First time working with midi

[Lastrite]

I'm working on a rock album with a friend who lives on the other side of the country (don't worry, it's just Holland, still only 2 hours away).

We are in the writing stage and we are doing it in Midi, something I am completely unfamiliar with, because my friend is an adept GuitarPro user.
He sends me a Midi file with guitars and bass, I add some simple drums in Reaper, put it through VSTi's and send it back as an Mp3 for him to study.

Remember please this is a post-production. It's Midi and I haven't played at all with velocities and other stuff to make it more 'human'. When we are done writing we will replace all the midi with real live instruments

Since it's my first time, I wanted to ask if people had any tips and suggestions about getting decent Guitar and Bass-sounds...

[rca33]

Decent guitars with midi ?
It’s a very hard thing to do.

For distorted guitars, I found that the best way to make it sound “right” is to use a sound similar of a clean electric guitar and them put that sound in Guitar Rig and add effects (distortion) from there.

But you have to bear in mind that a real guitar has multiple sounds by the way it is played.
When you do a simple chord (or solo) in a distorted guitar, you have the attack sound from the pick, the noises created by the fingers moving across the strings and other very characteristic properties of the guitar.

Some midi sounds come with these effects in order to add realism to the sample, but most don’t.

Your best bet is using midi just to get a picture of what you want, and then replace it with real guitars.