal are built on it. Lower tunings (Drop C, B standard, the seven-string) give the heavy low end of stoner and modern metal, open tunings suit slide and blues. Changing the tuning retunes both the neck and the chords on the pads.

Yes: what you play is yours. The band's drums come from a public-domain library, the cabinet impulses are published under CC0, and the genre riffs were written for this tool and do not copy other people's songs. The take's MIDI file opens in any music production program, where you can swap the sound.